How does one determine the Level of Effort for estimating the number of hours needed for a project?
say customer wanted to move 3 or 4 VLANS behind a firewall,
or wanted to connect a new router for a new C2C VPN,
or say needed some traffic analysis
I've never worn these shoes, I am not an estimator, but the task comes with the new Team Lead.
so I need to figure out how to estimate.
break down the tasks
assign mid-range hours per task
contingency 10%
admin overhead 3%
profit
e.g. new router
- design 16 hours
- BOM 1 hour
- place order 15 minutes
- draft config 2 hours
- draft change 2 hours- take delivery, unbox, stage 1 hours- submit change 15 minutes
- change meeting 15 minutes
- peer review 30 minutes
- 3rd party coordination 1 hour
- implement change 120 minutes after hours x1.5
- CMDB update 15 minutes
- doco update 15 minutes
so I need a SoW before the LoE...
Quote from: ristau5741 on June 02, 2020, 08:06:30 AM
so I need a SoW before the LoE...
Yep. But you need LoE estimates to include in the SoW, it's a vicious circle. The LoE will tie into the SLA, which is why I love "best effort" the best. That means if a reboot doesn't fix it, oh well.
Requirements. That is what you need. So I hear. Never actually seen a requirements document that details what is needed. You take that and build out the high level steps. Estimate how long each will take, and who is involved. Then build a SoW, and project plans from that.
How to do the actual estimation is experience and is very dependent on each organization. One organization my take a week to deploy a new switch with all the change control, manual config, rack stack, cabling, etc. All done by different teams. Another organization it may be 2 hours with no change control, and one guy goes down and does the work.
-Otanx
This is why I've always enjoyed working for a tiny (<50 person) SME. The AM walks over to my desk and says "how long will this take, roughly" and I say "ooh 2 hours, 3 hours max" and they disappear and return some time in the future with a job :smug:
ended up figuring it takes me 30 mins to research, develop and deploy a single firewall rule,
so I estimated 200 devices, x5 rules each, 1000 rules ~500 hours, plus time to research develop and plan,
discussion TRB CCB processing, etc.
Another way to think about it is, you do 30 minutes research and 10 mins documentation then future effort doesn't require so much research when you have a validated design (copy/paste) :)
To add to what Dieselboy said you will find that some tasks can be done in bulk faster than doing the task again. As an example it takes 6 hours to get a server build done. This is installing the OS, patching, installing applications, etc. However, if I need to build 5 servers the time it takes isn't 6 x 5. I can start the OS install on one, and move to two and start the OS install. Then on to three etc. Once I get server 5 started server 1 is waiting for input. So I can say 1 server takes 6 hours, and up to 5 servers takes 8 hours.
-Otanx
iTs super hard to estimate correctly esp with the factors mentioned. Its an art not a science esp. when you consider different individuals do things at a different pace...
Quote from: wintermute000 on June 23, 2020, 06:00:38 PM
iTs super hard to estimate correctly esp with the factors mentioned. Its an art not a science esp. when you consider different individuals do things at a different pace...
That's why you need to follow the Mr. Scott rule:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9SVhg6ZENw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xRqXYsksFg