Instructions for using the software estimation tool

You are expected to have a basic understanding of spreadsheet formulas before you will be able to effectively tweak and configure the estimation tool to match your company's operational workflow. Once the tool is configured correctly then you won't need any spreadsheet capability to use the tool and anybody in your organization will be able to use the tool easily. Hopefully with more people starting to use the template and with better documentation the system will become configurable for people without deeper understanding about spreadsheets. But to think of it, Project Managers and above should really be able to juggle with spreadsheet formulas :-)

To use the system you will first have to configure it to meet your company's operational workflow. See instructions for configuration.

Once the system is configured you will have to copy the template for each project you wish to estimate for. The only sheets you will have to modify would be the 'LineItemEstimate' sheet and the 'Team' sheet. You will first have to calculate the total coding hours in the project using the 'LineItemEstimate' sheet. This number will then have to be added to the 'Coding Hours' cell (cell B21) in the 'Team' sheet. Additionally you will have to add the team members who are going to be working on the project in the 'Team' sheet itself. You can copy over existing team member rows into new rows to add additional resources to the team and then edit the cells marked yellow.

Your estimated hours will appear in a table in the 'Team' sheet in the bottom of the sheet. The time to be allocated will appear in a table in the bottom right of the 'Team' sheet.