Estimating Activity Resources and Durations

Determining resource requirements is critical to successful project time management. The ability to estimate the duration of each project activity is equally essential. It is not enough to know what needs to be done and what resources are required. A project manager must know how much time it will take to complete each activity. This course covers estimating activity resources and durations in the project management discipline, and introduces best practices outlined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) - Fourth Edition, published by the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Specifically, learners will be provided with an overview of establishing resource requirements, sources of activity duration information, and methods of estimating activity durations. Some of the duration estimating techniques taught in this course include analogous estimating, parametric estimating, and using three-point estimates. This course provides a foundational knowledge base reflecting the most up-to-date project management information so learners can effectively put principles to work in their own organizations. This course will assist in preparing the learner for the PMBOK® Guide certification exam. This course is aligned with the PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition, published by PMI®, Inc., 2008. Copyright and all rights reserved. Material from this publication has been reproduced with the permission of PMI®.

Target Audience

Existing project managers wishing to get certified in recognition of their skills and experience, or others who wish to train to become accredited project managers.

Expected Duration (hours)
2.0

Lesson Objectives

Estimating Activity Resources and Durations

• Identify the purpose of the Estimating Activity Resources process
• Recognize examples of the types of information required to estimate activity resources
• Match tools and techniques with examples of their uses in estimating activity resources
• Recognize the principles of using the bottom-up estimating technique
• Recognize the importance of including assumptions for activity resource estimates
• Identify an example of a resource breakdown structure
• Match inputs with descriptions of their uses in estimating activity durations
• Match the tools and techniques for estimating activity duration with examples
• Recognize examples of the outputs of the Estimating Activity Durations process
• Estimate activity durations using the parametric estimating technique for a given scenario
• Estimate the duration of a given activity using the three-point estimating technique.