Project Time Management - Estimate Activity Resources

This process estimates the type and quantities of material, human resources, equipment, or supplies required to perform each activity. This allows for more accurate cost and duration estimates.

This process is coordinated with the Estimate Costs process as you may have to hire a consultant to get knowledge about what is needed for the project activities. This consultant will be an additional cost to the project.

Lets take a look at Inputs, Tools and Techniques, and Outputs of this process.

1) Schedule Management Plan

• identifies the level of accuracy and the units of measure for the resources to be estimated

2) Activity list

• Identifies the activities which will need resources

3) Activity Attributes

• Provides the primary data input for use in estimating those resources required for each activity in the activity list

4) Resource Calendars

• A calendar that identifies the working days and shifts that resources (humans, equipment, and material) are available. It also includes the information about resource experience or skill level as well as their location (time zones). 

5) Risk Register

• Risk events may impact resource selection and availability. 

6) Activity Cost Estimates

• Cost of resources may impact the selection of resources

7) Enterprise Environmental Factors

• May include the resource location, availability and skills.

8) Organizational Process Assets

• Factors that may impact estimate activity resources may include:
• Policies and procedures regarding staffing
• Policies and procedures regarding rental and purchase of supplies and equipment
• Historical information of resources used on other projects

9) Expert Judgment

• People with the specialized knowledge in resource planning and estimating can be used

10) Alternative Analysis

• conduct an analysis for alternatives to schedule activities such as various levels of resource skill, rent or buy decisions, or different size or types of machines used. 

11) Published Estimating Data

• Organizations will publish production rates and unit costs of resources for different countries or locations to get an array of labor trades, material and equipment. 

12) Bottom-up Estimating

• method of estimating the project duration or cost by aggregating the estimates of the lower-level components of the WBS. 

13) Project Management Software

• Software like a scheduling tool helps plan, organize and manage resource pools and develop resource estimates. Other items that can be track in the software include:
• Resource breakdown structures
• Resource availability
• Resource rates

14) Activity Resource Requirements 

• Identify the types and quantities of resources required for each activity in a work package. 

15) Resource Breakdown Structure

• A hierarchical representation of resources by category and type that is useful for organizing and reporting project schedule information with resource utilization information. 
• Category -labor, material, equipment, and supplies
• Types - skill level and grade level

16) Project Document Updates

• Documents that you may update include:
• Activity list
• Activity attributes
• Resource calendars

Source: PMBOK 5th ed.