Project Estimation Quotes

I could not see the speedometer, and was not accustomed to travelling in an open vehicle, but I estimated that we were consistently exceeding the speed limit. Discordant sound, wind, risk of death—I tried to assume the mental state that I used at the dentist.

Almost every cost estimate made by a physicist is wildly wrong, and the better the physicist the worse it is (Herb York).

Anything you might want to accomplish—executing a project at work, getting a new job, learning a new skill, starting a business—requires finding and putting to use the right information. Your professional success and quality of life depend directly on your ability to manage information effectively. According to the New York Times, the average person’s daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes.1 A separate study cited by the Times estimates that we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day, five times higher than in 1986.2 Instead of empowering us, this deluge of information often overwhelms us. Information Overload has become Information Exhaustion, taxing our mental resources and leaving us constantly anxious that we’re forgetting something.

Based on Earth history, he estimated a value for L between 304.5 years and 420.6 years.

The only way to reduce the variability in the estimate is to reduce the variability in the project.

Also, the technologically high-risk Apollo aerospace programme is considered a classic success story of megaproject planning and implementation. The cost overrun on this US$21 billion project was only 5 per cent. Few know, however, that the original budget estimate included US$8 billion of contingencies.18 By allowing for risk with foresight, the programme avoided ending up in the type of large cost overrun that destabilises many major projects during implementation. The Apollo approach, with its realistic view of risks, costs and contingencies, should be adopted in more major projects.

In 1998, Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page approached Yahoo! and suggested a merger. Yahoo! could have snapped up the company for a handful of stock, but instead they suggested that the young Googlers keep working on their little school project and come back when they had grown up. Within 5 years, Google had an estimated market capitalization of $20 billion. At the time of this writing, Forbes reported Google’s market capitalization at $268.45 billion.

In 21 projects studied that same year, estimates were prepared by a third party, typically a systems analyst. The developers in these cases substantially outperformed the projects in which estimating was done by a programmer and/or a supervisor

Schedules are simply a kind of prediction. No matter how precisely they are drafted or how convincing they appear, they are just a summation of lots of little estimations, each one unavoidably prone to different kinds of unforeseeable oversights and problems.

If you have a month to plan a project in detail, spend it on four one-week iterations developing while you improve your estimates. If you have a week to plan a project, hold five one-day iterations. Feedback cycles give you information and the experience to make accurate estimates.

These computer simulations try only to duplicate the interactions between the cortex and the thalamus. Huge chunks of the brain are therefore missing. Dr. [Dharmendra] Modha understands the enormity of his project. His ambitious research has allowed him to estimate what it would take to create a working model of the entire human brain, and not just a portion or a pale version of it, complete with all parts of the neocortex and connections to the senses. He envisions using not just a single Blue Gene computer [with over a hundred thousand processors and terabytes of RAM] but thousands of them, which would fill up not just a room but an entire city block. The energy consumption would be so great that you would need a thousand-megawatt nuclear power plant to generate all the electricity. And then, to cool off this monstrous computer so it wouldn't melt, you would need to divert a river and send it through the computer circuits. It is remarkable that a gigantic, city-size computer is required to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raises your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses twenty watts of power, and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.

Good engineering estimates are possible only if you have two things: good information and good engineers. If the specs are crap, and a programmer is asked to conjure up a number based on an incomprehensible whiteboard scribbling, everyone should know exactly what they’re getting: a fuzzy scribble of an estimate.

when it comes to the bread and butter of human misery, try a major depression. It can be life-threatening, it can destroy lives, demolish the families of sufferers. And it is dizzyingly common—the psychologist Martin Seligman has called it the common cold of psychopathology. Best estimates are that from 5 to 20 percent of us will suffer a major, incapacitating depression at some point in our lives, causing us to be hospitalized or medicated or nonfunctional for a significant length of time. Its incidence has been steadily increasing for decades—by the year 2020, depression is projected to be the second leading cause of medical disability on earth.

In 2013, the International Academy of Astronautics issued a 350-page report projecting that with enough funding and research, a space elevator capable of carrying multiple twenty-ton payloads might be possible by 2035. Price estimates usually range from $10 billion to $50 billion—a fraction of the $150 billion that went into the International Space Station.

One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. In a famous study, spouses were asked, “How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?” They also answered similar questions about “taking out the garbage,” “initiating social engagements,” etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency.

--- "That first day when we met, when I gave you my estimate for the deck project and you wouldn't shake my hand..." I laced my fingers with hers. "There was something sad and lonely in your eyes. I knew all about your reputation, your nickname the Ice Queen, but that wasn't what I saw that day. When I looked into your blue eyes, I saw a princess locked away in a tower, a prisoner. I wanted to set you free.

Again, the uncertainty in the estimate pales into insignificance when we look at the overall trend. Over the 11,000 years separating Göbekli Tepe from the International Space Station, the scale of cooperation, when measured by the labor costs of the most impressive building project, went up by four orders of magnitude—from 300 to 3,000,000. This is a huge—indeed, an astronomic—increase. And, of course, it was paralleled by an equally enormous increase in the scale of human societies. ·•·

The difference between the expert’s two estimates illustrates Danny’s distinction between the inside and outside views. When the expert was thinking about the problem as a member of project team, he was locked in the inside view—caught up in the optimism that comes with group endeavors—and did not bother thinking about what psychologists call “base rates,” that is, the average time for similar projects. When he put on his expert hat, thereby taking the outside view, he naturally thought of all the other projects he’d known and made a more accurate guess.

Recommended Reading Mike Cohn in his book User Stories Applied provides insights and details on user stories, including how to write them and their characteristics. His book Agile Estimating and Planning provides guidance on prioritizing user stories. Luke Hohmann in his book Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play describes 12 innovation games. The Definitive Guide to Getting Your Budget Approved by Johannes Ritter and Frank Röttgers provides a systematic guide for creating a quantifying the economic value for projects.

They asked forty-two experienced investors in the firm to estimate the fair value of a stock (the price at which the investors would be indifferent to buying or selling). The investors based their analysis on a one-page description of the business; the data included simplified profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow statements for the past three years and projections for the next two. Median noise, measured in the same way as in the insurance company, was 41%. Such large differences among investors in the same firm, using the same valuation methods, cannot be good news.

the nature of work will continue to change ever more rapidly. During much of the 20th century, most workers held two or three jobs during their lifetimes. However, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that many of today’s workers will hold more than 10 jobs before they reach the age of 40.2 The top 10 in-demand jobs projected for 2010 did not exist in 2004.3 Thus, the new mission of schools is to prepare students to work at jobs that do not yet exist, creating ideas and solutions for products and problems that have not yet been identified, using technologies that have not yet been invented.

One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. In a famous study, spouses were asked, “How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?” They also answered similar questions about “taking out the garbage,” “initiating social engagements,” etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency. The bias is not necessarily self-serving: spouses also overestimated their contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller extent than their contributions to more desirable outcomes. The same bias contributes to the common observation that many members of a collaborative team feel they have done more than their share and also feel that the others are not adequately grateful for their individual contributions

I don’t over-estimate you, or by any means look upon you as a “wonderful and good person”, as Kekesfalva so eulogistically refers to you, but as one who, because of the instability of his emotions, because of a certain impatience of the heart, is a thoroughly unreliable colleague. Glad as I am to have put a stop to your senseless project, I am not at all pleased by the hasty way in which you take decisions and are then deflected from your purpose. People who are so much at the mercy of their moods should never be given serious responsibilities. You would be the last person to whom I should entrust a task that required perseverance and unwavering resolution.

