Information Technology Project Management: Providing Measurable Organizational Value, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER 6

The Work Breakdown Structure and Project Estimation

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Chapter 6 focuses on developing the work breakdown structure, as well as on introducing a number of project estimation approaches, tools, and techniques. After studying this chapter, you should understand and be able to:

• Develop a work breakdown structure.
• Describe the difference between a deliverable and a milestone.
• Describe and apply several project estimation methods. These include the Delphi technique, time boxing, top-down estimation, and bottom-up estimation.
• Describe and apply several software engineering estimation approaches. These include lines of code (LOC), function point analysis, COCOMO, and heuristics.

INTRODUCTION

In the last chapter, you learned about defining and managing the project's scope—the work to be done in order to achieve the project's MOV or goal. Defining and understanding what you have to do is an important first step to determining how you're going to do the work that has to be done. In this chapter, we will focus on defining the tasks or activities that need to be carried out in order to complete all of the scope-related deliverables as promised. Moreover, we need to estimate or forecast the amount of time each activity will take so that we can determine the overall project schedule.

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) area called project time management ...