I have used project as an estimating tool at several employers. It is a good tool to do what if while working the proposal or remaining budgets. Moving hours between resource (junior level versus senior level) and having a clear picture of where that leaves you based on budget objectives.
However, I have hit a snag at some employers as they have set ways in which they do things. And most of these include the process of extracting hours from project at the WBS level and porting it over into excel and alinging with resource classifications. Some of this is based on customer required responses….etc. And my favorite “We have always done it this way” response.
Hopefully you can make headway with demos and explaining that you can have resource classifications list in the resource pool to handle the upfront/proposal costing. It is always a struggle with entering rates into a file that can be viewed by the customer or other employees. Are we going to use actual burdened rates or are we going to use “bid classification” rates…Senior Software Engineer.
