Project Cost Estimating: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  Estimating   Knowledge Shelf  

Project managers work across teams, so we call on both junior and experienced staff members to assist in delivering our project objectives. As we interact with these stakeholders, managing relationships and completing projects, we gain experience. We leverage these experiences on future projects, and organizations expect us to do so; after all, time is money in the project world, so we are often asked to rely on experience and historical data to save costs. This can be especially apparent during project estimation, when we may have significant experience and good access to historical data; however, can this time and money saving approach lead to more costly issues down the line?

In this paper, I will refer to stakeholder groups using the ADTraD model definitions of Activator, Driver, Traveler, and Dissenter (Berman, 2010, PMI Virtual Library). In brief, Activators resemble sponsors or those accountable to the overall project, Drivers are champions drawn from teams engaged in some aspect of a project, Travelers are staff members from various teams who assist in progressing a project, and Dissenters are those at odds with the project’s goals.

Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

 Let’s imagine you are the project manager on a large-scale initiative that requires resources from multiple teams across the organization. The Activator has presented …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.