From the course: Management: Top Tips

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Estimating time and costs

Estimating time and costs

From the course: Management: Top Tips

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Estimating time and costs

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- Step Three, estimating. In this step, we're estimating both the time and the cost for every task. And the method is exactly the same for both time and for money. A common mistake people make is to put in averages for their estimates. But the problem with an average is that half the time you'll be over budget or late. And it's really an unacceptable outcome for half your projects to be over budget or late. So what I recommend is for each task think about the average that it might take in terms of the cost and the money. And also think about the worst case, and then go halfway in between those. If you go halfway between the average and the worst, then you'll have a situation where you're going to be right 90% of the time. You're still going to be over spent on 10% of your estimates but we have to live with that. It's impossible to know everything. So that's estimating, halfway between the average and the worst case for both the time and the money.

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