Less Wrong Estimating

It’s irresponsible to promote early estimates as being accurate. Early on, there are too many unknowns. A responsible approach focuses on communicating our estimates as gradually more accurate. Here’s what you can do to produce responsible estimates.  

• Label your estimates. An estimate without a label implies the value is accurate. Label your estimates to indicate their accuracy, such as rough order of magnitude, budgetary, or definitive. Define the accuracy range for each label, such as -20% to +50%. Then, indicate when a more accurate estimate can be produced.
• Re-estimate at key points in the project. Events like finalizing a contract provide significant information to improve your estimates. Produce refined estimates after each of these events. Develop and communicate a schedule for re-estimating, tied to the events, to demonstrate a clear rationale for how you intend to incrementally improve your estimates. 
• Keep refining estimates during project execution. Don’t stop estimating after planning is complete. As major deliverables are produced and costs become known, continue to refine your estimates. This further demonstrates that estimation accuracy evolves, and reflects your concern for the money and time you spend.

Project management entails managing expectations. You can set expectations about estimating by creating an estimating schedule and estimating to that schedule as your project progresses. That’s a responsible and rational way to manage estimating.

To learn more about estimating, check out the estimating movie in my Project Management Foundations course.

#projectmanagement #projectpointers