This worked particularly well during the execution phase of our projects. The result – more projects were delivered successfully on time and within budget, with fewer “death marches” for our staff.Īnother estimating technique that we used was parametric estimating.
Our clients and prospective clients began to rely on our estimation of activity and project durations. As we accumulated historical information, staff effort, and productivity metrics, our ability to estimate and propose new jobs became much more reliable.
Notice that I said we used actual, not estimated, work effort from prior projects to develop the duration and resource estimates for the new project. Given that single industry focus, many of our proposal estimates were able to use a technique called analogous estimating.Using this technique, we were able to use actual activity durations and staff effort from previous project deliveries to derive analogous estimates for the new project. Perhaps I was fortunate that my consulting career was largely within a single industry. For some unknown reason, whenever they estimated activity durations that didn’t fit within their clients’ requested timelines, someone (typically a “higher up” who was not responsible for delivery) would invariably say, “throw some extra bodies at it.” Of course, this virtually guaranteed a late project before it even started.Īs I noted in my previous article, “Why You Should Educate Management on Estimating Activity Durations,” we project management professionals need to wrestle control back to those of us who are in the trenches to provide realistic timelines for our projects. It seems that in the exuberance of estimating a new project, IT providers would conveniently forget this truism. It was certainly true of execution, but what of the estimating process?
#Estimating activity durations software
Throughout my career I was always aware of Brooks’ Law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later” (Brooks, 1975, p.25). The 4 Best Techniques for Estimating Activity Durations
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