 Hi, I'm Rui Rizu and in this video, we will talk about time planning. Just to recap, in the previous video, we talked about scope planning. The output of scope planning is a WBS work breakdown structure. A work breakdown structure is a hierarchical description of the work that has to be done to complete the project. And the leaf and the final level of a WBS is a work package. The lowest level task, when assigned the time and the cost, together with the necessary resources, people and material and individual responsibility for their accomplishment, define a work package. Designates a full description of what, who, when, it is like from work. And this is the basis of the time planning and the cost planning. Timing the project from the knowledge of the lowest level activities of the WBS, the working packages, it is a three-step process. The first step is estimate effort in person month, person day or person hour. And after that, estimate duration in calendar months and then estimate the project cost. Just to note here that the measure that you will use, person math, person day or person hour to estimate the effort, it should be the most useful for the project. Okay. We will talk about this later, but just to make point here about effort and duration. Effort is the time that you will take to really make the task, the work package. And the duration is the calendar time. We'll talk about this later, but just to note here and stress this point. So how to estimate the effort of the activities? There are six main approaches that we will consider. And the first one is previous experience, historical data, expert advice, Delphi technique, three-point technique, PERT, and wideband Delphi technique. Let's look at the previous experience. In the previous experience, some activities in the current WBS may be similar to activities carried out in other projects that have already been completed. So you can use your own previous experience or the previous experience of other members of the team to make an estimation of the effort that will take to make the tasks in the lifts of the WBS, which are the work package. Another approach is using historical data. So in this way, you will assume that you have data from previous projects that you can use here to make a provision, make an idea about using similar cases, about what will take to make the duration and the effort of the tasks of your current project. Okay, if you don't have previous experience and you don't have historical data, then you can buy the experience from others. And this is the case of expert advice. You will buy from an expert from a consultant who has experience of similar projects, his advice in estimation or in project management or in project consultation, whatever. In this case, we are talking about time planning. So it's about expert advice on the estimation of the duration and the effort of the tasks first effort and then duration as we will see. Okay, when we are talking about using the experience, we are talking about persons who made already projects in the same business area and using similar technologies. Another technique is Delphi technique. It is used in the absence of expert advice, historical data and previous experience. It is a group technique that extracts and summarizes the group's knowledge to arrive at an estimate. It has three rounds of estimates. This technique was developed in the Second World War to promote consensus in a group. So how it works? Delphi technique round one. After the group has been informed about the project and the nature of the activity, each individual in the group is asked their best estimate for the duration of the activity. Okay, but when they make this estimation, they don't show up when they are doing this estimation. In the end, the results are then tabulated and displayed in an Instagram called the first round. Participants whose estimates fall in the extreme quartiles are asked to justify them. So they don't argue, they don't fight, let's say, but they just justify. Why did you make that estimation? Just that. There is no discussion. Just pointing out the justification. Then we will start round two. After listening to the respective arguments, each member of the group is asked again to return a new estimation. The results are again tabulated and displayed in an Instagram called the second round. Again, participants whose estimates fall in the extreme quartiles are asked to justify and to share this justification with the others. So we will start round three. The third estimation follows whose Instagram is called the third round. The average of the third estimate and the only the third estimate is used as the group estimation. Another technique is PERT, Program Evaluation and Review Technique. Three activity duration estimations are done, optimistic, pessimistic and most likely. And then you apply a formula of PERT weight average, which is the sum of the optimist estimation plus four, the most likely plus the pessimistic and it is divided by six. And then this value represents the estimation of one work package. Again, we are estimating work package per work package. Okay, then we assign a number of the half-word estimation for each work package. Another technique is Wide Band Delphi Technique. This technique combines the Delphi Technique and the PERT Technique. So how it works in each round? To make the estimation, each participant uses the PERT Technique. And then the three rounds are made using each estimation. With the PERT Technique in the end, we make the average of the third estimation duration. Again, and just to recap and to stress just not to make any confusion. Effort is the time that you take to make a task. And duration is the calendar time. Imagine the following. I have a task that it takes two hours. Okay, using one of the previous methods, we reach a two-hours estimation for a task. This is the effort. Okay, but imagine that in my schedule, in my agenda, with classes and other projects and meetings and so on, I can only dedicate one hour this week for this task and another hour next week for the task. Okay, so the calendar time and the date, the duration date that I will give to my customer is, okay, I will take two weeks for this task. Despite the fact that it only takes two hours to make it. Okay, but again, the duration is not only the calendar time. We must take into account unplanned outages, which means that it is consensus that we spend 35% of the time with unplanned outages. So how it works. First, I calculate the effort of the task, for instance, five man hours. Then, after calculation, the effort, I must calculate the first duration estimation. And the first duration estimation is the effort plus 35% of that effort. Okay, then we reach to a value that should be used in the calendar time. Again, imagine that my task is five man hour. Then, my first estimation of the duration is five plus five times dot 35, which means that I will have six dot 75 hour man, which means that I will take six hours and 45 minutes to do the task. This is the first duration estimation. Now imagine, again, that I will have only two hours per week to do this task. So I will take three weeks to do the task and another week to do the 45 minutes that left. In the first week, I will take two hours, the second two hours, the second two hours, and the third 45 minutes. So I will have to say to my customer that the duration time, it will be almost four weeks. And the effort is six hours is five hours to do the task. Okay, that is point to predict the losses in the order of 25 to 35%. That's why I use the 35% value. Calendar time is the actual duration of the activity. Again, however, for cost purposes, what count is the labor time actually spent on the activity? As we will see when we'll do the cost estimation, we will use the effort to use the cost of the project. And the duration to say the date, the calendar date to the customer when it will be accomplished in time. The number of resources and the effort. We can say that if you put more resources, for instance, more persons to do a task, then you can reduce the time of the task. Okay, if we are talking about construction projects, perhaps we can do this simpler correlation. When you're talking about software, it's not usually like this. When you add a new person to a software project, you increase the risk. You increase the entropy. So in the medium term, perhaps you have some gain in terms of productivity. But in the immediate, you will have to spend time to knowledge transfer to this new element. So if you have to speed up the time of the project, if you have to speed up the duration of the project, then you can add people. But it's always a risk. And before you have productivity, you will lose productivity. And this is an idea that you have to take into account when doing those kinds of moves in the project. Okay, if you don't have anything else to calculate a project that line, then you can use this rule of thumb. Okay, this formula to make an estimation. You can try 2.5 and 2 per trial instead of 3 to see which value is the most suitable. But it's like, again, a rule of thumb. It will help you after making a thorough analysis and the thorough calculation of the time of the effort and then of the duration. Then you can have and use this formula just a reality check. Okay, we have a lot to say again about time planning. And in the next video, we will talk about issues that complement this time estimation, effort and duration. Okay, see you in the next video.