Accurate estimating is a matter of profit or loss. The most accurate estimates will lead to the lowest cost.

Organisations require estimates at various points in the life of a project or package of work. Very early estimates are required to feed into the bidding process. At later stages more detailed estimates are necessary to permit the allocation of staff and budgets. Risk management is required to allow the project team to contain the risks and help to bring the work in to plan. SMS provides consultancy and training for both early and detailed estimates as well as risk workshops.

What are Estimating and Risk?

Estimation and Risk are strongly linked topics as they are both concerned with forecasting the cost and time elements of a project. Indeed a risk to the work can in many ways be seen as a risk of not meeting the estimate.

Estimation

Producing an estimate relies on an understanding of the performance of the development environment. That is we need to have historical data from the same or a similar environment to allow us to predict factors such as the probable productivity, time-to-market and quaity.

Risk Management

Risk Management consists essentially of two main steps: the analysis of the probable risks and the development of strategies to ameliorate these risks. Amelioration can mean avoidance of risk or the reduction of risk. As the presence of risk indicates uncertainty then we can reduce risk by increasing certainty . This may involve the investigation of other feasible solutions to our problem, possibly using alternative technologies or prototyping.