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4 Reasons Why People Need Estimates PMchallenge

From the The Money Files Blog
by Elizabeth Harrin PMwars

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Categories: budget, cost management, estimating

A blog that looks at all aspects of project and

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financial management | forecasting | Estimating take up far too much time and are, as my 3-year old says about everything
general | green | interviews | it | leadership
| methods | metrics | news | outsourcing | right now, ‘a bit boring’. I have no idea where he picked that up from. Don’t judge me!
pmi | PMO | portfolio management |
procurement | program | qualifications | I digress. We need to do estimates. And if you are one of those strange people who LOVE
records | recruitment | reports | research | doing estimates, then skip this article and go and read this one instead!
resources | risk | ROI | salaries |
scheduling | social media | software |
stakeholders | success factors | supplier Take a deep breath, and think for a moment about why we bother to do estimates. In his SPONSORS
management | team | timesheets | tips | book, Project Management for Humans, which is soon to be released, Brett Harned
training | transparency | value Innotas
provides 4 reasons why estimates are important for people on the team.
management | video | virtual teams | show
all posts
1. ESTIMATES HELP YOU COST THE PROJECT

ABOUT THIS BLOG “Estimates are based on a level of effort and times,” Brett writes. “Typically, the cost of a VENDOR EVENTS
project is based on the time spent on a project. Your estimate helps calculate a rough
determination of that cost and sometimes whether or not the project is worth the 8th Annual Resource
RSS
investment.” Planning Summit
February 10-13, 2019 |
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https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/30101/4-Reasons-Why-People-Need-Estimates
ProjectManagement.com - 4 Reasons Why People Need Estimates
A giant estimate normally comes with a giant price tag, and that might mean you don’t go See all Vendor Events
ahead with the project. Or you scale down the scope significantly so you still get some
benefit and don’t have to spend half your annual budget on this one project.
NEWSLETTERS
Either way, knowing how long things are going to take gives you valuable information to Dec 12: The Gift of Project
make informed decisions about your project and whether or not it should go ahead in the Management
current form. Dec 5: Working With
Volunteer PMs
2. ESTIMATES HELP YOU STAFF THE PROJECT
Nov 28: Business Analysts:
Estimates are created around specific tasks and the skills required to complete those
Librarians, Zombies or
tasks.
Ninjas?
Your estimate therefore gives you clues about who you need to do the work. And in turn, See all newsletters
that gives you a good idea about how long the work will take.
For example, a senior developer might take a week to complete a task, but your
apprentice developer would take a month, and need someone else working alongside
them to help check the work and support them during the coding. Knowing this you can
then decide what’s more important: having the work done quickly or upskilling the
apprentice. Or maybe you won’t have a choice, if the skilled developer is working on
something else and isn’t available.
Either way, estimating the work and thinking of who is involved in doing it will give you
invaluable information for your plan.
3. ESTIMATES HELP YOU PLAN DEPENDENCIES
If you know how long a task will take you can better plan for the impact it is going to have
on other tasks or on other projects. The duration of a task can help you schedule the next
set of tasks, or tell another project manager when they’ll be able to start work on their
project (or task).
For example, if you are tying up your senior developer for 4 weeks, in a business that only
has one developer with those skills, the next project to use that person will have to wait
until they are free. That’s a dependency on that skilled person.
You have a number of options to deal with that dependency including changing the project
priorities so the other project gets the resource before you if that project is ‘more
important’, buying in external skilled resource if you want to do both at the same time, or
even having someone else with less ability work on it so you can at least make a start. But
you need to know that you have a problem with resourcing and dependencies before you
can start to come up with solutions to address it.
Here’s an introduction to dependencies and constraints on projects. Even knowing that
your project doesn’t have dependencies on any other work is a big help with your planning
because it frees you up to get on with things safe in the knowledge that your team isn’t
messing anything up for anyone else. (Of course, that might change if a new project is
approved – so don’t take it for granted.)
4. ESTIMATING CREATES AGREEMENT AND BUY IN
“Working with a team can often be a challenge, particularly when no one is in agreement
on the project,” Brett writes. “Working together to produce an estimate can be a great way
to pull the team together to talk about staffing, responsibilities, process, and timing. And
guess what, that all helps produce a solid estimate.”
I covered this in my book too, Shortcuts to Success: Project Management in the Real
World. I highly recommend that you share all your budget information with your team, from
the moment you start to work on estimates through to the budget spreadsheet and
forecast rates.
Working together will help you gain collective responsibility for the dates and scope of the
work. You can hold each other accountable and no one can turn around and say that they
weren’t aware of the deadlines or their responsibilities. That’s huge, especially on projects
with tight deadlines and remote teams.
So, estimates benefit you and your team in lots of ways, and they are a part of your
project to just get on with, get done and then start using. They can feel like the start of the
real detailed work, the prelude to the fun part of building, but they help set you up for
success and a smooth delivery. What do you feel about estimates? Let us know in the
comments below!
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Posted on: June 21, 2017 09:59 AM | Permalink

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Eduin Fernando Excellent Elizabth, thanks for sharing

Valdes Alvarado
Project Manager, F y F
Fabricamos Futuro Posted: Jun 21, 2017 11:55 AM
Network:1634 Villavicencio, Meta,
Connect

Andrew Craig Thank you Elizabeth.

Scrum Master | Project
Manager Consultant,
Equisoft Posted: Jun 21, 2017 3:34 PM
Network:2061 Philadelphia, PA, USA
Connect

Thilo Wack Good points and well written and explained. Thank you, Elizabeth for sharing. From my
Head of Nitinol
experience there is another, more people centered, need for estimates: Some people
Projects, pfm medical
Tholey-Hasborn, need the fixed numbers to feel that things are under control. This has some
Network:783 Germany consequences the project leader should be aware of. First, there is a need for
Connect contingency buffers, else there might be blame when things do not go as smoothly as
expected. It is always easier to point out the initial assumptions when you did not use up
the full budget rather than when you have an overrun. Second, even if there is a lot of
uncertainty in projects, estimates get converted in milestones and goals and therefore
help tremendously to monitor and control a project and get the team focused.

Posted: Jun 22, 2017 2:07 AM

Cheikh FAYE Thank you so much Elizabeth for this great and well written article.
Microsoft Dynamics
To projects success, delivering results within estimated time, cost and quality parameters
365 Consultant MCP,
Eurêka Technologies is critical.
Network:1152 Dakar, Senegal
Connect Posted: Jun 22, 2017 9:34 AM

Vincent Guerard Estimate give you something to compare to, and see why you may not have done it like
Coach - Trainer -
Speaker - Advisor,
the initial estimate. Improve the next estime!
Freelance
Network:108227 Mont-Royal, QUEBEC, Posted: Jun 27, 2017 9:17 PM
Connected Since 1/3/19

Sante Vergini Estimates reduce risk also. Thanks for the article.
Agile Project Manager,
Monash University
Melbourne, Victoria, Posted: Jul 1, 2017 6:48 AM
Network:14888 Australia
Connect

Tamer Zeyad Great article!!!

Sadiq
QS/Cost engineer,
Saud Consult Posted: Jul 12, 2018 6:24 AM
Network:404 Riyadh, Ar Riyad, Saudi
Connect

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