IT costs & workload estimates – Overview of the estimation techniques

Why should you follow this training?

Target audience

• You are interested in understanding how various estimation techniques can help you to correctly evaluate your IT project costs and efforts and so efficiently allocate resources to tasks
• You are a project manager, scrum master, solution architect, lead analyst, lead developer or team manager involved in workload and costs estimating within the scope of software development project

Your expectations

• Discover and understand how estimation techniques can help you in your project effort estimation activities
• Assess pros & cons of various workload estimation approaches
• Implement and use well-proven estimation techniques in your working environment in order to better plan the human resources allocation to project tasks
• Provide and better communicate soundly-based estimates to your project stakeholders

What will you learn?

• Why correctly estimating is a key criteria for the success of a project 
• What are the prerequisites needed for a efficient workload estimation
• What are the influencing factors to take into account and the most common errors to avoid when estimating project activities
• Which appropriate costs estimation technique to select according to your project environment and how to use it
• How to efficiently communicate estimates 

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Training program overview 

Basics 

• Introduction to the basics of the estimating process ; what is an estimate ? 
• The estimations styles 
• Why and when estimating ? 
• What are the influencing factors ? 
• What are the pitfalls to avoid ? 

The estimating process 

• The approach when starting from scratch (WBS, bottom-up & top-down) 
• Prerequisites and preparation 
• The rules of thumbs 

Estimating techniques 

• Analogy & Expert judgment 
• Function Points 
• Use Case Points 
• User Story Points 
• A few words on others techniques 

The estimates & costs management 

• How to communicate estimates ? 
• How to manage them ? 
• What are the challenges ?