Two things when doing esimates, the engineering muliplier factor and fully understanding the task multiplier. If you have somebody who knows the task well and

Two things when doing esimates, the engineering muliplier factor and fully understanding the task multiplier. If you have somebody who knows the task well and knows exactly what do to then the task muiltiplier is 1x, engineering multiplier is usualy always 3x, some unwritten rule. If the person is not fully aware of what is needed to do the task exactly but near enough then you increase the tast multiplier. Combining the pair without any unit shifting for me works well. I'm sure others will explain why the engineering factor is never 1x. It is also worth noting that any engineers or programmers estimate time is for the consumtion of you line manger and internal and not customer directly presented. Reason being is that managers will either increase that more or come back to you as to why it is so long. Now manager will increase things as they will want to increase company profit and what might be a 5 minute change for a programmer, could be something that can be charged as a 50 hour change. There are situations were a 50 hour change from a customers perspective is only a 5 minute change and it is the managers role to adresss and educate were needed and juggle and balance tasks and costs with others. Saying all that if your a programmer and dealing directly with teh customer with quotes, then you will learn your own time stretching approach multiplier that works for you and your clients. Just remember egos can be costly if you charge for 5 hours something that takes longer in the end, learn from it as we all do, every now and then.