Estimates are based on a level of effort and times. Typically, the cost of a project is based on the time spent on a project. Your estimate helps calculate a rough determination of that cost and sometimes whether or not the project is worth the investment.
• A good estimate will be based on specific tasks and the talent used to complete them. Your estimate will help you staff the project properly. For example, you can say a senior developer will need four weeks to complete a project, but a junior might need twelve weeks with some support. That’s a pretty large detail that will impact your estimate!
• More complex projects can be dependent on other projects or tasks. Knowing just how long it will take to complete your project might answer an important question about another project (and when it may have to start or finish).
• Working with a team can often be a challenge, particularly when no one is in agreement on the project. Working together to produce an estimate can be a great way to pull the team together to talk about staffing, responsibilities, process, and timing. And guess what, that all helps produce a solid estimate.
It would be very easy, at this point, to just say, “This is how you create an estimate.” But that wouldn’t work in your favor, because there is a mindset that is required to do this the right way—and feel good about it.
Learn What You Can
I work in the web industry, and I’d never sell myself as a web designer or a developer. I’m a project manager. That said, I’ve learned enough about design and code over the course of my career to make me horribly dangerous. I would never step into a project and say, “I’m the best resource to design or code this,” but I know enough about how things are done to ask the right questions and make the proper assumptions about how they should or could be done. This knowledge helps immensely when estimating project work because I can give a gut check on the level of effort related to any task on a project.
I learned a lot of web skills in my career and have had to stay on top of industry standards and major changes ever since. In addition to that, as a PM, I had to learn a whole new set of people, processes, and clients every time I started a new job with a new company. A career in project management means that you have to stay on top of trends, changes, and deliverables in your industry. It isn’t easy, because things change fairly often, but it’s worth it because it will directly affect your success as a PM.
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