TOPIC: Estimation Question

Hi, I have a software project that is leveraging the Azure cloud. When estimating development stories, the team gets stuck on how to estimate actual development time vs processing time. When you refresh data in the cloud there is often material processing time. When estimating i get responses like, "it takes 2 hours to develop and 8 hours to process." Most of the time the processing happens overnight so the effort gets blurred. It doesn't seem like this type of estimation lends itself to relative sizing. Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Dear EQ:

I don't really see a question there, but I will try to address what I think you're asking.

From your description, it appears as though processing (which uses resources) always takes 8 hours per test and programming is the scalable aspect of the project. For example, if Project A takes 2 hours of coding and 8 hours of processing, then the estimation would be 10 hours. If Project B is twice as big, it would be 4 hours of coding and 8 hours of processing, for 12 hours. The equation would be Estimation = Hc+8 hrs, where Hc is the hours spent coding.

Harry