PMP Process – Estimate Activity Resources

This is a process where you look at each individual activity and determine what and
how many resources are needed to accomplish that activity. Resources are not just
people, but also include equipment, machines, and different types of supplies
needed to finish the activity.
This process lists all the resources, both physical and staff, and how many of those
resources are needed.

This particular process focuses on each activity within the schedule to calculate the
resource requirements. Another factor that will need to be considered along with the
hours’ work effort required, is the availability of the resources.
All of the above will combine and result in the project schedule which is developed in
a later process within the time management group.
There is a fundamental formula that ties together the duration of an activity against
the amount of work effort required, and the resources needed to complete that work
within the estimate activity resources process:
Activity duration = work effort/human units. For typical activities the duration will be
measured in days, the work effort in hours, and the number of people required as a
decimal fraction.
Although the Estimate Activity Resources process forms part of
developing the project time schedule, this process is normally
undertaken in parallel with the process ‘estimate costs’ (which is a
process within the cost management process group).

Inputs used to estimate activity resources:

Project management plan. This will contain the resource
management plan, which will give guidance on how to perform this
process. It will also contain the scope baseline which is made up of
the project scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary
Activity list. This is the prime input to estimate activity
resources because each activity in the list will be studied so that
appropriate resources can be estimated.
Activity attributes. These attributes will often include activity
information such as the knowledge, skills, and experience for suitable
individuals to carry out the activity. It may also include information
on nonhuman resources such as facilities, and materials, and tools.
Assumption log. This will keep track of any assumptions that are
made during the project. Assumptions and constraints could affect
how the schedule is built and may impact the lead and lag between
activities.
Resource calendars. This will cover both human and non-human
resources as the availability of an individual and then normal
working hours will be just as important as the availability of
resources such as a facility or heavy plant machinery as an example.
This availability will need to be factored into each activity and may
have a bearing on the duration of each.
Enterprise environmental factors. Examples of why this may affect
the resources required for an activity could be the laws and
regulations resulting in more or less work effort to carry out each
activity, the environment within which the activity is to take place, or
even the logistics concerning the use of resources.
Organizational process assets. Typical assets might be data from
previous similar projects regarding the work effort for typical
activities, or procedures that are mandated to carry out particular
activities.

Outputs from the estimate activity resources process:

Activity resource requirements. This is normally a document that
describes the number of resources for each scheduled activity, and
the knowledge, skills, and experience of each. The work effort may be
described as total hours, or as skills set per time period. An example
for the latter might be three bricklayers for a period of two weeks. It is
helpful to include assumptions and other detail in support of such
estimates for each activity.
Activity resource requirements will document the number and types
of resources needed to complete each activity. This should be very
detailed. For example, if you are painting a room, this process would
list the resource requirements as two painters, 4 gallons of primer, 2
gallons of glossy white paint, two rollers, one roll of tape, one
tarpaulin, and four paintbrushes.
Basis of estimates. This is a document that outlines what was used
to create the estimates pertaining to the resources on the project
and how the estimates were created. For example, what methods
were used to develop the estimate, what assumptions and
constraints were made, and the range of the estimates.
Resource breakdown structure. This is known as the RBS and is a
similar graphical diagram to the WBS, however, the diagram and
each node describe the resources by category and type. A particular
project may split the categories by knowledge or skills, or by
department or group.
This is a hierarchical breakdown of resources by their categories and
types. On a phone system upgrade project, you can break down
resources by software, hardware, and people. An RBS can help track
project costs as it ties to the organization’s accounting system.
Project document updates. It is highly likely that the activity lists and
activity attributes would normally get updated as a consequence of
estimating activity resources. The resource calendars may be
modified as well to pre-assign such resources.
Alternatives analysis. When considering the resource requirements
for each activity (estimate activity resources), it may be helpful to
consider alternative ways of carrying out the work as well as the
resources needed to do so. This may result in a more effective and
efficient way to carry out the activity such as buying procurement
rather than designing in-house.
Expert judgment. As with all things in life, nothing beats experience.
Those who are considered experts, or even those who have carried
out similar tasks, should be involved in all aspects of estimating as
this will result in a more realistic and achievable set of activities
within the estimate activity resources process and the resulting
schedule.
Published estimating data. This is often available in two forms;
internal published sources based on historical data and experience
of carrying out similar activities and industry-standard tables of
resources and effort. Within the building industry, for example, there
are standards tables describing the amount of person-effort to
construct standard frames when erecting buildings. Another
example is the number of bricklayers needed to create a wall of
standard dimensions.
Project management software. Applications such as Microsoft
Project can assist in storing and structuring information and will
allow swift calculations of alternatives or schedule possibilities. Such
software is only a tool, however, and the phrase ‘garbage in –
garbage out applies here!

The documents you are most likely to use in this process include:

Risk register. This would list all the identified project risks, as well as
their impacts and response. Risk responses can lead to adding
reserve time to activities.

Cost estimates. These will be the individual costs that are assigned
to each activity. Knowing the cost of an activity will be critical to
determining what resources should be used on the project.

Expert judgment. This is a helpful tool when dealing with resources. If

you are painting a room and need to estimate how much paint will
be needed, then it would be best to ask a painter who would be your
subject matter expert.
Tools and Techniques

Bottom-up estimating is when you break down the activities in

more detail until you can assign the resources. You can then
aggregate them back up to the full activity. This form of estimation
requires the work to be very detailed before it can be done.
This is considered one of the best estimates to use because it is very
accurate, but it is also very time consuming
Analogous estimating. This is also known as a top-down estimation.
It relies on historical information to assign the current duration to the
activities. It is based on a limited amount of information. This is a
quick estimate, but because you’re not actually inspecting the work,
it may not be very accurate.

Parametric estimating. This uses a mathematical algorithm to

calculate costs or duration. The calculation is based on historical
data and variables. For example, if it takes one programmer to write
one module, then it will take 10 programmers to write 10 modules. This
form of estimation could be accurate depending on the accuracy of
the data that is used to calculate it.

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