THE DELIVERY BOOK
Estimate the cost
Estimating costs can be difficult early in a project because you might not have all the facts. However, it’s likely you will be asked about the cost. Organisations have to prioritise because they cannot do everything. Cost can indicate of the size of your project and can inform those decisions.
When to do it
Do this early. Regularly re-visit your estimates and update them.
How to do it
You should:
decide what roles you need in your team
consider what your current team can do and what roles you need to bring in from elsewhere in the organisation or from outside
decide how long you will need those roles, use your roadmap to estimate how long the work will take
consider what you need to buy, what you need to build and what you already have that can be reused
cost the project end-to-end – do not just think about the cost to your organisation, there may be costs to other people or organisations too
speak to a finance expert for advice about how to estimate costs and how similar projects have dealt with this
Further reading
Find out more about this topic by searching the internet for:
United States Digital Service – agile team estimator