TABLE OF CONTENTS It is the task owner's job to estimate the resources required to carry it out. However, as the project manager, you will need to set this into the wider picture, and calculate how feasible the resource requirement is, before agreeing it with the task owner, or sending them off to think again. Bruce and Langdon (2000) have provided a useful summary of the stages involved in considering key resources. See Figure 3.2.
Brown (2002) has set down some basic principles for estimating:
Estimates should be expressed in terms of the actual days worked to complete the task not elapsed time, which is the period over which the activity will happen
Don't include contingency time here add this on globally at the end
Keep your estimates honest
Get individual commitment
Allow for staff skills and experience levels
Document the procedure used and any assumptions made
Revisit the process throughout the project to make sure the assumptions still hold
Make sure every aspect is reasonable.
You may be clear by this stage who you want to involve in terms of the project team, but you will need to think carefully about how they are used. Are there people who are effectively full time on the project, who will just join it for a short time, or who will be used intermittently as a source of expert advice? If a task requires a short amount of time each day over...
