Estimation

• “Predictions are hard, especially about the

future”,
• Planning, Estimating, Scheduling, what is the
difference?
– Plan:
• Identify activities. No specific start and end dates.
– Estimating:
• Determining the size & duration of activities.
– Schedule:
• Adds specific start and end dates, relationships, and
resources.
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 How To Schedule
• 1. Identify “what” needs to be done
– Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• 2. Identify “how much” (the size)
– Size estimation techniques
• 3. Identify the dependency between tasks
– Dependency graph, network diagram
• 4. Estimate total duration of the work to be done
– The actual schedule

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 Project Time Management Processes
• Activity definition:
– identifying the specific activities that the project team members and
stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables
• Activity sequencing:
– identifying and documenting the relationships between project
activities
• Activity resource estimating:
– estimating how many resources a project team should use to
perform project activities
• Activity duration estimating:
– estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete
individual activities
• Schedule development:
– analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and
activity duration estimates to create the project schedule
• Schedule control:
– controlling and managing changes to the project schedule

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 Creating a Good Estimate
• There are six techniques for estimating the
duration and effort of an Activity
– Similar activities
– Historical data
– Expert advice
– Delphi technique
– Three-point technique
– Wide-band Delphi technique

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 Creating a Good Estimate
• Similar Activities
– This just means estimate an activity based on
similar activities in the past
• If you’ve developed lots of web pages, you can safely
estimate how long it’ll take to develop similar pages
– A common rule of thumb is to
• Take the time it’d take you to do a task, double it, and
add 10-20%

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 Creating a Good Estimate
• Historic Data
– If you can find data from similar projects developed by
your organization, they can form the basis for a good
estimate
• This assumes the project uses similar technology as previous
projects
– This is why big new projects want to see experience developing
similar big
• Expert Advise
– If you don’t know anything about the task, ask someone
who does!
• Could find experts within your organization, outside consultants,
vendors, academia, etc.
– Notice the first three estimation methods depend on
someone having experience doing the task before
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 Creating a Good Estimate
• Delphi technique
– The Delphi technique is a formal way to get group
consensus on a wild guess for the estimate
1. Get a group of people together
2. Tell them about the project and its tasks
3. Get them to all estimate the duration of each task
4. Tabulate the guesses in a histogram called First Pass
5. For estimates in the outer quartile (<25% and >75%), ask them
for their rationale
6. Have everyone guess again, and retabulate the results: Second
Pass
7. Have the outer quartile defend their choices again
8. Make a third set of guesses, and use the average value for the
task’s estimate
• Though it sounds a bit goofy, this method actually
works pretty well

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 Creating a Good Estimate
• Three Point Estimate
– The actual duration of a task could vary,
depending on many factors
– Hence there could be a distribution of possible
values for the duration
– Based on best judgment, determine the
• Optimistic, Most likely, and Pessimistic values for the
duration, then use
– Estimate = (O+ 4*M+ P)/6

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 Creating a Good Estimate
• Wide-band Delphi technique
– Combine the three point technique and Delphi to
get the Wide-band Delphi technique
• In each of the three Passes (sets of guesses), have
each person estimate the Optimistic, Most likely, and
Pessimistic values
– Use results from the third Pass and apply the three point
formula