Case Overview
Barbara is assigned as the project manager for a competitive bidding job at her company. Typically RFP’s (requests for proposals) at her company are handled by a group of senior managers who will review the RFP and make a decision on whether to proceed. Once the senior managers approve, the proposal department will take over to begin estimating all work along with the help of functional managers, if there is no previous history regarding the deliverables.
Generally the project manager will come into the picture after a contract is awarded and not during the bidding process, however Barbara was placed into the project during the bidding phase. Barbara was more skeptical about the estimates than a project manager normally is and decided to review the estimates prior to submitting.
After Barbara’s review, it was determined that the estimators arrived at 12 weeks using one grade 7 employee full time on one of the most critical tasks for the project. Because Barbara had experience performing this task on previous projects, she was certain that the task would take one full time employee 14 weeks to complete unless the project was smaller and less complex, so she questioned the estimators. Barbara discovered that the estimators had used a three-point estimate that did not take into account the complexity of this project and perhaps a triangular estimate would have been a better method to use to arrive at 13 weeks. This estimate still left about a week difference from her previous estimate and could cause serious complications for Barbara if time commitment was not met.
Because the estimates were leaving Barbara with many questions, she went directly to the expert in completing this type of task, Peter a grade 9 employee assigned to the project. Peter agreed with Barbara and did not understand why the estimators decided to use the three-point