Planning and estimating large-scale software projects
&gt; Estimates are one of the hardest parts of software development.<p>And also fundamental. When I was directly estimating big software projects the key, for me, was to trust developers recommendations but apply a different multiplier for each developer. Multipliers ranged from x1 to x3. Those rare devs with x1 were, of course, a blessing. And those with x3 were not necessarily bad; they were often the ones working on the really hard problems. Of course, it meant getting to know those developers and a prior (which we set at x2, for new starters).<p>Individuals were remarkably consistent in terms of their actual performance; so a x1 developer would almost always be a x1; a x1.5 would almost always be x1.5.