project size

that is the most completely ambiguous question i've ever seen.

can you be just slightly more specific?

You can estimate size of the project using various techniques. You can distribute your project into small tasks (work breakdown structure) and note the effort estimate for each task and sum these estimates to get the overall estimate.

Another techique is PERT where you can apply the optimistic, pessimistic and realistic estimates.

Another method is to use historic data. For example if you have done a similar project in the past you can evalute how much time it took and based on teh new scope apply the time estimate for new project.

Your project size is both the cost of the project and the duration. Various costing techniques are also available to estimate the cost of project. One of the simple costing method is to apply the hourly rate and multiple it with the overall time. Depending on the applied resources there can be differend hourly rates for resources that can be added accordingly.

Hi:

The most common answer in Project Management industry is.. "It depends" I explain myself:

It depends on context, for example, for a midsize enterprise a project of 10,000 hrs duration could be short but for a short company, the project could be inimaginable. So you have to observe several variables and put them into context to determine the size of the project, I'll give some examples I have used in my field:

Effort: almost all projects with an effort up to 2500 men hours are short, up to 5000 are middle and more than 5000 men hours are large projects.

People: Basically, the more people, the largest is the project, what I have used is: up to 3 people is short, between 3 to 10 is medium and more than 10 people means a large project.

Cost: The money that is in risk with the project could be used to determine the size too.

Duration: If project goes up to 8 weeks is short project, between 8 and 16 weeks are medium and more than that would be a large project.

Scope: How many organizations within the company will be affected or required to participate on the project could be used to determine size, for example: Departamental scope could be short, divisional could be medium and company wide or more could be stated as a large project or program.

The most important thing is What will you do with that classification and in what context will the projects be inmerse.

To estimate a project follow these steps

1. Determine the size using the function point methodology (you can refer to Software Engineering by Roger Pressman for a guide on estimation) it involves determining the function points by the number of inputs and outputs.

2. Freeze on a productivity factor (PF) - a SEI CMM L 5 company uses a PF of 16-20 fp/pm i.e function points per person month - measure of the number of function points that can be built into tha pplication by a single person working on the project for a month (22 days - taking a 5 working day week)

3. Arrive at the effort in Person months - Total Function Points / PF

4. From the above arrive at the staffing - Person Months / Calendar Months

5. Prepare a schedule

Sridhar's answer is correct as far as it goes. However, if you were at CMM Level 5 you wouldn't be here asking the question. You'd have answered it four years ago when you were at Level 2.

At Level 1, your task is to determine your "productivity figure" before you can "freeze" it. You can't use industry benchmarks; they are heavily biased toward organizations at higher CMM Levels because they are the ones who have data to contribute to the benchmark study. IT projects in a Level 1 shop can vary wildly, from 25 hrs/FP to 150 hrs/FP. You must have data on a valid statistical sample of prior projects of similar type upon which to base your estimate.

If you're in the USA, don't forget that your labor data is probably horribly inaccurate; we never record overtime.

In most Level 1 shops the biggest problem is software quality, not productivity. End users eventually forget budget and schedule overruns, but they have to live with software defects every day.