Estimating tasks for a project

You’ve set the scope for your new project and communicated it to your stakeholders and team members. You have defined a set of tasks to get started, but now you are being asked to estimate how long these tasks will take. 

How do you create these estimates for the project tasks? 

Ask each team member to review the tasks assigned to them and estimate the time they will spend on each task. You could also estimate the weekly number of hours each team member is expected to spend on project tasks. 

Once you have these estimates, consider when you want the team to report the actual time they spent on the tasks and/or the project. Should the actuals be recorded when the task is complete? Or should the actuals be captured at the end of the month? 

When you have both estimates and actuals captured, it is important to compare the values and provide feedback back to the team. If the actuals are higher than the estimates, is there a specific reason? If the estimates are higher than the actuals, is there a specific reason? You may consider only reviewing in detail the differences within a specific threshold. 

The difference between the two values could be caused by a scope change or possibly a delay from another task and/or resource. Sometimes the difference is caused by not being clear on the project scope or task deliverable. 

Creating estimates is more an art than a specific formula. Team members need practice and review of the numbers to provide more accurate estimates for future projects.