Estimating Tasks for the Project Plan

Once the initial project plan is completed with tasks listed, it is time to estimate the time required for the implementation.

First, you should have the people who will performing the various tasks estimate the time required for those tasks. In most cases, because the majority of the tasks involve software development, it will be the programmers who will be making the quotes for the majority of those tasks.

In any case, the best estimate for each task comes from the person who will be performing that task. Clearly they will be best able to evaluate the amount of time required for that task.

But there is another benefit. If you get the estimate for the amount of time to complete the task from the person who will actually perform the task, then you get an implicit commitment from that person to perform the task in that amount of time. On the other hand, if someone else (such as the project manager) estimates the amount of time required for a particular task but that estimate turns out to be too low, the programmer won’t have the same level of commitment. In that case, after all, it is only someone else’s quotation.

In some, probably many cases, you won’t know at the time of the quote who will be performing a particular task. In that case I recommend having the functional manager quote the tasks. When you do that you are at least getting a commitment from the manager of the person who will have to perform the task. If you can’t get either one, then do the best you can. But build some contingency into the schedule.

I recommend that all task estimates should INITIALLY be made as though they had to be performed from scratch, even though in some cases you may be duplicating something that has already been done. Assuming that everything is done from scratch gives you the worst-case scenario. Note that it is still important to factor in risk and make other adjustments. I talk about those later.