A project manager that fails to allocate project resources is like a carpenter without a hammer. That's why estimating task resources is an integral step in project planning. It also happens to be one of the most fundamental aspects of project management, one of the steps that the project manager utilizes on a day to... [Read More]| ProjectEngineer
I once experienced a project horror story whereby a piece of equipment was snowed in at a previous project, delaying the project by several weeks until a transport vehicle could get to the stranded machine. Since there are relatively few of these around, the project either had to wait or additional costs had to be incurred... [Read More]| ProjectEngineer
Project estimating requires predicting the future. Like ancient prophets and soothsayers, today's project managers are experts in telling people what is going to happen. The key to success, then, is to ensure that what actually happens is the same as the estimate. This might seem like magic sometimes, but it requires strong project cost estimation... [Read More]| ProjectEngineer
Once the project has been divided into tasks and resources assigned to those tasks, the next step is to determine the task durations. This may seem trivial, but its importance cannot be understated because these durations will be used to construct the project schedule. Just like the tiny O-rings that brought down the space shuttle... [Read More]| ProjectEngineer
In 1986, the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger exploded spectacularly upon take-off in front of one of the largest live TV audiences in history (to that time). The investigation concluded that several tiny O-rings that sealed the rocket booster to the fuel supply failed. These O-rings were about 1 foot in diameter. Just like the tiny... [Read More]| ProjectEngineer
Bottom up estimating is the project management technique of estimating individual tasks and then combining them into an overall project estimate. Often the individual project team members who will be performing the task provide the estimates, because they are in a better position to estimate a task that they will be working on. Types of... [Read More]| ProjectEngineer