Someone who has run a project like this before says six weeks and two designers, and the room treats that as a plan. The number feels specific enough to put in a proposal.
The trouble is the feeling does not travel. A vague objective, twenty stakeholders, or a deadline that was already missed, and the same kind of project is a different piece of work. The estimate stays put because nobody wants to reopen it.
The shape of the work
The estimator starts from the kind of project: onboarding, an application, a journey map, an app redesign. Then it asks four things that change the effort. How complicated the topic is. How many people have to agree. How clear the brief is. How little time you have.
What comes back is a team, not a single number. Roles and grades, how many weeks each one is on it, and whether that is full time or part of a week. You can copy it out and argue with it.
A baseline you can edit
The starting weeks come from a baseline for each project type. If you run these projects often, those baselines can be adjusted, so the tool follows the way your team actually staffs the work rather than a generic guess.
It is a small tool for a conversation that used to happen in a slide. Open the estimator, pick the work, and see who you would need.