You can reasonably assume that overconfidence affects project teams in general, but you cannot be sure that it is the only bias (or even the main one) affecting a particular project team. Maybe the team leader has had a bad experience with a similar project and so has learned to be especially conservative when making estimates. The team thus exhibits the opposite error from the one you thought you should correct. Or perhaps the team developed its forecast by analogy with another similar project and was anchored on the time it took to complete that project. Or maybe the project team, anticipating that you would add a buffer to its estimate, has preempted your adjustment by making its recommendation even more bullish than its true belief.

In fact, the average programming manager would prefer that a project be estimated at twelve months and take twelve than that the same project be estimated at six months and take nine. This is an area where some psychological study could be rewarding, but there are indications from other situations that it is not the mean length of estimated time that annoys people but, rather, the standard deviation in the actual time taken. Thus, most people would prefer to wait a fixed ten minutes for the bus each morning than to wait one minute on four days and twenty-six minutes once a week-. Even though the average wait is six minutes in the second case, the derangement caused by one long and unexpected delay more than compensates for this disadvantage. If

This embarrassing episode remains one of the most instructive experiences of my professional life. I eventually learned three lessons from it. The first was immediately apparent: I had stumbled onto a distinction between two profoundly different approaches to forecasting, which Amos and I later labeled the inside view and the outside view. The second lesson was that our initial forecasts of about two years for the completion of the project exhibited a planning fallacy. Our estimates were closer to a best-case scenario than to a realistic assessment. I was slower to accept the third lesson, which I call irrational perseverance: the folly we displayed that day in failing to abandon the project. Facing a choice, we gave up rationality rather than give up the enterprise.

Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality, understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in a world of reality in comparing the costs and utility of the shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts and in estimating the costs and difficulties of each project. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed -- schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support NASA, the so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.

One way to protect against this is simply to add a 50 per cent buffer to the amount of time we estimate it will take to complete a task or project (if 50 per cent seems overly generous, consider how frequently things actually do take us 50 per cent longer than expected). So if you have an hour set aside for a conference call, block off an additional thirty minutes. If you’ve estimated it will take ten minutes to get your son to football practice, leave the house fifteen minutes before practice begins. Not only does this relieve the stress we feel about being late (imagine how much less stressful sitting in traffic would feel if we weren’t running late), but if we do find that the task was faster and easier to execute than we expected (though this is a rare experience for most of us), the extra found time feels like a bonus.

In her book The Government-Citizen Disconnect, the political scientist Suzanne Mettler reports that 96 percent of American adults have relied on a major government program at some point in their lives. Rich, middle-class, and poor families depend on different kinds of programs, but the average rich and middle-class family draws on the same number of government benefits as the average poor family. Student loans look like they were issued from a bank, but the only reason banks hand out money to eighteen-year-olds with no jobs, no credit, and no collateral is because the federal government guarantees the loans and pays half their interest. Financial advisers at Edward Jones or Prudential can help you sign up for 529 college savings plans, but those plans' generous tax benefits will cost the federal government an estimated $28.5 billion between 2017 and 2026. For most Americans under the age of sixty-five, health insurance appears to come from their jobs, but supporting this arrangement is one of the single largest tax breaks issued by the federal government, one that exempts the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance from taxable incomes. In 2022, this benefit is estimated to have cost the government $316 billion for those under sixty-five. By 2032, its price tag is projected to exceed $6oo billion. Almost half of all Americans receive government-subsidized health benefits through their employers, and over a third are enrolled in government-subsidized retirement benefits. These participation rates, driven primarily by rich and middle-class Americans, far exceed those of even the largest programs directed at low income families, such as food stamps (14 percent of Americans) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (19 percent). Altogether, the United States spent $1.8 trillion on tax breaks in 2021. That amount exceeded total spending on law enforcement, education, housing, healthcare, diplomacy, and everything else that makes up our discretionary budget. Roughly half the benefits of the thirteen largest individual tax breaks accrue to the richest families, those with incomes that put them in the top 20 percent. The top I percent of income earners take home more than all middle-class families and double that of families in the bottom 20 percent. I can't tell you how many times someone has informed me that we should reduce military spending and redirect the savings to the poor. When this suggestion is made in a public venue, it always garners applause. I've met far fewer people who have suggested we boost aid to the poor by reducing tax breaks that mostly benefit the upper class, even though we spend over twice as much on them as on the military and national defense.

At length, the traffic lights change. The bus coughs into movement, and trundles on its way to St. Paul’s. And in her last few seconds of viewing, our upstairs passenger might wonder what it’s like, working in these offices; might even conjure a brief fantasy in which the building, instead of a faltering legal practice, becomes an overhead dungeon to which the failures of some larger service are consigned as punishment: for crimes of drugs and drunkenness and lechery; of politics and betrayal; of unhappiness and doubt; and of the unforgivable carelessness of allowing a man on a tube platform to detonate himself, killing or maiming an estimated 120 people and causing £30m worth of actual damage, along with a projected £2.5 billion in lost tourist revenue—becomes, in effect, an administrative oubliette where, alongside a pre-digital overflow of paperwork, a post-useful crew of misfits can be stored and left to gather dust.

These ideas persisted into the twentieth century and drove government programs that attempted to regulate Black women’s reproductive lives. State and federally funded family-planning programs engaged in massive campaigns to sterilize Black women. For example, between 1933 and 1976, the Eugenics Board of North Carolina approved the involuntary sterilizations of more than 7,500 people—affecting Black people at a disproportionate rate—on the grounds that they were “mentally defective.”44 In 1973, a federal district judge presided over a case of two Black sisters from Montgomery, Alabama, who were sterilized at ages twelve and fourteen when government-paid nurses pushed their illiterate mother into signing a consent form with an X.45 The judge, Gerhard Gesell, in ruling against this practice, noted that “over the last few years, an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 low-income persons have been sterilized annually under federally funded programs.

Most computer users by the end of the century made regular use of the Internet, a vast web of worldwide computer networks born in the late 1960s in the work done by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and universities it commissioned. Its founders had needed to share information with researchers working on government contracts at various universities. Once computer users at these well-funded institutions realized the possibilities of an electronic network connecting them with colleagues worldwide, word of the wonder spread and the Internet blossomed. By the late 1980s, anyone with a computer equipped with a modem hooked up to a regular telephone line could send an “E-mail” message or any other electronic document to anyone similarly equipped anywhere in the world - instantaneously. By 1994, the number of people connected to the World Wide Web of computer networks had swelled to an estimated 15 million.

