ESTIMATE ACTIVITY DURATION

RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS
AND COST

CHAPTER # 8
 ESTIMATE ACTIVITY DURATION
RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS AND COST
 Duration: It is the elapsed time in the
working days excluding holidays, weekends
or non-workdays.
 Work Effort: It is the labor required to
complete an activity. The labor may be
consecutive or non-consecutive hours.
 Labor Time & Clock Time: Labor time
and clock time are not the same 
Cont,d
 Individual work at 75%
 Unplanned interruptions account for 33% of clock time
 Under normal conditions, a person’s work is interrupted
by phone calls, visitors, socialization and other reasons.
The work of 10 hours will require 13 hours and 20
minutes which does not include interruptions. Using 75%
focus figure and 33% on unplanned interruptions figure
means that a 10 hour task will take approximately 20
hours to complete.
 This elapsed time (20 hours) is estimated for each
activity in the project.
 For costing purposes, the labor time (work) actually spent
on an activity.
Cont,d
 “RESOURCE LOADING” VERSUS “ACTIVITY DURATION”:
 Duration: of an activity is influenced by the amount of Resources
working on it.
 Crashing of activity: It means reducing the duration of an activity by
adding more resources.
 There is a limit to minimizing the duration of activity. Beyond that limit the
increase of more resources may not reduce the activity duration rather,
sometimes, it may increases the time duration of activity. For example
repairing a watch needs one watchmaker. Two watchmakers if work on one
watch, the duration of repairing activity will not reduce rather it may
increase.
 VARIATION IN ACTIVITY DURATION:
 Activity duration is a random variable.
 Activity duration is difficult to be exactly estimated due to various factors.
 Estimating activity duration is thus an effort to minimize variation between
estimated duration and actual duration of an activity.
Cont,d
 CAUSES OF VARIATIONS in ACTIVITY DURATION
 1.Varying Skill Levels:
 Activity duration is usually estimated based on typically skilled persons. In
practice, we may get persons with lower or higher level of skills which
shall cause variation in activity duration.
 2.Un Expected Events:
 An un-expected events cause delays such as traffic jams, power failure,
and accidents etc.
 3.Efficiency of Work Time:
 Level of productivity is affected each time when a worker is interrupted
during working. Therefore, the work time (productive time) will be lesser
than clock time (allocated time).
 4.Mistakes and Misunderstandings:
 Errors in tools, machines or human errors and mistakes/misunderstanding
usually occur during the work. This results in reworking the work in
process.
Cont,d
 SIX METHODS FOR ESTIMATING ACTIVITY DURATION:
 Accuracy in estimation of activity duration mostly depends upon the
knowledge, skills and past experience of the estimator in those
activities. Re-estimation and re-planning are common. Following are
the six techniques suitable for estimating Time estimates for each
activity.
 1.Similarity to the other Activities:
 If similar activities have already been completed earlier in other
projects, the estimates for time duration could be prepared on the
same basis with provision of adding or reducing it, depending upon
the situation in this project and the last project.
 2.Historical Data:
 From the project dairy or record, the estimated and actual durations
of activities mat provide a good basis for the estimation of activities.
Regression technique could also be used for this purpose.
Cont,d
 3.Expert Advice:
 In case of projects using new technology and non-availability of
expertise within the organization, an outsider expert may be hired to
provide assistance or expert advice.
 4.DELPHI-Technique:
 In absence of expert advice, the Delphi technique can produce good
estimates.
 It is a group technique of forecasting, using a panel of experts in the
relevant field to predict estimates. It is a Qualitative type of forecasting
technique.
 First of all the purpose of the forecasting / estimation is explained to the
forum/ panel. Each member of the panel makes his own estimates.
Results are tabulated and presented to the panel for discussion and
comments of the panel.
 The same process is repeated until consensus of workable estimates /
forecasts is emerged.
Cont,d
 5.Three-point Technique:
 This technique of activity duration estimation is commonly used in Project
Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) for project planning and
controlling.
 In this technique, three estimates of activity duration are needed.
 OPTIMISTIC TIME (O):
 It is the shortest duration of an activity. It does not take possible problems
or factors and is confident about the achievement of the activity.
 PESSIMISTIC TIME (P):
 It is the longest duration of an activity which considers un-expected delays.
It involves over conscious attitude of the time estimator.
 (c) MOST LIKELY TIME (M):
 It is the most likely duration of an activity which is based on previous
experience.
 Expected TIME (E) = O + 4 M + P (formula)
 6
