💃 Salesforce Effort Estimation With Best Case, Worst Case, Most Likely🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Are you are struggling to estimate ambiguous new work?

Or requests with a bunch of “it depends” but the stakeholder needs an estimate NOW?

Then this formula is for you 🫵.

Introducing - Best Case, Worst Case, Most Likely

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Best Case, Worst Case, Most Likely

• Scenario

• What Next?

• Best Case, Worst Case, Most Likely

• Takeaway

SCENARIO

Connie the consultant is expertly working her way through her client deliverables 💪 .

The project is nearing the point where the data migration can kickoff. At the start of the project, the client had advised that they would be responsible for the migration.

Now, the client is understanding that they are not well-equipped to take on the data migration 👀.

The client asks Connie for an estimate of hours for her to deliver the migration.

“Hmmmm, let me get back to you on that…,” Connie replies.

Connie has contributed to, and even led, a few data migrations. But she’s never been responsible for providing an estimate of hours.

Connie knew Sara, her Senior Manager, would help her calculate an estimate. She also knew Sara would love to see her take a stab at it before coming to her.

After a few iterations of breaking down the migration into components, estimating each piece, and aggregating the effort into an overall estimate 🥵, Connie still did not feel confident in her number 😔.

What if she was off? What if she was too high? Or too low?

How did she not even know if she was too high or too low?!?!

She felt even worse than when she started….😢 

WHAT NEXT?

Connie reached out to her senior manager, Sara, to discuss the estimate.

Sara, proud that Connie had done an initial analysis, quickly accepted the meeting invite.

Upon meeting, Connie explained to Sara her thought process and approach to the data migration hours estimate she came up with - 80hrs.

“But, I don’t feel confident in this number…I don’t even know if it’s too high or too low 😢,” said Connie.

Sara quickly replied “Connie, this is a great analysis! And 80hrs seems reasonable to me. You think it could be done in less time? What is the best case scenario?”

“Well,” Connie replied, “55hrs if the data was fairly clean. Ha, but we know that’s never the case…”

“Agreed! And what’s the worse case? If all the things went wrong, how long could this take?” Sara asked.

“Hmmm, like 140hrs. The data may be a mess. Also, we’re not sure on the legacy data model, so we may have to add cycles of creating Salesforce IDs to relate records.”

Connie nodded, “Yup, agreed.…here, let me show you something….”