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In Your Estimation
Bill is President, Project Management Partners in Lexington, Mass., and is a consultant and trainer.
Good estimating is a skill like any other — it can be developed with practice. But many terms are used inconsistently or imprecisely. In the first of a series on this widely misunderstood subject, seasoned estimating pro Bill Duncan establishes some common terminology.
This article is the first in a three-part series on accurate estimating.
Estimating is a forbidding topic for some people. I’ve even heard intelligent, experienced project managers assert that it is "impossible" to estimate the work on their project. Perhaps these people just don’t understand estimating. They may be confusing estimating (making informed assessments of uncertain events) with extra sensory perception (making exact predictions of uncertain events). Or in some cases, they may be trying to prepare budgets or prices in the absence of estimates.
I know that accurate estimates are possible. I have done it myself (one of my projects had a most likely estimate of 1,300 hours of effort and was completed for 1,302 hours), and I have taught thousands of others to do it as well. Recall Clarke’s Law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Good estimating is a skill like any other — it can be developed with practice to the point where it may seem like magic to the uninformed.
The fact is many of the terms related…
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