Cont,d
 6.WIDE-BAND DELPHI TECHNIQUE:
 The technique was developed by combining the DELPHI Technique and
Three Point Method. The panel of experts is asked to give optimistic,
pessimistic and most likely estimates. The results are complied and any
extreme estimates are removed. Averages are computed for each of the
three estimates and the averages are used as the optimistic, pessimistic
and most likely duration.
 Resources:
 Two approaches to Project Management:
 Market Driver Approach:
 Resources can expand in order to meet time to Market requirements.
 Resource Driven Approach:
 It involves effective use of resources. Both are not compatible. We
cannot minimize TIME to market while optimizing resource utilization.
This approached is usually adopted by government / public sector
organizations.
Cont,d
 Types of Resources:
 People: It is one of the most difficult type of resource to schedule due
to difficulty in availability and variance in their skills and abilities.
 Facilities: Timely and the required type of facilities (Production /
service delivery place) at appropriate location play an important role in
the efficient implementation of the project. These facilities include office
space, conference room, and other various facilities for office operations.
 Equipment: Timely and desired type of equipment affects the project
schedule.
 Money: Availability of sufficient amount of money at the right time is
quite essential and delays in its availability shall not only affect the
progress of the project but can adversely influence the relations of
suppliers/customers as well as the project staff with the Management.
 Materials: Materials are essential for the production and operations of
various deliverable. Delays may seriously affect the Project schedules as
well as its cost.
Cont,d
 PEOPLE AS A RESOURCE: ( Human resource in
Project).
 The planning and scheduling of human resource is quite
problematic and complicated, due to type of skills
requirement, time and place of its availability and varying
output level.
 Two tools for scheduling people:
 SKILL MATRICES:
 The two Matrices, skill inventory matrices for staff
and skills needs matrices for the tasks, are used to
assign staff to tasks. The assignment might be based on
task characteristics such as risk, business value,
criticality or skills development.
Cont,d
 SKILLS CATEGORIES:
 Skill matrix is developed by looking at each
task that the unit must perform and describing
the skills needed to perform the task.
 SKILL LEVELS:
 Level of skills must be clearly described in a
manner to indicate that how much of the
skills, the person should possess. We prefer to
use Bloom’s Taxonomy as described in Project
Managers’ Skill in chapter-2.
Cont,d
 ESTIMATING DURATION AS A FUNCTION
OF RESOURCE AVAILABILITY:
 The following three variables affect Duration
of activity and they influence each other as
well as:
 The duration itself.
 Total amount of work, as in person hours/days
that will be done on the activity by a resource.
 The percentage of his time per day that the
resource can devote to working on it.
Cont,d
 There are three methods to assign a
resource to an activity.
 Market driven ( Private / Commercial /
business projects and Resource driven
(Public sector projects) will have
different options and priorities.
 The choice is driven more by resource
availability.
Cont,d
 Assign at a Constant Rate:
 If an activity takes 40 hours of clock time to complete and
required 20 hours of effort to complete. In this case work
should be assigned at constant rate, the team member will
work half time for a period of 40 clock hours in order to log
in 20 hours of efforts to complete the work.
 Assign as a Total Amount:
 Alternatively, the worker is assigned to the activity until the
work is completed.
 Assign as a Profile:
 In some circumstances, persons can not work at a constant
rate because of other commitments. In such cases, the work
may be assigned at different rates over the 40 window.
Cont,d
 We may assign the worker ¾ of time for 20 hours and half time for 20
hours.
 The start of work will be delayed until the person is available and then
they will work full time to the completion of the activity.
 ESTIMATING COST:
 Cost estimates are determined after the activity estimates and resource
requirements are completed.
 Cost estimates are calculated at activity level and then aggregated/rolled
up to prepare project cost.
 (a) Material cost: Material will be priced on per use or per time unit
basis. There could be standard costs that can be easily calculated for an
activity.
 Labor cost: It is classified according to skill profile or Job classification.
 For calculating labor cost we need to know the rate of pay for a unit of
time of the labor.
 
Cont,d
 HOW TO USE A JP.P SESSION TO ESTIMATE
ACTIVITY DURATION AND RESOURCE
REQUIREMENT:
 JPP is a participative planning technique in
which the WBS exercise is carried out by the
team in its session.
 The subject matter specialists and resource
managers are asked to determine each activity
duration / time estimates and also the resource
requirement estimates are calculated.