Overview

Bad estimates are a leading source of project failure: if you promise to do a five-month job in three-months – and it really is a five-month job – schedule slippages and cost overruns are hardwired into the project before any work has begun. Clearly, individuals and organizations intent on reducing the levels of project failure they encounter need to focus attention on improving the way they develop estimates of costs, schedules, and resource requirements.

This course balances the "soft" and "hard" dimensions of estimation. On the soft side, it emphasizes that factors, such as the optimism of the sales staff, the naivete of the technical team, and political pressures to win a job at any cost, contribute mightily to understating cost, schedule, and resource realities. On the hard side, it describes a series of techniques – including trend extrapolation and Monte Carlo simulation – that enable capable estimators to do a better job of forecasting project requirements.

Effective Estimation was developed by UMT Dean Dr. J. Davidson Frame and is based on the course he has taught as part of the PMI Project World Seminar series.

[Note: Students who take Effective Estimation should not take UMT-PM251. Planning and Control.]

Free Review

You can review the first five complete modules of this course for free.

If you want take the Enrichment Package, and be eligible for 15 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credits, you can enroll at any time at a cost of only $495.

The enrichment material is designed to enhance the course presentation. It includes the following:

• Five additional modules offering in-depth insights
• Course Textbook: Innumeracy, a book by John Allen Paulos
• "Think and Review" section that helps you review key points of the modules
• Answers to the "Think and Review" section
• A final exam which contains multiple choice and true/false questions
• Certificate of Completion, which makes students eligible for 15 PDU credits (given upon exam completion).

By completing the full course, with the additional enrichment material, you will have covered the same content contained in our two-day Effective Estimation course when it is offered live in a classroom environment.

Objectives

To provide participants with insights and skills that will enable them to develop better capabilities to create effective estimates.

PMBOK Knowledge Areas

• Project Human Resource Management
• Project Time Management
• Project Scope Management
• Project Cost Management
• Project Risk Management
• Project Procurement Management

What You Will Learn

• How problems with effective estimation are largely inevitable
• How to collect and archive data for better estimates
• Different issues involved in estimating costs, schedules, and resource requirements
• Techniques to improve the accuracy of estimates

Topics Covered

• Estimating a current state of affairs vs. forecasting the future
• Different types of measures: nominal, ordinal, interval
• Estimating work performance
• Estimating costs, schedules, resource requirements
• The psychological dimension of estimation
• Top-down (e.g., parametric) vs. bottom-up estimates
• The differing roles of conceptual, preliminary, and definitive estimates
• Forecasting techniques: scenario-building, gap analysis, trend extrapolation, Delphi
• Estimation and risk
• Life-cycle cost estimating
• Developing a database to make better estimates

Enter Free Course

In order to enter the free course, please fill out the form below. This will allow you to take the course as a "Guest." There are instructions on the course site about how to sign up for the Enrichment Package.

If you have any questions, please send an email to training@umtweb.edu or call us at (703) 516-0035.

Take a Course

This course costs $495. You can begin the course today, with no application necessary. There are four easy ways to sign up:

• Secure Online Payment (VISA, Master & American Express)
• Registration Form [Word]. Mail the form with your check to: UMT, 1901 North Fort Myer Drive, Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22209-1609.
• Fax the form to us at (703) 516-0985.
• Register by phone at (703) 516-0035.

Once the payment has cleared, you will be issued an ID name and a Password that will allow you to access the full course.

To access the course, log into the UMT online coursesite with your USER ID and PASSWORD at: coursesite.umtweb.edu.