The Sarcophagus needed the strength to withstand Ukrainian weather for an estimated 20 years - time to develop a more permanent solution - and contain the astronomical levels of radiation within. Erecting the enclosure involved a quarter of a million workers, all of whom reached their lifetime maximum dose. In order for the Sarcophagus to be built, the radioactive graphite and reactor fuel first had to be cleared up and buried, so remote control bulldozers were brought in from West Germany, Japan and Russia to dig up the earth. Workers had originally piled up rubble at the base of Unit 4 and poured concrete straight onto it, intending to seal in the radiation, but that didn’t last long. “Geysers are starting to shoot up from the wet concrete. When the liquid falls on the fuel in the pile, there is an atomic excursion or simply a disruption of heat exchange and a rise in temperature. The radiation situation deteriorates sharply”, reported Vasiliy Kizima, chief of the construction project at the time.229

products.” The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses spread spectrum. So does the U.S. military’s $41 billion MILSATCOM satellite communications network. Wireless local area networks (wLANs) use spread spectrum, as do wireless cash registers, bar-code readers, restaurant menu pads, and home control systems. So does Qualcomm’s Omni-TRACS mobile information system for commercial trucking fleets. So do unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), electronic automotive subsystems, aerial and maritime mobile broadband, wireless access points, digital watermarking, and much more. A study done for Microsoft in 2009 estimated the minimum economic value of spread-spectrum Wi-Fi in homes and hospitals and RFID tags in clothing retail outlets in the U.S. as $16–$37 billion per year. These uses, the study notes, “only account for 15% of the total projected market for unlicensed [spectrum] chipsets in 2014, and therefore significantly underestimates the total value being generated in unlicensed usage over this time period.” A market of which 15 percent is $25 billion would be a $166 billion market.

He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favorable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to their allies—projects whose success would only conduce to the honor and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. [8] The causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank, ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent control over the multitude—in short, to lead them instead of being led by them; for as he never sought power by improper means, be was never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high an estimation that he could afford to anger them by contradiction. [9] Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with a word reduce them to alarm; on the other hand, if they fell victims to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short, what was nominally a democ racy was becoming in his hands government by the first citizen.9a [10] With his successors it was different. More on a level with one another, and each grasping at supremacy, they ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the multitude.

In the mid-twentieth century, the subfield of cosmology—not to be confused with cosmetology—didn’t have much data. And where data are sparse, competing ideas abound that are clever and wishful. The existence of the CMB was predicted by the Russian-born American physicist George Gamow and colleagues during the 1940s. The foundation of these ideas came from the 1927 work of the Belgian physicist and priest Georges Lemaître, who is generally recognized as the “father” of big bang cosmology. But it was American physicists Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman who, in 1948, first estimated what the temperature of the cosmic background ought to be. They based their calculations on three pillars: 1) Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity; 2) Edwin Hubble’s 1929 discovery that the universe is expanding; and 3) atomic physics developed in laboratories before and during the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bombs of World War II. Herman and Alpher calculated and proposed a temperature of 5 degrees Kelvin for the universe. Well, that’s just plain wrong. The precisely measured temperature of these microwaves is 2.725 degrees, sometimes written as simply 2.7 degrees, and if you’re numerically lazy, nobody will fault you for rounding the temperature of the universe to 3 degrees. Let’s pause for a moment. Herman and Alpher used atomic physics freshly gleaned in a lab, and applied it to hypothesized conditions in the early universe. From this, they extrapolated billions of years forward, calculating what temperature the universe should be today. That their prediction even remotely approximated the right answer is a stunning triumph of human insight.

Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines minister to accept the offer on the table. Two days later, Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to announce that the federal government would be taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Syn-crude project, with Alberta owning 10 percent and Ontario the remaining 5 percent. In the coming years, it would be Lougheed, with his steadfast support and multimillion-dollar investments in SAGD, who would be seen as the Patch’s great public sector champion. But it was Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” whose backroom deal-making skills had saved Syncrude

MATHEMATICAL MIRACLE Some years ago, I heard a story which has been making the rounds in Midwest A.A. circles for years. I don’t have any names to back up this story, but I have heard it from many sources, and the circumstances sound believable. A man in a small Wisconsin city had been on the program for about three years and had enjoyed contented sobriety through that period. Then bad luck began to hit him in bunches. The firm for which he had worked for some fifteen years was sold; his particular job was phased out of existence, and the plant moved to another city. For several months, he struggled along at odd jobs while looking for a company that needed his specialized experience. Then another blow hit him. His wife was forced to enter a hospital for major surgery, and his company insurance had expired. At this point he cracked, and decided to go on an all-out binge. He didn’t want to stage this in the small city, where everyone knew his sobriety record. So he went to Chicago, checked in at a North Side hotel, and set forth on his project. It was Friday night, and the bars were filled with a swinging crowd. But he was in no mood for swinging—he just wanted to get quietly, miserably drunk. Finally, he found a basement bar on a quiet side street, practically deserted. He sat down on a bar stool and ordered a double bourbon on the rocks. The bartender said, “Yes, sir,” and reached for a bottle. Then the bartender stopped in his tracks, took a long, hard look at the customer, leaned over the bar, and said in a low tone, “I was in Milwaukee about four months ago, and one night I attended an open meeting. You were on the speaking platform, and you gave one of the finest A.A. talks I ever heard.” The bartender turned and walked to the end of the bar. For a few minutes, the customer sat there—probably in a state of shock. Then he picked his money off the bar with trembling hands and walked out, all desire for a drink drained out of him. It is estimated that there are about 8,000 saloons in Chicago, employing some 25,000 bartenders. This man had entered the one saloon in 8,000 where he would encounter the one man in 25,000 who knew that he was a member of A.A. and didn’t belong there. Chicago, Illinois

Obama is also directing the U.S. government to invest billions of dollars in solar and wind energy. In addition, he is using bailout leverage to compel the Detroit auto companies to build small, “green” cars, even though no one in the government has investigated whether consumers are interested in buying small, “green” cars—the Obama administration just believes they should. All these measures, Obama recognizes, are expensive. The cap and trade legislation is estimated to impose an $850 billion burden on the private sector; together with other related measures, the environmental tab will exceed $1 trillion. This would undoubtedly impose a significant financial burden on an already-stressed economy. These measures are billed as necessary to combat global warming. Yet no one really knows if the globe is warming significantly or not, and no one really knows if human beings are the cause of the warming or not. For years people went along with Al Gore’s claim that “the earth has a fever,” a claim illustrated by misleading images of glaciers disappearing, oceans swelling, famines arising, and skies darkening. Apocalypse now! Now we know that the main body of data that provided the basis for these claims appears to have been faked. The Climategate scandal showed that scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were quite willing to manipulate and even suppress data that did not conform to their ideological commitment to global warming.3 The fakers insist that even if you discount the fakery, the data still show.... But who’s in the mood to listen to them now? Independent scientists who have reviewed the facts say that average global temperatures have risen by around 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 100 years. Lots of things could have caused that. Besides, if you project further back, the record shows quite a bit of variation: periods of warming, followed by periods of cooling. There was a Medieval Warm Period around 1000 A.D., and a Little Ice Age that occurred several hundred years later. In the past century, the earth warmed slightly from 1900 to 1940, then cooled slightly until the late 1970s, and has resumed warming slightly since then. How about in the past decade or so? Well, if you count from 1998, the earth has cooled in the past dozen years. But the statistic is misleading, since 1998 was an especially hot year. If you count from 1999, the earth has warmed in the intervening period. This statistic is equally misleading, because 1999 was a cool year. This doesn’t mean that temperature change is in the eye of the beholder. It means, in the words of Roy Spencer, former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA, that “all this temperature variability on a wide range of time scales reveals that just about the only thing constant in climate is change.”4

