title: How do you estimate the project effort/schedule of your projects?
body: <blockquote>
    <p><strong>Possible Duplicates:</strong><br>
    <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/305618/how-to-create-an-accurate-hour-estimate">How to create an accurate hour estimate?</a><br>
    <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/549597/dealing-with-awful-estimates">Dealing with awful estimates</a>  </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>There are many estimation techniques. From formal ones like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cocomo</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point_analysis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Function Points</a>, less formal ones like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_points" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Story/Feature points</a>, to even less formal like "Toss some dice".</p>
  
  <p>Which method you find most useful or most effective? Why?</p>
  
  <p>What do you do if the estimation method gives results that are not quite exactly what project managers, marketeers or pointy haired bosses expect?</p>