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Subject:Re: How to Estimate Project Time? From:Heli Roosild <HeliR -at- MSMAILHQ -dot- NETIMAGE -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 23 May 1994 16:54:00 PDT
Arthur Comings gives excellent advice, including:
" ... break the job down into all of the tasks that
will really go into it, and try to assign realistic times to them. When
you multiply them out, it gets impressive."
This method, though requiring extra work up front, gives you a realistic
estimate as well as the justification for it. Often management has no idea
about all the nitty-gritties required to put together a document, and this
spells it out for them.
In my former job, I was able to do this kind of estimating (and subsequent
tracking), using a fairly simple database application, which would total the
estimated time automatically. Now, I keep hoping to find time to set up a
spreadsheet to do similar tracking.
In any case, if you are new to estimating projects, or under pressure to
give unrealistic figures, you might find breaking the job down to specific
tasks to be helpful.
--Heli
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Heli L. Roosild Network Imaging Systems
helir -at- msmailhq -dot- netimage -dot- com Herndon VA 22070