Contents of Guide 4: How to Estimate Anything Properly

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Guide 4: How to Estimate Anything Properly

What's this Guide about?

Possibly the biggest problem with being a Project Manager is that you get asked to make predictions of the future and then have them come true! Since nobody can actually do this, that has to make Project Management the world's hardest job!!

The estimates you make are the basis for the predictions you make and the commitments you give. Thus if you're going to make your commitments as accurate as possible you'd better make your estimates as accurate as possible. This Guide shows you how to do that.

How is the Guide structured?

Section 1 of the Guide shows you how doing estimates (and hence, making predictions) is a problem in supply and demand.

Section 2 shows you how to estimate Demand - the work to be done.

Section 3 shows you how to calculate Supply - the resources to do the work.

A Reference section at the end of the Guide gives you sources of further information.

Table of Contents

Introduction
What's this Guide about?
How is the Guide structured?
1 Estimating as a Problem in Supply and Demand
2 Estimating Demand
2.1 The Method
2.2 A Bad Example
2.3 Making The Method Work
2.4 Example
3 Calculating Supply
3.1 The Idea

What you get:

• This Guide tells you how to estimate any project accurately. Even if you know very little about the project, or the project is at a very early stage, it is still possible to estimate it with a high degree of precision.
• If people say that they can't estimate a project accurately, they are really saying that either (a) they can't be bothered or (b) they don't know how. This Guide should remove the second excuse.

© Fergus O'Connell 2003