Estimate Activity Durations

All project management activities have three unique attributes and these include duration, work effort, and resource.  It is important for project managers to carry out estimate activity durations to be able to plan activities based on its three attributes.

Estimate activity durations is a process in project management that involves analyzing different activity and estimates how long it takes to accomplish a certain task with the estimated amount of resources. The benefit of this particular process is that it provides the amount of time that each activity will require in order for it to be accomplished.

To make the estimate activity durations, it is important that you look into the necessary inputs such as the schedule management plan, activity list, activity attributes, resource calendars, project scope statement, risk register, resource breakdown structure, enterprise environmental structure and the organizational process assets. All of these things are necessary to come up  with a good estimate for each individual task involved in the project life cycle.

On the other hand, developing the project schedule requires several techniques.  The stability of the schedule of the activities depends on the accuracy of the duration of the entire project activities. This is the reason why estimation techniques like analogous estimating, parametric estimating and three points estimating are very crucial.  Project managers can also use reserve analysis and group decision-making techniques to be able to give a good estimate of the project activities. Seeking expert judgment is also crucial in this process.

All of these can lead to updates on the project documents as well as the activity duration estimates. Estimate activity duration is a critical step in project management because it helps project managers accurately and precisely creates estimates of the project activities. This will ensure that everything will be right on schedule.

This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.