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There are many reasons that people look into renovating a home.

Perhaps you just bought a fixer upper or the house you have is just run down. No matter the reason, you will want to get an accurate home renovation estimation before you get started. This will tell you what you are looking at money wise and then you can plan your budget accordingly. There are some options that you can go with that might lower the over all cost of the renovation, which you be doing some or all of the work on your own.

You need to decide if you want to take your time and do it yourself and your way or hire someone so the job gets done quickly. There are many people that would prefer to leave the decisions to a professional but it can also be fulfilling to do it yourself. There are many software programs out there today that can help you to get an accurate home renovation estimation. You simply put in what you are looking to do and go through the steps in the program. The end result is what your approximate cost will be.

You will want to know what the value of your home is in the current condition that it is in. You can do this by getting the home appraised. They will compare your home to others in the area that have recently sold and the condition of your home as well as the nearby homes. This is a good way to tell if it is worth it to renovate the home or to go house hunting. You want the renovation costs to stay within 20 to 30% of the value of the home otherwise it just isn’t worth it. Once you go over 30% of the value it will be too costly to do the work. Keep in mind also that what ever renovations that you do will increase the value of the home.

You can also get estimate from local contractors on what the cost will be to do the renovations. This can be useful if you do not want to do the work yourself or even if you just want to see how much you will save by doing it yourself. You should have a few estimates to look at. Remember that each contractors is the others competitor so they will try to outbid one another. That can be a useful tool in getting the lowest price possible. No matter which way you choose to go, take your time in making your decisions and look at things from all angles. You want to be sure that you are doing what is right and not spending a fortune to do it.

Andrew Winthorp owns and operates http://www.construction-estimating-guide.com Construction Estimating Learn more tips and guidelines for home improvement, remodeling and making accurate construction estimating

Following are some approaches to consider:

Implicit Risk Context Approach:

A typical approach to test estimation is for a project manager or QA manager to implicitly use risk context, in combination with past personal experiences in the organization, to choose a level of resources to allocate to testing. In many organizations, the ‘risk context’ is assumed to be similar from one project to the next, so there is no explicit consideration of risk context. (Risk context might include factors such as the organization’s typical software quality levels, the software’s intended use, the experience level of developers and testers, etc.) This is essentially an intuitive guess based on experience.

Metrics-Based Approach:

A useful approach is to track past experience of an organization’s various projects and the associated test effort that worked well for projects. Once there is a set of data covering characteristics for a reasonable number of projects, then this ‘past experience’ information can be used for future test project planning. (Determining and collecting useful project metrics over time can be an extremely difficult task.) For each particular new project, the ‘expected’ required test time can be adjusted based on whatever metrics or other information is available, such as function point count, number of external system interfaces, unit testing done by developers, risk levels of the project, etc. In the end, this is essentially ‘judgement based on documented experience’, and is not easy to do successfully.

Test Work Breakdown Approach:

Another common approach is to decompose the expected testing tasks into a collection of small tasks for which estimates can, at least in theory, be made with reasonable accuracy. This of course assumes that an accurate and predictable breakdown of testing tasks and their estimated effort is feasible. In many large projects, this is not the case. For example, if a large number of bugs are being found in a project, this will add to the time required for testing, retesting, bug analysis and reporting. It will also add to the time required for development, and if development schedules and efforts do not go as planned, this will further impact testing.

Iterative Approach:

In this approach for large test efforts, an initial rough testing estimate is made. Once testing begins, a more refined estimate is made after a small percentage (eg, 1%) of the first estimate’s work is done. At this point testers have obtained additional test project knowledge and a better understanding of issues, general software quality, and risk. Test plans and schedules can be refactored if necessary and a new estimate provided. Then a yet-more-refined estimate is made after a somewhat larger percentage (eg, 2%) of the new work estimate is done. Repeat the cycle as necessary/appropriate.

Percentage-of-Development Approach:

Some organizations utilize a quick estimation method for testing based on the estimated programming effort. For example, if a project is estimated to require 1000 hours of programming effort, and the organization normally finds that a 40% ratio for testing is appropriate, then an estimate of 400 hours for testing would be used. This approach may or may not be useful depending on the project-to-project variations in risk, personnel, types of applications, levels of complexity, etc.

Successful test estimation is a challenge for most organizations, since few can accurately estimate software project development efforts, much less the testing effort of a project. It is also difficult to attempt testing estimates without first having detailed information about a project, including detailed requirements, the organization’s experience with similar projects in the past, and an understanding of what should be included in a ‘testing’ estimation for a project (functional testing? unit testing? reviews? inspections? load testing? security testing?)

With agile software development approaches, test effort estimations may be unnecessary if pure test-driven development is utilized. However, it is not uncommon to have a mix of some automated positive-type unit tests, along with some type of separate manual or automated functional testing. In general, agile-based projects by their nature will not be heavily dependent on large one-shot testing efforts, since they emphasize the construction of releasable software in very short iteration cycles. These smaller multiple test effort estimates may not be as difficult to estimate and the impact of inaccurate estimates will be less severe.

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