At this point and as the project manager, I would arrange a meeting with senior management officials and present the bottom-up (micro) estimates. However disagreeable the task may seem, upper management must be made aware that a detailed review of the two estimates indicates the project will finish 4 months past the planned finished date and 20% over the original budget. After presenting the inconsistencies between the top-down and the bottom-down estimates, I would present two choices to upper management: (a) consider the cost increase as acceptable and continue to move forward, or (b) stop the project. These choices should be presented first because if they answer no, …show more content…
Even though bottom-up approaches take up more time, the result of obtaining more accurate estimates become worthwhile as the project is more likely to stay on schedule and within budget. Senior management started the initial project with a top-down approach similar to the consensus method; their estimates came out of an off-site meeting which incorporated both past experiences and current expectations (Gray & Larson, 2014, p.135, 153). Lauren conducted her own research and discovered that the initial estimates were not reasonable and accurate (Gray & Larson, 2014, p. …show more content…
According to Gray & Larson (2014), range estimating works best when work packages have substantial ambiguity relative to the time or cost to complete. Since this project was deemed by upper management as having the highest priority, a determination of low, average, and high estimates can give stakeholders and senior management a better understanding of whether or not the project is still feasible given the proposed budget and schedule. In addition, the template method would be a potential estimating technique to use because it considers the cost from past projects as well as meeting with those who will be doing the work. This allows input from two different aspects and helps to reduce errors in cost and time which is noted as a top priority for senior