The CivicActions Estimating Worksheet

Over the last several months we have developed a set of tools to assist with estimating for Drupal web development projects. We recently arrived at version 1.9 of our estimating worksheet, maintained by Owen Barton, our Engineering Group Manager. The tool has come to be known as the CivicActions Estimating Worksheet Template - now available as a Google Spreadsheet (click File -> Make a Copy) or as an OpenOffice template. We thought it might be of use to other Drupal consultants so we're publicly releasing it for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license. You are free to use under the terms of this license. In the spirit of the community in which we work we would appreciate that you share any improvements with the rest of the community. Please post a link in the comments here to any new versions that you would like to share. The attached file contains five worksheets:

1. Intro contains important notes on the tool.
2. Line-Item Estimate is for estimates of individual work items based on the provided RFP/documentation. The totals from this are used in the other sheets.
3. RFP Estimate calculates final hour and cost estimates and includes all functionality that is reasonable to implement from the RFP or documentation provided.
4. Recommended Estimate calculates final hour and cost estimates and makes allowances to avoid major custom work and focus on high-value out-of-the-box functionality. This is generally only used when the estimate for the RFP exceeds the available budget. Please note that this sheet is disabled by default – to enable use the switch on the sheet.
5. Timeline is a tool to assist in drafting a project timeline and phase/sprint plan. Once the estimates are settled this can be used to work out an appropriate project timeline and resource plan.
6. Client Summary is a friendly summary of the information we normally include with our proposals. The values from this sheet can be copy and pasted from this sheet into a new spreadsheet file or into the proposal document. Overview of Features:
   • Takes into account the certainty of the line item estimates (allowing for vague RFPs, technical risks and areas that need research) to produce low and high estimates, in addition to the 'normal' estimate that give an idea of the expected range of variability.
   • Allows us to recommend reduced, simplified or alternative functionality than what is requested (especially useful for clients with dreams bigger than their pockets).
   • Calculates cost estimates based on actual role rates, rather than blended rates.
   Types of estimates rolled into the total:
   • Line-item estimates are the traditional estimates that we have done. Typically we would only do engineering line-item estimates at the proposal stage - the other roles would be valuable however if we re-estimate post-IA or post-strategy, where we have more information and need specific information for budgeting and scheduling.
   • Duration estimates account for the fact that it takes a certain amount of our time just to keep a project rolling.
   • Proportional estimates allows us to base an estimate on a proportion of some other estimate, which is a useful way to estimate some of the QA and PM work.
   • Manual estimates are a way to include a single aggregate estimate into the totals - for example creative estimates sometimes use this.
   
   CivicActions Estimating Worksheet by Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
   Based on a work at civicactions.com.