[Codey09]

Hi Guys,

I'm in my second year of my foundation degree in software development.
One of my modules is Project where were supposed to learn project management and have our own project with a real company (not a made up one).
I have got a project were I am developing an app for blackberry phones for my college, so that future students can download the prospectus and look at the course that are being offered on their blackberry phones.
I have weekly meetings with one of the tutors at the college to check on progress and discuss any issues that may arise or any questions I may have. I have been asked to produce a time line for the project, I know in principle how the time line should work but I don't have any idea on how long to give to different aspects of the development cycle.
Any suggestions or examples would be great so I can use that as a guideline.

[Martyr2]

Typically you would break down each task to a small enough detail that you can, with reasonable accuracy, know roughly how long it would take. This is usually done with a critical path or Gantt chart. Now as far as estimating, it is a bit of a fine art based on past experience. However, most books would suggest that you give three estimated times per task. One is a pessimistic time (if all goes wrong how long would it take), one is a most like'y view (if things went so so) and one optimistic view (where everything went right with the task). Then you use the equation (P+4M+O) / 6. P = Pestimistic, M = Most likely, and O = Optimistic.

So if a task took 12 minutes worst case, 5 minutes most likely and 3 minutes optimistic then you would have (12 + (4*5) + 3) / 6 = 5.83 minutes.

Then you would use that time as the estimation... of course rounding it to 6 minutes.

Hope this helps!