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Barbara just received the good news: She was assigned as the projectmanager for a project that her company won as part of competitivebidding. Whenever a request for proposal (RFP) comes into Barbarascompany, a committee composed mainly of senior managers reviews theRFP. If the decision is made to bid on the job, the RFP is turned over tothe Proposal Department. Part of the Proposal Department is an estimatinggroup that is responsible for estimating all work. If the estimating grouphas no previous history concerning some of the deliverables or workpackages and is unsure about the time and cost for the work, theestimating team will then ask the functional managers for assistance withestimating.Project managers like Barbara do not often participate in the biddingprocess. Usually, their first knowledge about the project comes after thecontract is awarded to their company and they are assigned as the projectmanager. Some project managers are highly optimistic and trust theestimates that were submitted in the bid implicitly unless, of course, a989significant span of time has elapsed between the date of submittal of theproposal and the final contract award date. Barbara, however, is somewhatpessimistic. She believes that accepting the estimates as they weresubmitted in the proposal is like playing Russian roulette. As such,Barbara prefers to review the estimates.One of the most critical work packages in the project was estimated attwelve weeks using one grade 7 employee full time. Barbara hadperformed this task on previous projects and it required one person fulltime for fourteen weeks. Barbara asked the estimating group how theyarrived at this estimate. The estimating group responded that they used thethree-point estimate where the optimistic time was four weeks, the mostlikely time was thirteen weeks, and the pessimistic time was sixteenweeks.Barbara believed that the three-point estimate was way off of the mark.The only way that this work package could ever be completed in fourweeks would be for a very small project nowhere near the complexity ofBarbaras project. Therefore, the estimating group was not consideringany complexity factors when using the three-point estimate. Had theestimating group used the triangular distribution where each of the threeestimates had an equal likelihood of occurrence, the final estimate wouldhave been thirteen weeks. This was closer to the fourteen weeks thatBarbara thought the work package would take. While a difference of 1week seems small, it could have a serious impact on Barbaras project andincur penalties for late delivery.Barbara was now still confused and decided to talk to Peter, the employeethat was assigned to do this task. Barbara had worked with Peter onprevious projects. Peter was a grade 9 employee and considered to be anexpert in this work package. As part of the discussions with Barbara, Petermade the following comments:I have seen estimating data bases that include this type of workpackage and they all estimate the work package at about 14 weeks. Ido not understand why our estimating group prefers to use the threepoint estimate.Does the typical data base account for project complexity whenconsidering the estimates? asked Barbara. Peter responded:Some data bases have techniques for considering complexity, butmostly they just assume an average complexity level. Whencomplexity is important, as it is in our project, analogy estimatingwould be better. Using analogy estimating and comparing thecomplexity of the work package on this project to the similar workspackages I have completed, I would say that 1617 weeks is closer toreality, and lets hope I do not get removed from the project to put outa fire somewhere else in the company. That would be terrible. It isimpossible for me to get it done in 12 weeks. And adding more peopleto this work package will not shorten the schedule. It may even makeit worse.Barbara then asked Peter one more question:Peter, you are a grade 9 and considered as the subject matter expert. Ifa grade 7 had been assigned, as the estimating group had said, howlong would it have taken the grade 7 to do the job?Probably about 20 weeks or so, responded Peter.QUESTIONS1. How many different estimating techniques were discussed in the case?2. If each estimate is different, how does a project manager decide thatone estimate is better than another?3. If you were the project manager, which estimate would you use?Read the above paragraph and answer the below Questions in APA Format with Minimum of 125 words for each question. Purchase the answer to view it
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