To paint after nature is to transfer three-dimensional corporeality to a two-dimensional surface. This you can do if you are in good health and not colorblind. Oil paint, canvas, and brush are material and tools. It is possible by expedient distribution of oil paint on canvas to copy natural impressions; under favorable conditions you can do it so accurately that the picture cannot be distinguished from the model. You start, let us say, with a white canvas primed for oil painting and sketch in with charcoal the most discernible lines of the natural form you have chosen. Only the first line may be drawn more or less arbitrarily, all the others must form with the first the angle prescribed by the natural model. By constant comparison of the sketch with the model, the lines can be so adjusted that the lines of the sketch will correspond to those of the model. Lines are now drawn by feeling, the accuracy of the feeling is checked and measured by comparison of the estimated angle of the line with the perpendicular in nature and in the sketch. Then, according to the apparent proportions between the parts of the model, you sketch in the proportions between parts on the canvas, preferably by means of broken lines delimiting these parts. The size of the first part is arbitrary, unless your plan is to represent a part, such as the head, in 'life size.' In that case you measure with a compass an imaginary line running parallel to a plane on the natural object conceived as a plane on the picture, and use this measurement in representing the first part. You adjust all the remaining parts to the first through feeling, according to the corresponding parts of the model, and check your feeling by measurement; to do this, you place the picture so far away form you that the first part appears as large in the painting as the model, and then you compare. In order to check a given proportion, you hold out the handle of your paintbrush at arm's length towards this proportion in such a way that the end of the thumbnail on the handle coincides with the other end of the proportion. If then you hold the paintbrush out towards the picture, again at arm's length, you can, by the measurement thus obtained, determine with photographic accuracy whether your feeling has deceived you. If the sketch is correct, you fill in the parts of the picture with color, according to nature. The most expedient method is to begin with a clearly recognizable color of large area, perhaps with a somewhat broken blue. You estimate the degree of matness and break the luminosity with a complimentary color, ultramarine, for example, with light ochre. By addition of white you can make the color light, by addition of black dark. All this can be learned. The best way of checking for accuracy is to place the picture directly beside the projected picture surface in nature, return to your old place and compare the color in your picture with the natural color. By breaking those tones that are too bright and adding those that are still lacking, you will achieve a color tonality as close as possible to that in nature. If one tone is correct, you can put the picture back in its place and adjust the other colors to the first by feeling. You can check your feeling by comparing every tone directly with nature, after setting the picture back beside the model. If you have patience and adjust all large and small lines, all forms and color tones according to nature, you will have an exact reproduction of nature. This can be learned. This can be taught. And in addition, you can avoid making too many mistakes in 'feeling' by studying nature itself through anatomy and perspective and your medium through color theory. That is academy.

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Requirements for a Roadmap Relaunch ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​As we outlined in the preface, the product people we’ve talked to are looking for certain things from a roadmap. A product roadmap should: Put the organization’s plans in a strategic context Focus on delivering value to customers and the organization Embrace learning as part of a successful product development process Rally the organization around a single set of priorities Get customers excited about the product’s direction ​​​​​​​​​​​​​At the same time, a product roadmap should not: Make promises product teams aren’t confident they will deliver on Require a wasteful process of up-front design and estimation Be conflated with a project plan or a release plan (we cannot stress this enough)

When the feeling of control and certainty is more important to us than knowing the truth, and the fear of change holds us back from seeking better, it's time to do some questioning. It's time to face our fears.

The finger-like projections grow longer at the insistence of microbes, making the surface area large enough to capture the energy it needs from food. It’s been estimated that rats would need about 30 per cent more to eat if it weren’t for their microbes.

particular, identify a deep task (that is, something that requires deep work to complete) that’s high on your priority list. Estimate how long you’d normally put aside for an obligation of this type, then give yourself a hard deadline that drastically reduces this time. If possible, commit publicly to the deadline—for example, by telling the person expecting the finished project when they should expect it. If this isn’t possible (or if it puts your job in jeopardy), then motivate yourself by setting a countdown timer on your phone and propping it up where you can’t avoid seeing it as you work. At this point, there should be only one possible way to get the deep task done in time: working with great intensity—no e-mail breaks, no daydreaming, no Facebook browsing, no repeated trips to the coffee machine.

Premature Precision Both business and programmers are tempted to fall into the trap of premature precision. Business people want to know exactly what they are going to get before they authorize a project. Developers want to know exactly what they are supposed to deliver before they estimate the project. Both sides want a precision that simply cannot be achieved, and are often willing to waste a fortune trying to attain it.

In 2014, Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business, estimated that Uber was probably worth roughly $ 6 billion, based on its ability to ultimately win 10 percent of the global taxi market of $ 100 billion, or $ 10 billion. According to Uber’s own projections, in 2016 the company processed over $ 26 billion in payments. It’s safe to say that the $ 10 billion market was a serious underestimate, as the ease of use and lower cost of Uber and its competitors expanded the market for transportation-as-a-service.

When you project a picture of your product to the clients, make sure the picture is pictured effectively in the consumer’s mind. Many products die due to our inability to look at the bigger picture that is to estimate the viewers response towards the displayed picture.

Where each entry is akin to a mini project charter for that work package; including such information as a description of the work, [Cost] estimates, [Scope] requirements & technical references, acceptance criteria & [Quality] standards, [People] & [Resource] needs, assumptions & constraints, [Time] duration & milestones.

Maruti was called upon to take a difficult decision soon after the first bookings had been made. The pick-up truck, a purely commercial vehicle that was part of the original project along with the 800 and the van, got a very poor response—bookings of just 2,000. In the project report, the pick-up truck was expected to account for 20 per cent of total production. The booking response showed that the customers did not want this vehicle, and manufacturing it in small volumes would not be viable. The company realized it had made a serious error of judgement in not recognizing that petrol-driven commercial vehicles could never compete with diesel-driven ones, as the government-determined price of diesel was much lower than petrol. SMC had estimated that the pick-up truck would be very successful because of good experience in other Asian countries. In Pakistan, it was used for rural transport, after being fitted with a canvas top, and sold in large numbers. However, India had a vehicle called the Tempo, which carried a load slightly more than the pick-up truck and ran on diesel. The highly value-conscious Indian customers immediately realized that the pick-up truck would always lose out to the Tempo, because of the Tempo’s lower operating costs. Realizing that the truck would be a failure, Maruti decided to drop its production and to write off the costs incurred till then in tooling and other related activities. This experience was a reminder to Maruti on the importance of correctly assessing the behaviour of Indian customers, and the dangers of transferring experience of other countries to India, without careful examination.

By combining software with another, more readily monetized product — services, in this case — Amazon is able to efficiently extract profit from a growing, volume market. What’s more impressive, however, is that because Amazon is building primarily from either free software (in the economic sense) or software it developed internally, it is paying out minimal premiums to third parties for the services it offers. Which means that not only is AWS a volume business, it may be a high-margin business at the same time. Amazon does not break out its AWS revenues, so we’re forced to rely on estimates, but UBS analysts Brian Fitzgerald and Brian Pitz projected in 2010 that AWS’s margins would grow from 47% in 2006 to 53% in 2014. Last year, Andreas Gauger, the chief marketing officer for Amazon competitor ProfitBricks, estimated Amazon’s margins were better than 80%.

