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No more initial estimates? NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Kiron Bondale

You are assigned to manage a project and before you or your team have had an opportunity to start to chip away at the looming mountain of uncertainty, you get put on the spot to provide a cost or schedule estimate by your project sponsor or some other stakeholder. Sometimes we see an oscillation between these outcomes. No be there.

Estimate 136
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Basis of Estimating Software Development

Herding Cats

The estimating of software development is both straightforward and complex. When it is suggested that estimating is hard, of no value, and unnecessary, always ask what principle is used to support that claim? Software Sizing and Estimating: Mk II FPA , Charles Symons, John Wiley & Sons, 1991. Don't hear one?

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Estimating the Risk

Herding Cats

Aleatory uncertainty, which is the naturally occurring yields variances in the underlying processes. Epistemic uncertainty comes from probabilistic processes that can be addressed with handling responses. Without these estimates, there is no risk management. Without these estimates, there can be no risk management.

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Strategic Project Portfolio Management [Book Review]

Rebel’s Guide to PM

It covers the whole lifecycle from finding ideas for projects, through the prioritisation process and planning for the most productive organisation possible. Estimating For Success. Maybe best of all, Moore talks about range-based estimates – a topic I’m very interested in.

PMO 150
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How to Manage Your Creative Firm and Make a Profit

Function Point

Agencies are interested in better defining their workflow processes, are looking for solutions that meet specific needs and the ability to collect all (or most) of their relevant data in one system. The provider will effectively become the business process partner of the agency and serve as both business consultants and IT experts.

2010 40
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Entering Actuals During the Tracking Cycle

MPUG

The tracking process is not as trivial as marking a task complete as planned or using simple percent complete estimates. The process can vary depending upon Task Type, whether your schedule is resource and cost loaded, how many resources and of what type have been allocated to a task, and so forth. ProjectPro, 2010.

2010 52
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Reading List for the Cone of Uncertainty

Herding Cats

The primary purpose of software estimation is not to predict a project’s outcome; it is to determine whether a project’s targets are realistic enough to allow the project to be controlled to meet them ? The difficulty of accurate size estimation is compounded especially at the time of inception when very little information is available.

2012 48