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Stenbeck writes that, “among all the stressful facets of project management, none evokes the fear, the sense of foreboding, and the absolute dread that comes from needing to provide estimates for some requirements that are, quite simply, unknown or unknowable” (Stenbeck, 2008).  Indeed, we’ve all heard the mantra, “don’t worry about the things you can’t control”.  But, what happens when you need to put a cost on those things?  Estimating can be a complex process, particularly if confronted with the task of top-down or bottom-up estimating a project with a plethora of unknowns.  Early on in my career, I was fairly successful utilizing historical estimates as a majority of the projects I was working on were, for the most part, monolithic and uniform. Lately, I’ve been faced with a wider variety of projects, and I’ve had to rely on other tools.

Read the following by Quincy Yarbrough regarding Level of Effort (LOE) at the link below, and then return to comment on the topic.

Level of effort (LOE) is a project management term that refers to a specific type of project activity called support activities. Support activities do not yield deliverables, but rather fuel tasks that do. Therefore, the level of effort is how much work these tasks will take to complete.

This work can take many forms, such as updating project documents, maintaining equipment, submitting expenses, etc. The unifying characteristic of this work is that it must be done regularly to support a greater task.

Level of Effort Examples

The best way to understand level of effort is by looking at common support activities that take place in almost any project. We’ve a few level of effort examples below.

Managing Stakeholders

Stakeholder management is the art of creating strong relationships between everyone involved in a project. Good stakeholder management requires constant communication and transparency. Depending on the scope and size of the project, the level of effort for stakeholder management activities will go up and down, and it is important to be aware of how much energy it will take. Stakeholder management includes sending regular updates, scheduling meetings, hosting calls, creating documents, etc.

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The post What is Level of Effort (LOE)? Plus, 5 Tips for Effort Estimation appeared first on ProjectManager.com.
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Stenbeck, J. (2008). Five keys to estimating. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2008—North America, Denver, CO. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.