Regardless of project/planning methodology, having a ever-growing checklist of less-obvious estimation items is a simple way to avoid forgetting to consider them. The book "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" [1] by Steve McConnell contains a number of these.
Some examples:
- Team or company meetings
- Team member sick days, holidays, vacations
- Bugs in third party software
- Maintenance of previous systems
- Maintenance of build automation
- Demos
- Interviews
- ...
... or your own list of whatever other items you have historically forgotten, or tend to forget when estimating.
In the painting example, the moving of the furniture was something I overlooked, despite having made the effort to carefully think of all tasks. A estimation checklist built up from previous painting projects could have triggered me to consider this task.
Some examples:
... or your own list of whatever other items you have historically forgotten, or tend to forget when estimating.In the painting example, the moving of the furniture was something I overlooked, despite having made the effort to carefully think of all tasks. A estimation checklist built up from previous painting projects could have triggered me to consider this task.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Devel...