Beware the 4-Hour Day

  Estimating   ProjectsAtWork  

Resource estimating is difficult. If you plan on achieving seven hours of productive work from a person in an eight hour day, guess again. Based on recent studies, the average amount of productive work in an eight-hour day is about four hours per person. So be careful how resources effort is allocated against the real work that needs to be produced.

Mike Beard suggests using the Performance Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) formula to add risk factors for tasks and scheduling — it is (O+4ML+P)/6 where ‘O’ is Optimistic, ‘ML’ is Most Likely, and P is Pessimistic.

“A PM must always be aware of what work is getting done in comparison to the effort allocated to the task,” Beard says. “This is no different than watching your personal checkbook to make sure you have adequate money to pay the bills. Watch it like a hawk. You can never recoup lost time.”

Become well versed in the development and maintenance of a standard scheduling tool. It should help you review a schedule for completeness, simplicity and validation of current status. And make sure your tool is set up to see and manage negative slack.

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