How to Keep Time with Project Managemen: Tips for Making Proper Time Estimation

As a manager who regularly oversees various projects within your company, you understand the necessity of accurately estimating the time it takes from the planning stage of a project all the way through its fruition. Estimations are one of the most important aspects of creating a project, mainly because they set the pace of resulting deadlines for each phase's delivery-not to mention your supervisor's and client's appraisal of your abilities as a project leader. They also play an important part in deciding what the project will cost, greatly affecting your company's profit margin.

Although this is one of the biggest points of a project, unfortunately managers have an annoying tendency to greatly underestimate just how much time is necessary to work on said projects. The risk of underestimation only increases when the manager hasn't familiarized themselves with the nature of the project or the work that needs to be done. Sometimes they fail to factor in the inevitable hiccups or unforseen circumstances that force work on the project to completely shut down even for a short while. Or maybe they just don't understand how complicated the task is, and don't allocate enough time to handle the intricate details.

So how do you estimate the time it will take to complete a project with a good degree of accuracy? Take time in advance to completely familiarize yourself with the goal your project has. Write out a detailed list of the tasks that will have to be finished and when they need to be finished by, and don't leave anything out no matter how small it seems at the time.

Once you see exactly how many little tasks are going to be involved within the larger framework of the project, try to estimate the time each task is going to take to be completed. The important thing in this step is what too many managers forget: you need to plan for everything when making the estimate, including collaboration time, staff meetings, holidays, unexpected delays, and any other time involved that you can possibly think of.

Unexpected delays are especially prone to greatly adding to the length of a project, often to an unimaginable degree. While this doesn't mean you should go to the other end of the spectrum and greatly overestimate the time of a given project, you need to be aware that project managers do need to prepare for the unexpected.

Don't lose face in your company just because you forgot to factor in a few delays. You not only severely affect the bottom line of your company's financial reports, but you bring undue stress to the others involved in the project. Make sure you understand the project in its entirety ahead of time, so you can better and more accurately estimate the time it will take to complete it.