And the estimations were to be used to increase their sales. Over the years, multiple software vendors have reached out to us to 'partner' with us on estimation - all of them came from these vendors' marketing or sales departments. One must not only not be one of these entities but must be entirely independent of these entities. This means the one performing the calculation cannot be a software vendor or IT consulting firm, as their only interest is to make the TCO of the application they are selling look like it is the lowest.
