IT Project Estimation: Contemporary Practices and Management Guidelines

Many IT projects continue to suffer from poor estimation. Indeed, the accuracy of estimation has hardly changed from that reported in a seminal study carried in 1992 by Lederer and Prasad. The full article is based in the results of two survey-based studies, which replicated and then extended the original study. The findings from Study 1, which looked at overall organizational estimation practices, are remarkably consistent with Lederer and Prasad’s study, with “classic” estimation mistakes still being made—over-reliance on personal memory, use of intuition and guessing. Moreover, the common causes of poor estimation practices have changed little over the past 20 years—change requests from users, users’ lack of understanding of requirements, poor problem definition and insufficient analysis prior to an estimate being made.