In my previous post on High Level Project Estimates, I talked about 3 points estimates to help provide an up-front estime of effort for a project. Aside from the effort estimate you also need to consider other aspects that the team will spend time on. The following are some aspects I consider with the kind of percentages (above the effort estimate) I have experienced. Note: these percentages are by no means standard or the norm they are essentially a rough guess based on the projects I have worked .

• Planning Meetings @ 10%
• Demos @ 2%
• Code Reviews @ 5%
• Retrospectives @ 5%
• Dark Mater @15%
• Bugs @15%
• New Technical Stories and Spikes @ 25%
• Change Requests (shouldn’t average more than 15%)
• Holidays and Sick Leave @ 5%

You will also need to consider Management Overheads as well as Business Analysts (if included in the team), QA/Functional Testing, Support and Maintenance (if required).