Time and Cost Estimating Techniques Essays -- Project Management Obser

Time and Cost Estimating Techniques Estimating work times provides several benefits for the project manager. It gives an idea of the level of effort required to complete a project. This information then enables the project manager to produce a realistic plan based upon that effort. Estimating also helps the project manager anticipate the budget for the project. There are many formal techniques available to estimate time and cost for activities. Please refer to the Project Management Reference Section for more details on these techniques. Anyone reviewing these estimates should understand that they are approximations, not accuracies. Although the formal techniques are very specific, most of them have the following tasks in common: * Break activities down into small pieces for easier and more accurate estimation. (WBS) * Review historical information and compare to current activities. * Include a contingency buffer for potential risks. * Solicit advice from others that have previously completed similar activities. * Identify and document the assumptions and parameters used to derive the estimates. Microsoft Project Microsoft Project is project management software. Project management software assists project managers by providing a means for organizing project information. A project manager uses the software to enter and maintain a workplan that organizes activities and details. The software calculates the scheduled dates for tasks based on the time or work requirements of each task using a calendar of working days for the project and its resources. Microsoft Project is a tool to assist project managers in creating a WBS, PERT Charts, Gantt Charts, and resource histograms. Other reports and charts are also readily available for use and customization. AIS project team members and managers should use the latest version. PERT/CPM Network analysis techniques identify early and late start and finish dates for the uncompleted portions of project activities. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM) are examples of network analysis techniques. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is an event-oriented technique used to show all the project tasks, dependencies, and earliest and latest start times for each task in graphical form. It is used... ...y are achieving the task goals. This type of observation can also be useful if aspects of team performance are being investigated to understand how the team members are organised and perform their tasks. Communication and conversational analysis Investigation of the patterns in the organisation of people's interaction (it would be possible to use the principle of analysing a conversation between two travellers, or one traveller and one transport enquiry office operator in real situations, in order to identify the needs for the traveller in specific contexts, what are the difficulties encountered, how a system could resolve these difficulties,... ). One of these methods is the language / action approach which considers the language as a means by which people act. Advantage of this method : it provides a complete and logical conceptual frame in order to investigate all kinds of conversation. Disadvantage of this method : many situations are characterised by subtle communication processes not taken into account by the model. There is also a difficulty in labelling an interaction and a message especially if they do not fit into the request or promise categories.