Techniques for Estimating Task Duration in Project Management

Describe common practices to estimate the duration of project activities as well as real reasons that cause project delays.

I will use project scope, work breakdown structure, and AON to evaluate deliverables, set expectations, and estimate the completion date. From the case, we also learned that there are few deliverables new to the company; thus, I will use expert, Delphi, and wide-band Delphi to estimate the project task

The project path of task A(3weeks) plus task C(4.5weeks) plus task E(5weeks) plus task H(11weeks) plus task J(3.5weeks) which equals 27 weeks total.

The amount of time that will be required to complete each work package will be estimated by recommending the number of work periods needed to complete individual activities with the estimated resources. All estimated duration times will be reported in whole hours, rounding any partial hours up to the next whole hour. Partial days will be rounded up to the next whole day. The estimated duration times will be reviewed and must fall in line with the scheduled Project completion date.

Since the optimistic and pessimistic estimates for project tasks are unknown, the following table assumes an optimistic estimate of 90% and a pessimistic estimate of 130% of each task’s original duration

project data from work breakdown structures and schedules" and comparing it to "topdown project goals." After this, the teams are to estimate investment risks

One way project teams add safety to duration estimates is to overestimate the time to complete individual activities. Team members may pad the activity time to ensure that they will be able to meet the promised deadline. This padding is augmented by the

For my 20 time project I did two things. The first was that I made a sign. The sign was cut out from a big sheet of steel, and then I programed the laser cutter to cut out the sign with a little help. The second thing I did was fix my broken four wheeler, I did this by welding a piece that broke off back on. I had help from my dad's friend who is the one who owns a laser cutter and the welder.

Manuscript ID: CO/2003/022870 Specialty Area: Cost & Schedule Audience: Researchers PROBABILITY OF PROJECT COMPLETION USING STOCHASTIC PROJECT SCHEDULING SIMULATION (SPSS) Dong-Eun Lee1 ABSTRACT This paper introduces a software, Stochastic Project Scheduling Simulation (SPSS), developed to measure the probability to complete a project in a certain time specified by the user. To deliver a project by a completion date committed to in a contract, a number of activities need to be carried out. The time that an entire project takes to complete and the activities that determine total project duration are always questionable because of the randomness and stochastic nature of the activities’ durations. Predicting a project completion probability

Determine the critical path. The critical path is determined by adding the times for the activities in each sequence and determining the longest path in the project. The critical path determines the total calendar time required for the project. If activities outside the critical path speed up oe slow down (within limits), the total project time does not change. The amount of time that a non – critical path activity can be delayed without the project is referred to as a slack time. If the critical path is not immediately obvious, it may be helpful to determine the following four quantities foe each activity: ES – Earliest Start time EF - Earliest Finish time LS – Latest Start time LF - Latest Finish time These times are calculated using the expected time for the relevant activities. The earliest start and finish times of each activity are determined by working forward through the network and determining the earliest time at which an activity can start and finish considering its predecessors activities. The latest start and finish times are the latest times that an activity can start and finish without delaying the project. LS and LF are found by working backward through the network. The difference in the latest and earliest finish of each activity is that activity’s slack. The critical path then is the path through the network in which none of the activities have slack. The variance in the project completion time can be calculated by

Accordingly, Earned Schedule was also a successful and easy derivative of the Earned Value Management tool. It has make things much easy to link between cost and time performance of a project to its schedule analysis. Moreover, Earned Schedule provides schedule performance indices and gauges with time based units, which was not very reachable in the Earned Value Tools. Using ES technique, the future performance of a project can be predicted easily and precisely according to matters of time and durations. Furthermore, Earned Schedule can be used for different sizes, scales and natures of projects. The tool is also considered useful for analyzing the total project, sub-levels and sole activities, as well as, it is capable of analyzing the schedule performance of critical

Project Time Management – an estimated time for the completion of each task and based on resources, the duration is determined.

Delphi method. The Delphi method gathers a panel of experts from different fields to comment upon the research of others in their own and different disciplines. It is typically used to arrive at high-level predictions. The aim is to account for the complex factors that affect long-range forecasting by generating a wide range of possible future scenarios. The method also claims to safeguard against the tendency of group discussions on these kinds of matters to arrive at a consensus. (Delphi Method)

In field of project management, there are a plethora of mechanisms under perpetual reevaluation. One specific segmentation of project management under such scrutiny pertains to cost duration, which is the time and monetary costs of completing individual tasks within the project’s critical path (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). The process of monitoring and evaluating the time and financial impacts of each task is referred to as cost duration analysis (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). A chief concern of cost duration analysis is identifying tasks within the project’s critical path which can reduce project duration (PMI, 2013). A common approach to reducing a project’s duration is task “crashing” (PMI, p.181). According to The Project Management Institute (2013) crashing refers to the process of methodical determining the financial value of increasing a critical path task’s resources in order to decrease project duration (p.181).

In almost every business, project management is critically important. The critical path method (CPM) will provide a timeline for the project manager for when tasks should be completed. In addition, providing a deadline and the negative effects it will have on the following successors if not completed on time. These many task are interdepended. Therefore, the CPM provides the start and finishes times of the tasks, and identifies the few tasks on the critical path that the project manager should observe to determine which task needs the most attention. Already discovering and incorporating the details the task or assignments may require, CPM calculates all task times, which can be measured in hours, days, weeks, and months. For any unintended manually input errors, a warning message will be provided. Including an automatic successor generator, task numbering comment, and data validation, makes it easier on the project manager.