>I'll be working on a project for a system that I've just started learning. I will be making significant changes and also creating some things I'm not familiar with (creating services, working with ports, etc.). I need to give an estimate on the time I think it's going to take to do all this, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a way to do that. I normally find estimates hard, pretty much take an educated guess, add on 30%, and hope I'm close. Anyone have a better way? Thanks!

I hate giving time estimates. A few months ago I gave somebody an estimate of 80 hours on an application. 260 hours later, I was done. It wasn't me... it was scope creep, and they knew it and had no problem with it. Still, if I had scheduled something else planning on the 80 hours, I probably wouldn't have been able to sleep for a few days.

There are so many variables to consider.