For example, if I break a project into n discrete work products (say classes or functions or components) is there a time t such that n*t is a suitable amount of time to spend on estimation?
How long to spend estimating programming tasks?
time estimation
If you have enough information to have broken it down to that level, you shouldn't spend more than a minute on each one. You're not going to be correct anyway, but you're going to be as correct after a minute as after an hour.If, on the other hand, you were talking about user stories, I would suggest getting the stakeholders in a room and spending five minutes asking questions before estimating.Regardless, don't waste much time doing estimates. They're not useful or accurate enough to be worth the effort.