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 1.1 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 (Version 1.1). 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:

Intro contains important notes on the tool.
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.
RFP Estimate calculates final hour and cost estimates and includes all functionality that is reasonable to implement from the RFP or documentation provided.
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.
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.

Attachment	Size
ca_template_estimating_worksheet_v1.1.ots	186.41 KB

Comments

OTS File

Submitted by Anonymous on March 6, 2009 - 1:34pm.

FYI, the download file is in OpenDocument (ODF) Spreadsheet Template format. To open it, you'll probably want OpenOffice.org or another ODF capable program like Google Docs, KOffice, NeoOffice, Lotus Symphony, etc. [ODF is an ISO-approved, internationally-used open data format (kind of like HTML and CSS are). It's very much in line with the philosophy of open standards and open source software, hence it makes a better choice for sharing this info than, for example, Excel would be.]

Wow

Submitted by Anonymous on March 14, 2009 - 4:02pm.

It is incredibly generous of you to share a document like this. Being able to estimate projects accurately can make or break a development shop. Open-sourcing something this proprietary is really walking the walk. --ksenzee

Great pointer

Submitted by Anonymous on March 24, 2009 - 10:21am.

Thanks a lot for sharing valuable pieces like this. Experiencing the growing pains of an expanding organisation, things like this are really great help. Even if we don't take it over 1 on 1, it certainly helps looking at our own practises from another angle. Imre Gmelig Meijling http://www.internetunlimited.nl

A new version with calculated project duration

Submitted by Anonymous on April 1, 2009 - 4:44pm.

Thank you for putting this file/system in the wild. I have just posted an article that looks at the features I find the most interesting and point out some shortcomings. I have created a new version that tries to make this tool a tad more precise. It incorporates the calculation of the project duration based on available resources, areas of work and tasks. Please check it out @ Raincity Studios site (sorry, the spam filter doesn't let me post an URL here) and feel free to let me know your thoughts and comments. Cheers and Thanks! Francis

Thank you for your comment

Submitted by Gregory Heller on April 3, 2009 - 2:57pm.

Thank you for your comment Francis, and your additions to the worksheet! Your blog post on the RCS website is very thoughtful, and we will certainly review and consider your improvements. We have about 30 different people that we schedule across quite a few concurrent projects (10 to 20). We use a completely different spreadsheet and process for that and it is groaning under the weight of its size, we hope to move to an online system, and have done some planning around what that would look like. In the estimating spreadsheet the "project duration" is not calculated, rather it is "declared" by the project planner. To arrive upon the duration we do some mental calculations and also look at when the client would like to have something launch ready. So if the project estimate is 2000 hours, we realize that we probably would not do the project in 6 weeks! We would consult our scheduler regarding available resources, and then consider what a realistic time frame is for the project. We use the duration to show a client how the project cost can change if there are delays in the project (extra round of IA or Visual Design, or delay in getting client content entered into the site, or signoff) because of the overhead costs of having the team assembled and working at less than the intended/scheduled pace.

I try to open it in OpenOffice but it wouldn't allow me to do it

Submitted by Anonymous on April 13, 2009 - 11:10pm.

I try to open it in OpenOffice but it wouldn't allow me to do it There is a bunch of XML files The biggest one is content.xml 4 Mega It open in a webbrowser So I try by file open in open office but it opens in I think the writer instead of calc. Could you post it in a more userfriendly way ?