How to do Pre-sale Budget & Effort Estimation

[prabir]

Hello Guys, pardon me if I am asking some very obvious questions :)

When we receive a pre-sales RFI or RFP, it's the responsibility of the project manager to provide a project budget + some other stuff like resource estimate etc.

• I want to know how we can do cost and effort estimates while we don't have enough requirements of the project?
• What are the tools we can use at this point?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[dhaughey]

Hi Prabir,

Early project estimates are just that, your best estimation of what it is going to take to deliver the project. There are a few techniques to help you create a reasonable estimate. You could try expert judgment, which uses subject matter experts to calculate the total cost of the project. You could use analogous estimating, which looks at the history of similar projects and how much they cost while taking into account any differences in the new project. There is also supplier bid analysis, which compares bids from different suppliers to arrive at a cost estimate for the project.

This article may help with some more information about creating budgets, Creating a Project Budget: What You Need to Know. It contains a Business Analysis and Forecasting Template you may find useful.

Cheers,
Duncan