Egg franchise sector is projected to grow at 10% in coming five years The growth of egg franchise sector in India will be increased due to urbanization, changing lifestyle and consumption pattern. Moreover, people demand more luxurious outlets to enjoy with friends and families while eating delicious egg dishes. A plethora of new egg franchise establishments have contributed towards massive development of egg industry. As per experts, the sector is estimated to grow at 10% in forthcoming years may become leading sector to attract more investors. There are numerous evolving trends in egg industry that are contributing to generating futuristic opportunities. Indore based start-up egg franchise brand, Andeywala has produced amazing business model to provide better infrastructure facilities at low investment. Now it becomes easy to start new business with Andeywala. Besides this, sector is expected to provide employment to millions of people, an increased number of egg restaurants will require employees. Tier 1 and tier 2 cities are crowded with food franchises but none of them exclusively egg dishes.

There is a major economic difference, however, between now and 1991, much less 1950. At the start of the Cold War in 1950, the United States produced around 27 percent of world output. As of 1991, when the Cheney-Wolfowitz dreams of U.S. dominance were taking shape, that figure was around 22 percent. By now, according to IMF estimates, the U.S. share is 16 percent, while China has surpassed the United States at 18 percent.6 By 2021, according to IMF projections, the United States will produce 15 percent of global output compared with China’s 20 percent.

recent decades, American utility companies have spent relatively little on research and development. One industry report estimates that, in 2009, research-and-development investments made by all US electrical-power utilities amounted to at most $700 million, compared with $6.3 billion by IBM and $9.1 billion by Pfizer. In 2009, however, the Department of Energy issued $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to a hundred smart-grid projects across the United States, including many in areas that are prone to heat waves and hurricanes.

plants vary, but the basic rule of thumb for staple cereal crops grown at optimal temperature is that for every degree of warming, yields decline by 10 percent. Some estimates run higher. Which means that if the planet is five degrees warmer at the end of the century, when projections suggest we may have as many as 50 percent more people to feed, we may also have 50 percent less grain to give them.

The “Ready for Development” column essentially means “Here’s a bunch of features that we’ve broken down and estimated and clarified, but we haven’t yet decided which of these we are going to develop and in which order.

Danny and Lanir then presented their probabilities to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. (“The National Gamble,” they called their report.) The director-general looked at the numbers and said, “10 percent increase?—that is a small difference.” Danny was stunned: If a 10 percent increase in the chances of full-scale war with Syria wasn’t enough to interest the director-general in Kissinger’s peace process, how much would it take to convince him? That number represented the best estimate of the odds. Apparently the director-general didn’t want to rely on the best estimates. He preferred his own internal probability calculator: his gut. “That was the moment I gave up on decision analysis,” said Danny. “No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.

In 2022, this benefit is estimated to have cost the government $316 billion for those under sixty-five. By 2032, its price tag is projected to exceed $600 billion. Almost half of all Americans receive government-subsidized health benefits through their employers, and over a third are enrolled in government-subsidized retirement benefits. These participation rates, driven primarily by rich and middle-class Americans, far exceed those of even the largest programs directed at low-income families, such as food stamps (14 percent of Americans) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (19 percent).[24]

Here’s how NPI worked: Once every quarter, teams submitted projects they thought were worth doing that would require resources from outside their own team—which basically meant almost every project of reasonable size. It took quite a bit of work to prepare and submit an NPI request. You needed a “one-pager”; a written summary of the idea; an initial rough estimate of which teams would be impacted; a consumer adoption model, if applicable; a P&L; and an explanation of why it was strategically important for Amazon to embark on the initiative immediately. Just proposing the idea represented a resource-intensive undertaking.

We project higher population rates not because of increased births, but because of a lower death rate brought upon by medical advances. So our projection of a U.S. population of 451 million in 2050? We estimate 316.5 million of those people are already alive. That is, 70 percent of the 2050 population is already living. As a point of reference, the U.S. population is 333 million. We predict 85 percent of this population will still be alive in 2050. Stated differently, the growth of the population by 2050 will reflect far more on the change in the death rate than on births.

The ideas behind Bitcoin and blockchain technology give us a new starting point from which to address this problem. That’s because the question of who controls our data should stem first from a more fundamental question about who or what institutions we must trust in order to engage in commerce, obtain services, or participate in modern society. We see compelling arguments for a complete restructuring of the world’s data security paradigm. And it starts with thinking about how Internet users can start to directly trust each other, so as to avoid having to pour so much information into the centralized hubs that currently sit in the middle of their online relationships. Solving data security may first require a deliberate move from what we call the centralized trust model to one of decentralized trust. In an age when technology is supposed to be lowering the cost of entry, the outdated centralized trust-management system has proven expensive and restrictive (think about the 2 billion people in the world who are unbanked). It has also failed—spectacularly. Even though the world spent an estimated $75 billion on cybersecurity in 2015, according to estimates by Gartner, total annual losses from online fraud theft were running at $400 billion that year, said Inga Beale, CEO of British insurance market Lloyd’s of London. If you’re alarmed by that figure—and you ought to be—try this one on for size: $2.1 trillion. That’s the estimated fraud loss Juniper Research came up with after extrapolating from current trends into the even more digitally interconnected world projected for 2019. To put that figure in perspective, at current economic growth rates, it would represent more than 2.5 percent of total world GDP.

Energy prices in the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index soared almost 60 percent in 2021 as supply lagged behind demand.49 Pressure on institutional investors from eco-minded shareholders has slashed investment in new fossil fuel projects by 40 percent, according to one estimate.

People acted how they looked like. The reactions of the world to one’s appearance were an invisible estimation of one’s perception of themselves. The beautiful and the hideous each got treated a certain way—experiencing wildly different kinds of years. The beautiful were told phrases the hideous never heard. The beautiful struggled more with envy, while the hideous spent more time practicing courage, for things never easily bent their way. Every person accepted how they were treated and sank into that role. It showed in the way they sat. How their heads turn. When they spoke. If they spoke. Mannerisms were then not a matter of individual personality, but collective decree. Andrei would notice in a stranger all the things their body did, memorize them, and project them imaginarily on a different person. The imagined transference would never work! It seemed odd, like a miscalculation, to visualize a gorgeous Adonis walk with his head down and fidgety fingers the way a shy man did. There was undeniably a pattern of traits between strangers, courtesy of the strangers they meet.

