Estimate
An estimate is an approximate prediction or assessment of the time, effort, resources, or cost required for defined work or activity.
Lead Developer Career Guide
An estimate expressed as the number of hours expected to complete a task or project.
- How it is used
- Supports software project planning by expressing expected task or project duration in hours for timelines, budgets, and sometimes client billing.
- How deep it goes
- Defines hourly estimates, contrasts them with story points, and gives a practical sequence for scoping, breaking down, checking, and revising work.
- Examples
- Uses fixed-budget projects, consultancy billing, team availability, and an out-of-scope feature addition to illustrate estimation decisions.
- What you can do after
- Practice/perform hourly estimation by clarifying scope with the team, breaking work into tasks, considering prior work and availability, and revising estimates.
Delivering Machine Learning Projects: From design to deployment
Estimation is the process of forecasting the effort, resources, schedule, or cost needed to deliver a project or its results.
- How it is used
- Transforms a project hypothesis and delivery context into a resourced, reviewable proposal before customer costs are discussed.
- How deep it goes
- Specifies work, resourcing, risk premiums, review, documentation, and sign-off without detailing task-level forecasting methods.
- Examples
- Uses estimate-building tickets, risk registers, mitigation premiums, review meetings, documentation, and accountable budget sign-off.
- What you can do after
- Apply a structured estimate that exposes resource needs, uncertainty, mitigation costs, and organizational risk before commitment.
Read how Delivering Machine Learning Projects: From design to deployment explains estimate →
Related concepts
- story pointalternative to · A story point is an abstract relative unit for estimating the size or effort of a software work item, independent of elapsed time.
- infrastructure as codeuses · Infrastructure as code is the practice of defining, provisioning, and managing computing infrastructure through machine-readable code or configuration rather than manual procedures.
- HCP Terraformimplemented by · HCP Terraform is HashiCorp's hosted software platform for managing Terraform workflows as a software service.
- project managerused by · A project manager is a professional who plans, coordinates, and controls a defined project’s scope, schedule, resources, estimates, and delivery.
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