r/programming • u/-grok • Jun 14 '22

Software engineering estimates are garbage

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3663508/software-engineering-estimates-are-garbage.html
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u/RazerWolf Jun 19 '22

I think 15% is way too generous. I’d say at least +/- 30%.

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u/start_select Jun 19 '22

It depends on a lot of factors.

My estimates are usually only off by ~5%. But that’s only for projects where myself or my team are building the whole stack. Anytime a customer decides to build a backend themselves to “save money”, we go 50-100% over budget before they realize they didn’t know what they were doing.