Project Management

Estimating Principle

The golden rule for estimators is to get other people to bring their experience to bear to quality assure their own judgements and to use information drawn from the past.

Objective

For a given scope and quality, actual costs and time should match the estimated costs and time.

Our Approach

We advise our client to develop a database to record the experiences from past projects. The information, which is mainly drawn from the post-completion review (refer to the POST-COMPLETION Principle) should include details of actual costs, risks and contingencies.

When preparing estimates:

	Use other people's experience in the business to validate your estimates
	Estimates should match the plan
	Estimates should be based on past experience
	Estimators should not exclude consultation and Quality Assurance checking with anyone having relevant experience
	Given the unforeseeable, there should be an equal probability for the actual costs and time to be above or below the estimates

Unfeasible Project Costs?

This position is most likely to occur where a project has an IT component. IT is particularly unforgiving in the sense that there is a lot of detailed work that must be precisely correct and fully complete before the whole result will work without propagating errors.

It is sometimes feasible to separate the IT and business components so that the business part is changed to be able to succeed without IT, leaving the IT part to progress independently and be added later.

Click
	Refer to Estimating - Not feasible

Estimating The Benefits

Click
	Refer to the BENEFITS REALISATION Principle

[ Home ] [ Project Definition ] [ Project Failure ] [ Our Approach ] [ Project Management Cycle ] [ Project Organisation ] [ Roles Summary ] [ Project Governance ] [ Project Principles ] [ Project Timeline ] [ Benefits for You ] [ Contents ]

4-consulting 2-8 Millar Crescent, Edinburgh, EH10 5HW
Tel 0131 447 4546 Fax 0131 447 8679
Copyright � 2002 4consulting