Estimating Your Project Sridhar Pandurangiah Director - Engineering

Project Management ? Project management is about how to deliver within a predefined number – time, budget

Unrealistic estimates… Imposed estimates – competitive pressures : some real and some occasionally imagined, perverse form of motivation Overriding sense of optimism on how quickly we can get work done Productivity of humans is assumed to be constant for a given time period Committing a number before fully understanding the problem

Unrealistic estimates Project sponsors don’t remember anything after the first number is committed Project managers provide padded estimates to cover eventualities - customers getting wiser about it start playing calculated games to bring down the figures – Disastrous for new honest project managers Unfunded changes and belief of customers that change was built in the contingencies by the Project Manager "When I said what I wanted on the project, this is what I meant."

Good Estimates Good estimates should have the ability to be wrong by the same degree each way Should have their logic defined (written down!) so that variations can be analyzed quickly and easily to help adjust the forward plan The team that has to deliver against good estimates will also buy into them

What to do ? Don’t burden your project with unreasonable estimates Estimates mean both effort and cost

How to do it ? Better estimation skills alone will not solve the problem Don’t just “know the scope” – “understand it” The effort portion of the estimate is the place to take into consideration a resource’s productivity and experience level (ask them, and/or document your assumptions) While specifying duration consider calendar events specific to each resource - vacations, holidays, nonstandard work schedules, additional work commitments and other items affecting availability

How to do it ? Always staff the project with resources that have the same level of capability and business acumen that you assumed they would have while estimating Don’t assume an interruption factor of zero! Cost estimations should include - internal staff, external staff, travel and equipment A wise man knows what he doesn’t know! – Document assumptions Don’t use consensus approach

How to do it ? Don’t be a jack of all technologies!- Use experts Change customers perceptions on how estimations are done. E.g. refer them to the IFPUG website How we communicate the estimates to the customer has a significant bearing on how it is regarded. Add legitimacy send the FPA sheets If you aren’t doing all of the above you are not estimating – you are just guessing

Thank You