ABBREVIATIONS AND RULES OF THUMB

   

You may also find the following of use:

8 man-hours (MH) = 1 man-day (MD)
5 man-days = 1 man-week (MW)

Technically there are 4.3 man-days in a man-week, but 5 is easier to work with.

19 man-days = 1 man-month (MM)
12 man-months = 1 man-year (MY)
220 man-days = 1 man-year.

Technically, there are 228 man-days in a man-year, and I think this may be true in the US. Certainly in Europe it's closer to 220.

EXAMPLE 1

Pregnancy is an often used example of a project. For this, our four terms above are:

Effort 9 woman -months
Schedule 9 months approximately
Critical path 9 months (i.e. adding more women won't shorten the project)
Milestones Doctors can identify particular significant points in the growth of a child from conception to delivery.

EXAMPLE 2

Here's another project. It has six jobs in it as follows :

  • Write document

  • Circulate document

  • Review document

  • Revise and update document

  • Circulate document again

  • Sign-off document

The project ends when this particular document is signed off by the relevant parties.

Let's assume also that the following estimates, i.e. guesses made by us, apply to the six jobs. Each estimate is given as three numbers : effort in man-days (MD), schedule in elapsed time, number of people involved.

Write document 15.0 MD, 7.5 elapsed, 2 people
Circulate document 0.5 MD, 0.5 elapsed, 1 person
Review document 5.0 MD, 5.0 elapsed, 5 people
Revise and update document 4.0 MD, 2.0 elapsed, 2 people
Circulate document again 0.5 MD, 0.5 elapsed, 1 person
Review and sign-off document 2.5 MD, 5.0 elapsed, 5 people

As always, we document the basis for these estimates:

  1. Write document is 2 people working full time for a week and a half.

  2. Circulate is 1 person doing photocopying, faxing and mailing for half a day.

  3. Review is 5 people each spending a day each reviewing the document and we give them a week to do it.

  4. Revise is the 2 people working full time, this time for 2 days.

  5. Circulate again is the same as the previous "Circulate."

  6. Review is the same 5 people taking half a day each to review and sign-off the document, and we give them another week in which to do it.

Thus:

Effort 27.5 MD
Schedule 20.5 elapsed
Critical path 20.5 elapsed (because the tasks must follow one another sequentially. This is not always the case. Also each activity is on the critical path.)
Milestones The completion of each of the six tasks represents one possible set of milestones in the project. (The beginning of each task is an alternative set.)
   


How To Run Successful Projects III. The Silver Bullet
How to Run Successful Projects III: The Silver Bullet (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 0201748061
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 176

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