Estimating Realistic Project Deadlines

Tuesday June 28th 2005, 11:04 pm

Written by: Brian Benzinger

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I stumbled apon the article, Estimating Realistic Project Deadlines, via Particletree. This is something that many of us had to do once before. Estimate the time to complete a project. It is very difficult as you probably know and I usually have to give it a big guess on how long it will take. But for my next project, I am going to give this equation a try and see how well it matches up:

Te=(To+4Tm+Tp)/6

Te = Realistic time estimate

To = Most optimistic time estimate (the Sunny Side estimate with no setbacks)

Tp = Most pessimistic time estimate (with every obstacle happening)

Tm = Most probable time estimate (this makes you think realistically; some setbacks happen, others don’t)

Let’s say we have a project of developing a departmental newsletter. The variables break down as follows:

Tm = 14 days

To = 10 days

Tp = 30 days

The calculation would be:

Te = (10+(4X14)+30)/6

The best estimated duration for the project would be 16 days.