Navigating the Minefield - Estimating without Complete Requirements

Your team is assigned to a new project, and you've had the kickoff meeting. Now, your boss' boss sends an email to you asking for a "guesstimate" of how long and how many people-days the project will take. What do you do? Even though developers and project managers can see the futility of doing premature, fixed cost estimates prior to requirements development, the industry still demands early estimates, often before a project is even named. Based on her experiences with similar projects, Carol Dekkers offers tips and tricks that she and others have used successfully to answer these difficult questions. Find out how to provide traceability when the original estimates turn out to be as inaccurate as the unknown requirements they represent.

• Early resource and time estimates without good requirements
• Organizing and documenting early requirements statements
• Communicating the unknown to customers and management