Managing Padding in Time Estimates
Estimating time is one of the most difficult and most unsure activities during the planning phase of the project management process. We had a discussion recently with some colleagues of mine about the extra time that sometimes the developers or the project managers add to their estimates, called padding.
There are two extremes about this approach. On the one side is the management’s urge to shorten the project’s duration leading to unrealistically short schedules. Sometimes the developers (usually younger and inexperienced ones) get infected by the flowing optimism and make unrealistic estimates, which you know are impossible to meet. Then, when you make the final schedule you add some percentage of time (usually between 10% and 20%) to make sure that even after the management shortens your schedule you will still have the necessary time to complete the project on time.
Filed Under Project Management, Teamwork | 4 Comments
-
Subscribe to this blog!
License
The content of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 2.5 Bulgaria License-
Admin