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Sun oriented streetlamps are a creative and practical lighting arrangement that bridles the force of the sun to enlighten streets, pathways, and public spaces. In urban communities like Bangalore, where energy proficiency and natural manageability are key needs, the reception of sun based streetlamps has been picking up speed. This article investigates the different parts of sun based streetlamps, including their advantages, estimating factors in Bangalore, an examination of various items, experiences into a main supplier like SuneaseSolar, ways to choose the right streetlamp, and rules for establishment and support. 1. Prologue to Sunlight based Streetlamps What are Sunlight based Streetlamps? Sun oriented streetlamps are independent lighting frameworks that bridle the force of daylight to enlighten open air spaces like roads, pathways, and public regions. These lights comprise of sun powered chargers, Drove lights, batteries, and a regulator to deal with the energy stream. Significance of Sun based Streetlamps Sun based streetlamps assume a significant part in improving wellbeing, security, and perceivability in metropolitan and provincial regions where customary lattice power might be untrustworthy or inaccessible. They offer a practical and productive lighting arrangement that decreases reliance on non-renewable energy sources and adds to a greener climate. 2. Advantages of Sun powered Streetlamps Energy Effectiveness Sun oriented streetlamps are profoundly energy-effective as they work by changing over daylight into power, taking out the requirement for lattice power. This outcomes in lower energy utilization and decreased fossil fuel byproducts, making them an economical lighting choice. Cost Reserve funds By using sun powered energy, sun based streetlamps help in chopping down power charges fundamentally over their life expectancy. The underlying interest in sun powered streetlamps is balanced by long haul cost reserve funds because of negligible upkeep prerequisites and no power costs. Ecological Effect Sunlight based streetlamps add to natural preservation by using inexhaustible sun oriented energy and decreasing carbon impressions. They help in fighting environmental change and advancing a cleaner, greener planet by diminishing dependence on non-sustainable power sources. 3. Factors Influencing solar street light price in bangalore Nature of Parts The cost of sun oriented streetlamps in Bangalore can change in view of the nature of parts utilized, like sun powered chargers, batteries, and Drove lights. More excellent parts frequently bring about better execution and strength, yet may come at a greater cost. Government Endowments and Motivators Government endowments and motivators can affect the last expense of sun based streetlamps in Bangalore. Different plans and projects might offer monetary help or tax reductions, making sunlight based lighting more reasonable and appealing for shoppers. Establishment and Support Expenses Extra factors like establishment and upkeep expenses can impact the general cost of sunlight based streetlamps. Legitimate establishment and normal support guarantee ideal execution and life span, prompting likely expense reserve funds over the long haul. 4. Examination of solar street light price in bangalore Market Investigation of Various Brands A correlation of sunlight based streetlamp costs in Bangalore ought to incorporate an examination of various brands and their contributions. Factors like brand notoriety, item quality, and after-deals backing can affect the cost and generally an incentive for purchasers. Highlights and Particulars While contrasting sun powered streetlamp costs in Bangalore, it's fundamental to consider the highlights and determinations presented by various models.

The rise of radical Islamism received a good deal of state help from Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family agreed to propagate Wahhabism as a means of propitiating the clerics, thus buying “their own political legitimacy at the cost of stability elsewhere.”65 Because funding of Wahhabist institutions comes from both Saudi government ministries and private charities, it is virtually impossible to estimate the total spending. One expert testified to Congress that the Saudis had spent roughly $70 billion on aid projects since the 1970s, and others report that they sponsored 1,500 mosques and 2,000 schools worldwide from Indonesia to France.66 These institutions often displace more moderate and worse-funded institutions promulgating moderate interpretations of Islam.67 Even if these numbers are incorrect, a fraction of the dollar figures still dwarfs what the United States has spent on public diplomacy in the Muslim world.

According to Section 2.4.2.3 of the PMBOK® Guide, iterative and incremental life cycles are those in which the project scope is generally determined early in the project life cycle, but time and cost estimates are routinely modified as the project team's understanding of the product increases.

Well-Estimated Project If the estimation inputs and process are well-defined, arbitrarily changing the output is not a rational action. Project stakeholders might not like the output, but the appropriate corrective action is to adjust the inputs (for example, reduce the project’s scope) and to recalculate the outputs, not just to change the output to a different answer.

Facilitate and document business analysis. Assist the project manager in defining project scope. Estimate needed time and resources. Define and design interfaces to external applications.

Carlton Church: Japan Finally Acknowledges Negative Nuclear Effects One of the leading sources of news and information, Thomson Reuters, has just reported about Japan’s acknowledgement of casualty caused by the Fukushima nuclear power plant wreckage. However, it may be too late for the victim as the young man, an unnamed worker in his 30s working as a construction contractor in Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima Daiichi plant and other nuclear facilities, is already suffering from cancer since 2011. The ministry’s recognition of radiation as a possible cause may set back efforts to recover from the disaster, as the government and the nuclear industry have been at pains to say that the health effects from radiation have been minimal. It may also add to compensation payments that had reached more than 7 trillion yen ($59 billion) by July this year. It can also cause a lot of setbacks from a lot of nuclear projects which were supposed to be due in the succeeding years. A streak of legal issues and complaints are also to be faced by Tokyo Electric, mostly on compensations for those affected. According to further reviews, it is estimated removing the melted fuel from the wrecked reactors and cleaning up the site will cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades to complete. Despite the recognition, a lot more people are still anxious. The recognition would mean acknowledgment of possible radiation effects still lingering in Japan’s boundaries. When it was once denied, the public are consoled of the improbability of being exposed to radiation but now that the government has expressed its possibility, many individuals fear of their and their families’ lives. Hundreds of deaths have been attributed to the chaos of evacuations during the crisis and because of the hardship and mental trauma refugees have experienced since then, but the government had said that radiation was not a cause. Yet now, it is different. The trauma and fear are emphasized more. Anti-nuclear organizations, on the other hand, are happy that their warnings are now being regarded. Carlton Church International, one of the non-profit organization campaigning against nuclear proliferation, spokesperson, Abigail Shcumman stated, “I don’t think ‘I told you so’ would be appropriate but that is what I really wanted to say”. She added, “We are pleased that at last, we are being heard. However, we continue to get worried for the people and the children. They are exposed and need guidance on what to do”. - See more at: carltonchurchreview.blogspot.com

Any project can be estimated accurately (once it’s completed).

Recommended Reading Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning provides guidance on iteration planning, including estimating the effort for user stories. David J. Anderson Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business provides the guidance, definitions, and metric calculations necessary to establish an efficient software development flow, including establishing WIP limits.

The solution: Break the big thing into smaller things. The smaller it is, the easier it is to estimate. You’re probably still going to get it wrong, but you’ll be a lot less wrong than if you estimated a big project. If something takes twice as long as you expected, better to have it be a small project that’s a couple weeks over rather than a long one that’s a couple months over.

When W. Clement Stone, an insurance magnate and philanthropist, gave $2 million to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 campaign, it caused public outrage and contributed to a movement that produced the post-Watergate reforms in campaign financing.” Accounting for inflation, Balz estimated that Stone’s $2 million might be worth about $11 million in today’s dollars. In contrast, for the 2016 election, the political war chest accumulated by the Kochs and their small circle of friends was projected to be $889 million, completely dwarfing the scale of money that was considered deeply corrupt during the Watergate days.

Economists explain this behavior using a concept known as the “sunk cost fallacy”: when estimating the value of a future investment, we have trouble ignoring what we’ve already invested in the past. Sunk costs are part of the story, but new research shows that other factors matter more. To figure out why and when escalation of commitment happens, researchers at Michigan State University analyzed 166 different studies. Sunk costs do have a small effect—decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments—but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn’t give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is ego threat: if I don’t keep investing, I’ll look and feel like a fool. In response to ego threat, people invest more, hoping to turn the project into a success so they can prove to others—and themselves—that they were right all along.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

We therefore conclude that cost overrun has not decreased over time. Cost overrun today is in the same order of magnitude as it was ten, thirty or seventy years ago. If techniques and skills for estimating costs and avoiding cost overrun in transport infrastructure projects have improved over time, this does not show in the data. No learning seems to take place in this important and highly costly sector of public and private decision making.

