Table of Contents

Task duration vs appetite
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If you are building a product, it is your responsibility to define how much time you’re willing to bet/spend on a feature, this is called the appetite
Unlike a task duration estimate, an appetite is a fixed amount of time that is defined in order to define the boundaries of what the feature to develop should be vs an estimate which means that the task should be completed and we expect it to take X amount of time (variable)
The appetite helps set the amount of time before a task is deemed without a proper scope

Do
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Make a high-level, gut feeling estimate of the duration of the whole project
Lowest (fastest, optimistic), average (most likely), and highest (slowest, pessimistic) time duration estimates
- A final value is computed by taking (lowest + 4*average + highest)/6
- List the reasons why you think things may go right/wrong
Heuristic estimation
- At a high level, you should be able to tell how much each portion of a project should have over the complete project
Use historical data
- If you have underestimated in the past, you will keep underestimating if you do not adjust
Break down any item that is larger than 10% of the project into smaller items

Duration will depend on the skills of the person completing the task. An expert will generally take less time than a novice to accomplish the same task

Easy to start/stop tracking a task (less than 15 seconds, otherwise it feels like an interruption)