Revolutionizing Cost Estimating with TruePlanning 2008
Minkiewicz, A
PRICE Systems, LLC

Successful project planning requires good cost estimating practices. Good cost estimating practices require that we think beyond the prediction of the cost, effort and schedule for hardware, software or systems composed of hardware and software. The cost estimator must have a toolset that facilitates unimpassioned trade-offs between scope, schedule and budget in order to provide decision makers with all the information necessary to plan and manage the development of complex systems.

The PRICE TruePlanning Suite is a cost estimating framework that provides estimators with one stop shopping access to all of PRICE's parametric cost estimating relationships in a single application. In addition, it allows estimators to intermingle their own estimating relationships with the PRICE relationships, while still taking advantage of the PRICE relationships for system engineering, project management and integration and test activities. In short, TruePlanning has revolutionized cost estimating by supplying the cost estimator with all the tools necessary to model a project using the optimal mix of cost estimating relationships and techniques for their particular project. The features and utilities available through the TruePlanning framework, regardless of the cost estimating relationships used, arm estimators with the necessary views, reports, charts and analysis required to support the many complex requirements of decision makers. With the 2008 release, PRICE moves even closer to estimating nirvana. Features have been added to enhance decision making in all three dimensions. Additional options have been added to the hardware and software estimating components to aide in quantification of the scope of a project. Cost estimating capabilities have been expanded through new and improved cost estimating relationships as well as additional features that enhance the usability of these cost estimates in decision making scenarios. The schedule estimating capability has been enhanced significantly, allowing estimators to constrain schedules at the activity level with immediate feedback on how schedule constraints impact project costs. The interface with MS Project has been upgraded to allow project managers to utilize Project capabilities for schedule management and integrate their results seamlessly to update cost estimates. Other interfaces have been developed that make it even easier to integrate the cost estimating functions with other tools vital through the product lifecycle.

This paper presents an overview of the capabilities of the TruePlanning framework with special emphasis on new features added for the 2008 release. Through a series of project management challenges, it presents solutions that take advantage of the enhanced cost estimating relationships and expanded feature set of TruePlanning to provide quick, credible, usable answers to the questions estimators are faced with.