How to Estimate with the Estimating Formula

If you want to estimate it helps having a formula.

Accurate estimating is a valuable skill. It's the answer to the question "How long will it take?"  If your boss, user or customer asks this question and you answer it incorrectly it could be a problem of

• Working overtime
• Not meeting expectations 
• Not being trusted
• Receiving a lower hourly rate for your work

If your boss asks for an estimate and you underestimate the work you may be working lots of overtime to meet your commitment. Had you had an accurate estimate you could tell him what that is and hopefully not work the overtime.

If you estimate time to build a website at 10 hours, $100/hour then you'll quote a price of $1,000. But what if your estimate is wrong and it takes 30 hours. It can be hard to charge the $3,000 you worked. Don't plan on getting repeat business. An accurate estimate would allow you to do better to come in on time with the site.

The formula for accurate estimating can be answered with the question of when will you finish this 300 page book? I use the book example, because once you understand it, estimate other things will be a matter of collecting the proper information and applying the formula.

Now if you read a page a minute it will take you 300 minutes or 5 hours (300/60) to complete the book. This is the actual time to read the book but not the elapsed time. If you read an hour a day it will take you 5 days to complete it. If you read 1/2 a day then 10 days to complete it. 

This brings us to the formula 

Estimated Completion Date = 

                                                                  pages to read 

        Today's Date  +       ---------------------------------------------------

                                       Pages per min  x  Time reading each day in minutes

So this is the basics of the Estimating Formula.  This formula will soon be implemented in Time-Creator.com, but it does help you with the variables of Pages/minute and Time reading each day.

You can download as spreadsheet to see this calculation in action.

If want job security, more customers, better employment reviews it does start with simple accurate estimating.

Random is Good or God

I was way into random before the iPod shuffle came along. Years back on my Atari 800 XL I built a program called Random Album Selection. This was a time before the CD or MP3 existed and everything was on vinyl.

Using Atari Basic, I wrote a program that allowed me to enter my albums and it would randomly select an album and side to play. I realized the benefit from this as I realized that Random is Good.

I would buy new albums and play them over and over again until it would sit with my other records never to listened to again. But after developing the program, I would be listening to albums that I wouldn't normally listen to and enjoying it very much. There was something to this random stuff.

Flash forward years later and I'm working on a version of Time-Creator.com. I start to think that if random is good for albums it's probably good for selecting what I should do. If you're in the habit of doing certain things and those things aren't getting you to where you want to be then Random Task Selection might be better than you selecting what to do.

I've built this feature into Time-Creator. You can filter on your "A" or top priority tasks and randomly select one to do. Now like the iPod shuffle, random task selection is good.  Matter a fact I like to think of it as asking God what to do. So Random is Good and Random is God.

You can download the latest version of Time-creator at my website.  Note it's an early alpha version a little buggy but very useful. You do need Excel 2007 or 2010 right now to use it.