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The CRUDLAFS Technique for Software Estimation

I have always, like so many other programmers, had a problem with software estimation and costing out a software project. Most of my career was plagued by software estimates so bad that I made significantly less money on my independent projects than I did at my low paying day jobs. This was not the reason I was working through my vacations!

The turning point came when I realized the CRUD acronym encompassed most of the functionality of the line of business applications I was writing and could be used as a check list to ensure I wasn’t missing functionality. Later, this checklist was refined to CRUDLAFS.

Wait! What? CRUDLAFS? … did I just coin a new acronym? …. Hmmm, looks like I did!</egosmirk>

While I’m sure you are already familiar with the CRUD acronym, here is CRUDLAFS:

Create All functionality around validating and creating an entity
Read All functionality around reading and displaying an entity
Update All functionality around validating and updating an entity
Delete All functionality around deleting an entity
List All functionality around querying and displaying a list of entities
Additional  All additional functionality related to an entity
Filter All functionality around filtering a list of entities
Sort All functionality around sorting a list of entities

I set up an Excel spreadsheet with CRUDLAFS as column headings, all my known or probable entities down the left, and probable hours to accomplish each in the cells, like so:

An example of a CRUDLAFS estimate

An example of a CRUDLAFS estimate (numbers are totally contrived)

So in my example, the estimated time to create a list of orders is 5 hours.

And when I say known or probable entities, I mean; on smaller projects, I usually have a pretty good idea what all the entities will be, but on big projects, I charge hourly until requirements, data model, GUI design / functional specifications, and initial risk assessment is complete. Most larger projects just have too much back and forth communication and the customer usually doesn’t even have more than a vague idea of what they want. This was a very important distinction which has kept me out of bankruptcy.

I get the feeling this may not work well with agile approaches, but for Big Design Up Front projects, it has been a major leap for me.

Copyright © John MacIntyre 2010, All rights reserved

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