ITPEC FE Morning October 2018 Question 52
Which of the following is an appropriate description for group decision-making techniques used in an estimate activity durations process?
Explanation
Team-based approaches such as brainstorming, Delphi and the nominal group technique — involving the team improves estimate accuracy and commitment.
Group decision-making techniques draw the estimate out of the people who will do the work. In the Delphi technique, experts estimate anonymously in several rounds, seeing a summary of the others' answers each time, until the estimates converge; in the nominal group technique, ideas are generated individually, then discussed and ranked by vote. Because the team took part, it is more likely to accept the resulting durations as its own.
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) — experts guided by historical information from similar past projects providing estimates is expert judgment
- •(b) — adding contingency reserves, or buffers, to absorb schedule uncertainty is reserve analysis
- •(d) — calculating an estimate from a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables is parametric estimating
Key rule: Name the estimating technique by its input: past similar projects give analogous estimating, a statistical model gives parametric, three values give three-point, and a team process gives group decision-making.
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