Speaker Topics - No Fluff Just Stuff
NFJS2025

Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost

Do you have to estimate schedule or cost for your innovation projects? If so, do you worry about providing an accurate—never mind precise—estimate? Estimation means “guess,” and our managers want our estimates to be commitments. Instead of providing guesses, help your managers understand risks with the ways you provide estimates or forecasts.

You will learn the three ways to provide an estimate, how to recover when your estimates are off, and how to start the conversation about value instead of cost.

  1. Understand your project’s context with respect to estimation
  2. What to do if you have a predetermined release date
  3. What to do if you have a predetermined date and a predetermined backlog
  4. How to estimate with a new team and a new project
  5. Ideas that work with any project.
  6. How to SWAG and keep your sanity.

Johanna Rothman

About Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see simple and reasonable things that might work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can decide how to adapt their product development.

With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. She’s written these books:

  • Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
  • Become a Successful Independent Consultant
  • Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer
  • Modern Management Made Easy series: Practical Ways to Manage Yourself; Practical Ways to Lead and Serve (Manage) Others; Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization
  • Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts
  • From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby)
  • Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver
  • Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
  • Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition
  • Project Portfolio Tips: Twelve Ideas for Focusing on the Work You Need to Start & Finish
  • Diving for Hidden Treasures: Finding the Value in Your Project Portfolio (with Jutta Eckstein)
  • Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost
  • Manage Your Job Search
  • Hiring Geeks That Fit
  • The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
  • Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)

In addition to articles and columns on various sites, Johanna writes the Managing Product Development blog on her website, jrothman.com, as well as a personal blog on createadaptablelife.com.

More About Johanna »