This is the only thing that ever works for me, but a) you have to be doing repeated projects or high overlap, and b) it's hard to defend when a PM challenges.

This is the only thing that ever works for me, but a) you have to be doing repeated projects or high overlap, and b) it's hard to defend when a PM challenges. My response is usually "<shrug> this is how long this kind of thing has taken in the past". I do a lot of the same projects at different customers, so my gut feel is usually pretty close (and I have to give a ballpark quote, so there's some penalty to being over or under). But if it's something completely new, breaking it down in to detail tasks almost never results in a good estimate.