Estimate projects quickly with the cookie cutter method

How a five-minute technique can predict how long and how costly your next project will be

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

Developers hate estimating. Predictions are difficult and too often turn into commitments. Teams also hate them because of the soul-destroying meetings that seem unending. Cookie cutter estimates can help with all that.

Cookie cutter is a useful technique for estimating repetitive work. When you think of estimating, you might think of Agile’s story points, planning poker, or even Monte Carlo simulations.

But these miss a crucial point:

Most of us don’t create groundbreaking or truly novel things every day. Instead, our jobs require a certain amount of repetition. And we find ourselves pondering and estimating very similar things time and time again.

Cookie Cutter Method

Consider for a moment the breadth of the work your team does. Are there similar projects that managers often ask you: when will it be done? how much will it cost? It could be building a new website or updating one, integrating a new client, patching servers, or many other things.

What you want is to break the project into the tasks you need to do. Then, you estimate a min and max amount of time to deliver each task.

That’s it. Next time a similar project comes along it will take you 5 minutes to estimate how long it will take and how much it will cost.

An example

In the games/VR space we often have to create 3D environments inspired by the real world.

All of these go through broadly the same steps:

Ideation
- Reference gathering: finding example images from the real world
- Concepts: low-fi drawings for discussion

Design
- Implement white-box: a very crude 3D wireframe to establish scales
- Modules planning: defining which 3D models are needed
- Material exploration: finding the right textures for the modules

Development
- Final models: the actual making of those objects
- Skybox: sourcing the actual sky around the environment
- Light pass: making light and shadows more realistic

Polish
- Optimisation: compressing the scene so it loads quickly
- Audio: sourcing the sound track for this environment

Cooking cutting

So, as you can see, estimating a new 3D environment is a fairly repetitive task.

A simple spreadsheet is all you would need to create the cookie cutter for a new environment — in this example (link).

Sample Excel spreadsheet

Easy peasy.

In this case the project is going to take between 1 and 4 months to deliver. This will quickly preempt interesting conversations such as: do we have enough people? the right people? too much scope?

Now that you have a benchmark, you can re-use it the next time your client (or boss) asks for estimates. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Greasing the mold

If you are gunning for sophistication on your cookie mold you should be aware of 3 common pitfalls:

1. Complexity. You have a mold. Now, is the new thing more difficult to create? Say, 50% more difficult. You can easily increase the min and max by as much
2. Number of “things”. Say you only need to build a 3D beach chair. But now you also need a table, umbrella, and a glass with a slice of pineapple on it. You can account for the number of new items you need to create which are fast or slow to build
3. Dependencies/parallelization. Think about your team, how many hands can work on a task simultaneously. What needs to be done before? After? Simultaneously? Cookie cutter estimate is not a substitute for planning (e.g. dependencies, sequencing, capacity planning, critical path, etc)

Conclusion

Estimates are needed. And sooner or later we all have to answer “how long” and “how much” to our bosses. The Cookie Cutter Method can help you cut down the time (and pain) to provide those answers.

You might also find useful:

• Estimating Unknown Scope Is Impossible! Here’s how to Do It
• Get (Some of) Your Life Back From Meetings Using Project Forecasting

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