Project Leads/Developers are often challenged to provide accurate estimates for their project. In usual organization, there is no standard way, people do estimates and lead their estimation on perceptions and experience. As per my belief any software development process that has historical data can be used for statistical estimation. But for new type of work, you definitely need to be smart with the popular methods for estimation, which may use sampling more frequently and evaluating the constraints between parts of a project.

The common methods for estimation in software development/learning development include:

• Parametric Estimating
• Cocomo
• SLIM
• SEER-SEM Parametric Estimation of Effort, Schedule, Cost, Risk (based on Brooks Law)
• Function Point Analysis
• Proxy Based Estimation (PROBE) (from the Personal Software Process)
• Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
• Analysis Effort method