Using historical task data to create future project estimates

[Don Epstein]

I am a new Project 2003 w/Project Server 2003 user. We frequently perform the
same tasks for network infrastructure projects, such as "migrate user profile
from PC to server", etc. What is the best approach to accumulating and
averaging actual time spent on each instance of this task in order to improve
our task estimation capabilities? Right now we manually capture this
information in an Excel spreadsheet and use that to calculate our averages.
There must be a better way leveraging Project, right? Thanks and Happy
Holidays!

 

[davegb]

I am a new Project 2003 w/Project Server 2003 user. We frequently perform the
same tasks for network infrastructure projects, such as "migrate user profile
from PC to server", etc. What is the best approach to accumulating and
averaging actual time spent on each instance of this task in order to improve
our task estimation capabilities? Right now we manually capture this
information in an Excel spreadsheet and use that to calculate our averages.
There must be a better way leveraging Project, right? Thanks and Happy
Holidays!

I'm not aware of any easier way to do this in Project. Not sure what
you mean by "leveraging Project". If I were doing it, I'd do pretty
much what you're doing. I might automate some of it using VBA.
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Don,

Try posting on the server newsgroup. Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project
Newsgroups. FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information
can be seen at this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Don --

What about using a completed project as a template for future projects of
the same type? Just a thought.