Over at In a stream of Random Thoughts .. there’s an interesting post on using Emacs and Org mode for breaking down and estimating projects. The idea is that each new project is given an Org file that breaks down tasks to be performed, progress made on those tasks, and estimates for completing them.
This Org file is populated with Yasnippet to ensure uniformity and placed in a file hierarchy that reflects the state of the project. There are directories for active projects, pending projects, paused projects, and completed projects.
The breakdown in each project file serves as a basis for making estimates. Nothing can make time estimates easy, of course, but having a project broken down into its constituent parts does make it less of a burden.
Take a look at the post to see if some of its ideas could be useful in your own workflow. My takeaway is the advantage of using Yasnippet to initialize each project file to ensure that nothing is missed. By having to “fill in the blanks” you help avoid missing any important details.