Analogous estimating is one of our tools and techniques to predict the duration of activities analogous
estimating is creating an analogy between projects between activities.
It's a way of taking similar project work and saying OK that project took six months.
Ours is very similar maybe just a little larger.
So I'm going to say it takes nine months.
So it creates an analogy between similar project work.
I have to have historical information to do this because I need a similar project to create my analogy.
This is also known as top down estimating because of starting at the top and working the way down and
analogus estimate is not very reliable.
It's fast.
It's the least expensive of all of our estimating approaches.
But it's the least reliable because it's just a quick subjective.
The historical information is required.
I can't just pick this out of the blue right I have to have something to compare it to.
And they have to be similar.
So I can't take a manufacturing project and create an analogous estimate to an I.T. project.
They are not really similar work.
Obviously the historical information also has to be reliable.
If that previous project didn't have its updates to the schedule and activity durations we may not be
based on reliable information.
So on paper it says it should take six months but that project in the past actually took 12 months.
So our analogous estimate would be flawed because we're not basing it on reliable information.
Expert judgment is also used with an analogous estimate because I can look at that project and really
understand the work and understand the work of the current project.
From that I could create a more reliable analogous estimate because I have experience and the expertise
to really compare and do some critical thinking between those two projects.
So some very simple examples.
Project eight took six months.
Project is a little bit bigger.
So I predict it will take eight months.
So it's pretty simple pretty straightforward.
So that's an analogous estimate.
You could also do it based on ours.
So you could say all right.
It took eight hours to install this picture in the fast.
Well that was hard to say.
You could say it took eight hours to install this fixture on a past project but we've learned how to
install the fixture properly.
So we understand the process of installing this fixture so it should take us about six hours now.
So we have some learning curve there that we talked about but we're also using an analogous estimate.
OK so that's an analogous estimate know that for your exam.