Project Management Step by Step: How to Plan and Manage a Highly Successful Project

Estimating time

The part of planning that people find the hardest, and which they often get stressed doing, is estimating how long the project will take. Accurate estimating is difficult and most people are simply not very good at it. The first thing to understand is that whilst it is helpful for your estimates to be as accurate as possible, don’t try to make them perfect. They are inherently uncertain as they are a judgement about the future. If you try to make them perfect you will spend more time estimating than doing anything else on your project. Estimation is as much an art as it is an accurate science – and is best done with experience of doing similar tasks before.

The next thing to clarify is what you are estimating. Your estimates ...