The solution: Break the big thing into smaller things. The smaller it is, the easier it is to estimate. You’re probably still going to get it wrong, but you’ll be a lot less wrong than if you estimated a big project. If something takes twice as long as you expected, better to have it be a small project that’s a couple weeks over rather than a long one that’s a couple months over. Keep breaking your time frames down into

Your Guide To Hiring The Best Driveway Contractor Great driveway pavers do not just appear, you have to do extensive research to find the right one. You will need to put in certain effort on your part and apply a certain amount of spadework in order to determine exactly what your aim is. You won't know if the driveway repair service provider fits your needs or what you have in mind if you're unsure about your demands. Make a checklist of qualities as quickly as you could and refer to our list of tips to help you along. When you start receiving bids, do not make the mistake of assuming that a low bid is indicative of poor work. Do some research about how much materials should cost and compare them against the low bid. You will also need to take labor costs into consideration. If the amount of the bid allows for an acceptable profit, you can consider drawing up an agreement. Always interview and take quotes from at least three contracting businesses. With an array of estimates at your disposal, carefully examine the cost breakdowns for materials and labor to guarantee that you're receiving the very best person for the project. If you're willing and in the position to invest more money in hiring a high quality driveway paving contractor, the chances are good that you will probably be very satisfied. Should you have any questions, make sure to address them before signing the legal agreement and ensure that all detailed information about the costs of the job are included. Take your time when searching for a honest driveway paving contractor. Look for the advice of your family and friend when looking for a recommendation. Find opportunities for networking in order to meet and become familiar with contractors. You will increase your odds of locating a great driveway repair contractor by conducting as many interviews as you could. You can always rely on a trustworthy driveway paving contractor to present you with a written assessment prior to him beginning the work on your project. Should you be in immediate need of the information, it should be a possibility for your driveway repair service provider to provide you with a quote over the phone. Also check their expertise and skill level as well as what other clients are saying about them in order to find out if they finish work on time and at the agreed upon fee. Don't sign a legal contract if you have any questions about anything in it; ensure your driveway repair service provider addresses every issue you have prior to you finalize your agreement.

#1 Creating overly optimistic projections about market size and customer acquisitions. My advice: Do your homework in terms of market research. Don’t blur the line between the number of potential customers who might possibly buy your product and the number who actually will. Don’t overlay an arbitrary percentage on the largest possible customer base when estimating potential market share. In three words: Know your customer. #2

when they investigated the productivity of 24 projects for which no estimates were prepared at all. These projects far outperformed all the others

In 1992 Cuba was busy building the “Juragua Nuclear Power Plant” on its southern coast, near Cienfuegos, the capital of Cienfuegos Province. All was going well, however construction had to be suspended following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States had been opposed to the project and discouraged other countries from assisting Cuba in completing this monumental project. Eight years later, when the Russian economy improved some, Vladimir Putin offered to finish one of the reactors. With estimates regarding the cost to finish this reactor ranging from $300 million to $750 million, Putin offered Cuba a grant of $800 million over a period of 10 years. Because of Cuba’s heavy national debt, Castro stated that Cuba was no longer interested in finishing the plant and would be seeking other energy alternatives. In 2004, a turbine was removed from the stalled project, to be used as a replacement for a damaged turbine at the “Guiteras thermoelectric plant,” thus effectively ending the “Juragua Electic Project.

Organizer—Using work breakdown, estimating, and scheduling techniques, determines the complete work effort for the project, the proper sequence of the work activities, when the work will be accomplished, who will do the work, and how much the work will cost. • Point Man—Serves as the central point-of-contact for all oral and written project communications. • Quartermaster—Ensures the project has the resources, materials, and facilities its needs when it needs it. • Facilitator—Ensures that stakeholders and team members who come from different perspectives understand each other and work together to accomplish the project goals. • Persuader—Gains agreement from the stakeholders on project definition, success criteria, and approach; manages stakeholder expectations throughout the project while managing the competing demands of time, cost, and quality; and gains agreement on resource decisions and issue resolution action steps. • Problem Solver—Utilizes root-cause analysis process experience, prior project experiences, and technical knowledge to resolve unforeseen technical issues and to take any necessary corrective actions. • Umbrella—Works to shield the project team from the politics and “noise” surrounding the project, so they can stay focused and productive. • Coach—Determines and communicates the role each team member plays and the importance of that role to the project success, finds ways to motivate each team member, looks for ways to improve the skills of each team member, and provides constructive and timely feedback on individual performances. • Bulldog—Performs the follow-up to ensure that commitments are maintained, issues are resolved, and action items are completed. • Librarian—Manages all information, communications, and documentation involved in the project.

It’s estimated that the Arctic, within seven years and maybe as soon as 2015, will have its first ice-free summer in the last 700,000 years (keep in mind that humans have only been on this planet for 165,000 years). Earlier projections predicted ice-free summers as far out in the future as 2080.

The most surprising part of the 1985 Jeffery-Lawrence study appeared at the very end, when they investigated the productivity of 24 projects for which no estimates were prepared at all. These projects far outperformed all the others

So far, the results confirm the folklore: Programmers seem to be a bit more productive after they’ve done the estimate themselves, compared to cases in which the manager did it without even consulting them. When the two did the estimating together, the results tended to fall in between.

As he spoke, Mudd clicked through a deck of slides—114 in all—that were projected on a large screen behind him. This would be straight-up, in-your-face talk, no sugar-coating on his part. The headlines and phrases and figures were nothing short of staggering. More than half of American adults were now considered overweight, with nearly one-quarter of the population—40 million adults—carrying so many extra pounds that they were clinically defined as obese. Among children, the rates had more than doubled since 1980, the year when the fat line on the charts began angling up, and the number of kids considered obese had shot past 12 million. (It was still only 1999; the nation’s obesity rates would climb much higher.) “Massive social costs estimated as high as $40–$100 billion a year,” announced one of Mudd’s slides in bright, bold lettering.

Even when the corporate risk tolerance is low it is still possible to take some working interest in a risky project. Clearly, zero working interest is the lower limit and 100% working interest is the high limit. Somewhere between these two extremes there must be an optimum working interest to take which depends on both the parameters of the project (success probability, estimated gains, and estimated costs) and on the corporate risk tolerance.

On February 11, 1998, the Sunday Times reported that ten bodies were dug up from beneath Benjamin Franklin’s home at 36 Craven Street in London. The bodies were of four adults and six children. They were discovered during a costly renovation of Franklin’s former home. The Times reported: “Initial estimates are that the bones are about two hundred years old and were buried at the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762 and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones

The market for vacuum cleaners alone is huge: Transparency Market Research estimated it at $11 billion in 2012 and projected an increase to $14.6 billion by 2018, with robotic vacuum sales rising faster than others.

