READOS / Business
Project Estimates, Schedules and Costs
Estimating cost and duration, testing schedules, reading cost reports and dealing with late and changing work.
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- 01Estimating project costs from cost drivers, not templatesTwo projects with the same deliverable can have very different costs. How to estimate from the drivers that create cost, separate uncertainty from margin and learn from every finished job.
- 02Estimating when data is thin: structured expert judgement, Delphi rounds and a written basisFor first-of-a-kind work, estimates come from people, not records. How to reduce anchoring and deference, gather independent views, run a simple Delphi and record the basis of each estimate.
- 03From estimate to commitment: keeping the range and setting rules for money held backEvery serious estimate has a range, but the number that gets approved rarely does. How to keep method and range visible, commit on purpose and separate contingency from reserve.
- 04How confident is that finish date? Ranges, parallel work and what a schedule's probability measuresA finish date without a confidence level is one point from a range of futures. How to use three-point estimates, why parallel streams lower your real odds and when detailed modelling helps.
- 05How finely to break down the work: plan detail decides how late you find problemsThe size of the chunks a job is broken into sets both the cost of control and how late a problem can surface. How to size work packages to the window in which you can still act.
- 06What your schedule quietly decides: who spends the slack and when you find out you were wrongSchedules hide two big decisions: who may use spare time, and when the hardest, least reversible work happens. How to keep a slack ledger and buy early proof before the point of no return.
- 07Which dependencies in your schedule are real? Testing the logic behind the datesA schedule looks calculated, but its length rests on claims that one task must wait for another. How to test what enforces each link, buy out resource links and find time honestly.
- 08Mapping dependencies across your projects: complexity lives in the connectionsCounting projects understates complexity. How to map shared people, decisions, systems and timing across your work, find concentration points and reduce coupling with modular design.
- 09Finding the cheapest duration for a job: pricing time before you are lateMany businesses only find a faster, cheaper way to run a job once it is behind. How to find the lowest-cost duration at planning, count only time costs that stop and use early options.
- 10Planning when you cannot predict: plans that detect, load-bearing assumptions and triggersUncertainty is a reason to plan early, not to skip planning. How to write plans that show quickly when you are wrong, find the assumptions that carry the case and set stop triggers.
- 11Scope that says what is out: exclusions, interfaces and acceptance agreed before work beginsA scope listing only what is included is read by others as a sample, not a boundary. How to collect expectations, give exclusions a destination, own interfaces and agree what done means.
- 12Variations: where the economics of a job quietly change, and how to control them without blocking changeJobs rarely lose money through one big change, but through many small ones agreed on the spot. How to classify, price and record variations, see their full effect and decide in time.
- 13Earned value: what it shows about a job, and what it cannotEarned value compares work done with work planned and money spent. How to measure it honestly, read the indices in context and not mistake delivery efficiency for a job worth doing.
- 14Cost reports and cash flow tell different stories: watching both on projectsA project can be on budget while draining cash, because cost reports record work done and cash records money moved. How to bridge the two and find your peak cash need early.
- 15When the job runs late: delay claims, extensions of time and the records that decide themA schedule shows that a job is late; the contract decides what follows. How to trace a delay from event to effect, give notice early, avoid informal acceleration and keep the evidence.
These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.
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