ABSTRACT
Most of the time the estimates are inƒated because of the process and lack of knowledge as to what is happening. Here is a ™rsthand experience. On a large project I was playing the role of project manager. Underneath me was a technical lead who was assigned to get estimates from several di¢erent systems. At the system level the technical lead worked with the managers of the many di¢erent systems. œe managers in turn asked their developers for the actual estimate. Because of my technical background, when the estimates came back I knew they were inƒated. A¬er doing some research, I discovered that each level was inƒating the numbers by 25%. If the developer had originally estimated 100 hours of actual work, they would inƒate it by 25% to 125 hours because of the unknowns of the work needing to be done and not knowing who would be doing it. œis estimate was then given to their manager. œe manager in turn also inƒated it by 25%. Now the estimate was 156 hours. œen when the technical lead got the estimate from the manager they did what they had always done on all prior projects. œey inƒated that estimate by 25%. œe original estimate of 100 hours now had become just under 200 hours because of the di¢erent levels inƒating the estimate they received by 25%. A project with an estimate of 9,000 hours at a cost of around $1 million is far easier to get approval than a project estimated at 18,000 hours with a cost of $2 million.