The cone of uncertainty shows that during the feasibility phase of a project a schedule estimate is typically as far off as 60% to 160%. That is, a project expected to take 20 weeks could take anywhere from 12 to 32 weeks. After the requirements are written, the estimate might still be off +/- 15% in either direction. So an estimate of 20 weeks means work that takes 17 to 23 weeks. Figure 1.1. The cone of uncertainty narrows as the project progresses.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS Sketches and Comps Fee quoted includes ____ preliminary concepts / sketches; additional concepts / sketches are $ _______ each. Final Artwork Fee quoted includes one set of final mechanical artwork. Changes to final artwork will be provided at an additional cost based on the extent and complexity of the changes, at $ ___ per hour or a mutually agreed upon fee, TBD. Rights Upon full payment of all fees and costs, the following rights to the use of the designs and/or artwork transfer to Client, as noted: Credit Unless otherwise agreed, Designer shall be accorded a credit line on all published, printed material, to read as follows: Overtime Fees quoted are based upon work performed during the course of regular working hours (based on a ____ hour week). Overtime, rush, holiday, and weekend work necessitated by Client’s directive is billed in addition to the fees quoted at $ ____ per hour or a mutually agreed upon fee, TBD. Change Orders Work change orders will be issued for additional work and changes requested after approvals or commencement of work. WCO’s include a description of the change/addition requested, estimated additional costs, and changes to work schedules/project completion. Client’s signature is required on WCO’s to proceed with changes/additions. Billable Items In addition to the fees and costs estimated herein, costs incurred for outside services (TBD), messengers, and courier services are billable (at cost __; with a markup of __ percent). Wherever applicable, state and local sales taxes will be included in Billable Items. Travel expenses are billed additionally, at cost.

The question: where to build such a dam? An initial survey selected a site in an area known as Boulder Canyon, south of Las Vegas. Twenty-five years later, at the outset of the Great Depression, the proposed dam became a possibility with congressional authorization of the “Boulder Canyon Project.” A more detailed analysis showed that Black Canyon, a few miles downstream from Boulder Canyon, had more stable bedrock to support the estimated 7 million tons of concrete that was to be the single largest structure in human history.

In 1857, to encourage continued settlement of the West, Congress passed the Pacific Wagon Road Act, which among other improvements to the trail called for the surveying of a shorter route to Idaho across the bottom of the Wind Rivers and the forested Bridger-Teton wilderness to the west. Frederick W. Lander, a hotheaded but experienced explorer and engineer, was assigned the job. He made Burnt Ranch the trailhead and main supply depot for the trail-building job, which became one of the largest government-financed projects of the nineteenth century. Lander hired hundreds of workers from the new Mormon settlement at Salt Lake and supplied the enterprise with large mule-team caravans that ferried provisions and equipment from U.S. Army depots in Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. “With crowds of laborers hauling wood, erecting buildings and tending stock,” writes historian Todd Guenther, “the area was a beehive of activity.” The engineers, logging crews, and workers quickly hacked out what became known as the Lander Cutoff, which saved more than sixty miles, almost a week’s travel, across the mountains. In places, the Lander Cutoff was a steep up-and-down ride, but the route offered cooler, high terrain and plentiful water, an advantage over the scorching desert of the main ruts to the south. Eventually an estimated 100,000 pioneers took this route, and the 230-mile Lander Cutoff was considered an engineering marvel of its time. This

f you have a complaint with your AC repair service provider, state it in a private place well away from public view. Searching for a location that allows both sides to talk without reservations and with honesty will help to make the discussion lucrative. Put the project on hold for a day or two to arrange for this meeting if essential. Be sure that you have a legal contract that thoroughly details your wishes before work begins; you could bring that contract to address any issues you are having. It shouldn't be assumed that a low-priced proposal indicates shoddy workmanship on the air and heating service company's part. Check the cost of the needed materials and compare them to the pricing of the low-priced proposal. Do not forget to calculate labor costs in your equation. You want to make sure that you only draw up a legal contract if the pricing is reasonable. Any air and heating service company worth his salt will provide the client with a written estimate before beginning work on a project. If there is a need to have the information immediately, your AC repair service provider should have the opportunity to give you an estimate over the phone. Also, review their expertise and skill level as well as what other clients are saying about them to find out if they finish work on time and at the agreed-upon fee. If you are feeling uneasy about anything, ask as many questions as possible before you sign a binding contract to work with a particular AC contractor. A reliable air and heating service company will make an effort to bring you the highest quality results. An efficient AC repair contractor will consider your needs and fulfill your requests on time. Make sure that you're giving your AC repair service provider adequate time to finish the job correctly without interruption. Discover how the AC repair service provider plans to manage any liability problems that occur.

Imagine that you knew Greece was still Greece and Italy was still Italy and that the prices quoted in the markets represented the bond-buying activities of banks pushing down yields rather than an estimate of the risk of the bond itself. Why would you buy such securities if the yield did not reflect the risk? You might realize that if you bought enough of them—if you became really big—and those assets lost value, you would become a danger to your national banking system and would have to be bailed out by your sovereign. If you were not bailed out, given your exposures, cross-border linkages to other banks, and high leverage, you would pose a systemic risk to the whole European financial sector. As such, the more risk that you took onto your books, especially in the form of periphery sovereign debt, the more likely it was that your risk would be covered by the ECB, your national government, or both. This would be a moral hazard trade on a continental scale. The euro may have been a political project that provided the economic incentive for this kind of trade to take place. But it was private-sector actors who quite deliberately and voluntarily jumped at the opportunity.

Welcome to, SRS is committed to customer satisfaction. Our service offerings range from taking total control and handling programming changes of your Biodiesel Plant facility industry also particular in handling asunder shape of industrial projects and ascertained guaranteed services to customers. For Turnkey Biodiesel Plant we follow all the brief steps in order to create and preserve a Biodiesel Plant. We assist you from site choice to manufacture and execution of the appliance. Additionally, Our industry also specializes in offering the maintenance services for the Biodiesel Plant. To estimate your existing plant’s issues that impresses its perform, our specialists offer the quality pleading that are subsidiary in making the affirmative modification.

A good estimate is an estimate that provides a clear enough view of the project reality to allow the project leadership to make good decisions about how to control the project to hit its targets.

As late as April 2009, the IMF estimated that we would incur nearly $2 trillion in direct costs saving the financial system, but at the end of 2013, our financial programs were projected to generate a positive return for the taxpayer of more than $150 billion, enough to fund federal cancer research at current levels for the next twenty-five years. But many Americans just remember the initial characterization of the financial rescue as a handout. Jenni LeCompte once sent me a clip of CNN’s Erin Burnett interviewing a young activist from Occupy Wall Street, asking him if he knew that the Wall Street bailouts had been profitable for taxpayers.

In early 2009, the IMF estimated that the U.S. government would end up spending nearly $2 trillion rescuing the financial system. In fact, the U. S. government’s crisis response not only prevented the collapse of the financial system and helped revive the broader economy, but as of the end of 2013 it was projected to generate about $166 billion in positive returns for taxpayers.

American officials estimated millions would be spent to develop internal security systems, and State Department officials expected the Cuban government to increase internal surveillance in an attempt to prevent further acts of terrorism. These systems, which restricted civil rights, became easy targets for critics. CIA officials admitted early on in the war of terrorism that the goal was not the military defeat of Fidel Castro, but to force the regime into applying increasingly stringent civil restrictions, with the resultant pressures on the Cuban public. This was outlined in a May 1961 agency report stating that the objective was to “plan, implement and sustain a program of covert actions designed to exploit the economic, political and psychological vulnerabilities of the Castro regime. It is neither expected nor argued that the successful execution of this covert program will in itself result in the overthrow of the Castro regime,” only to accelerate the “moral and physical disintegration of the Castro government.” The CIA acknowledged that in response to the terrorist acts the government would be “Stepping up internal security controls and defense capabilities.” It was not projected the acts of terror would directly result in Castro’s downfall (although that was a policy aim), but only to promote the sense of vulnerability among the population and compel the government into increasingly radical steps in order to ensure national security.18