Project Management Practitioner

Estimation plays a very important role in the success of any projects.

Project estimation focuses mainly on the following aspects.

1. Cost
2. Schedule
3. Resource

An accurate estimation greatly helps the PM to deliver the project on time & budget with little deviation.

Too generous estimation will translate into cost & schedule wider under-run and stingy estimation lead to cost & schedule wider over-run, both are the indicators of the poor estimation and dent your PM credentials.

How to do proper or more accurate estimation?

A detailed WBS will help the PM. Put on more efforts in creating a very detailed WBS which covers each and every aspects of the project. Discuss with all project team members, stakeholders and ensure everything is captured. Revisit couple of time and validate. Add a reasonable buffer for the unknowns and surprise elements.

Prepare the Project Scope with the list of all project deliverables. Again ensure with the stakeholders to confirm the deliverable list.

Prepare Level-1 estimation with the help of the WBS & the list of project deliverables.

If required, get the quotation from the external vendors for the procurement of services/products. Ensure all quotations are inclusive of various taxes, delivery charges, service charges if any. Revise the Level-1 estimation and prepare the most accurate Level-2 estimation.

Make sure the Level-2 estimation covers all the aspects and some buffers.

This homework will certainly help to prepare more accurate estimation.

-Posted by Dhana

Tags: Dhana, Estimation, WBS

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 3:41 am and is filed under Dhana, Knowledge Base. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.