Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 5: Anticipate the worst case and plan for contingencies.

• Develop the most critical use cases first

  • If the project runs into difficulty, then the critical features are more likely to have been completed
• Make three estimates:

  • Optimistic (O)

    • Imagining a everything going perfectly
  • Likely (L)

    • Allowing for typical things going wrong
  • Pessimistic

    • Accounting for everything that could go wring

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