Build Procedures and Estimation

How do you guess the amount of resources without any idea which dependencies are affected by your work?

Process for using the build procedure to help estimate software work:

1. Run the build procedure (make).
   
2. Make a preliminary change in the module you anticipate modifying to complete the task, or create stub code for a module you anticipate changing, and connect it to the existing software.
3. Run the build procedure again.
   
4. Observe the modules that were rebuilt following your change (See Note).
   
5. Use the list of modules from (4) to compose a list of modules that may need to be changed and tested to accommodate the task.
6. Use the list from (5) to estimate the task.

Note: This assumes that your build procedure correctly manages dependencies between modules/files. Every build tool I know supports this capability first and foremost.

I don't think that this is particularly new or pioneering information for the computer nerds out there.