Cost Estimation

How to capture cost estimates and use this to guide your planning

Chuen Seet avatar
Written by Chuen Seet
Updated over a week ago

Overview

Cost Estimation and Benefits Estimation are optional features that can greatly enhance the substantiation and value of your strategic roadmap.  

Jibility supports the ability to capture cost estimates for each action and initiative.  By defining the estimated cost for your actions and initiatives you can improve: 

  1. Your understanding of the approximate size of work; and

  2. Prioritization of initiatives to fall within budget.

The cost estimation feature is customizable, and you can choose to enable or disable this feature in the Canvas Properties settings (the pencil in the top right corner). 

Tips: Exclude cost estimation feature upfront to focus on building the basics of your strategic roadmap.   This will allow you to socialize the strategic roadmap with your stakeholders without getting stuck in detailed discussions around costs.  Sometimes, showing cost estimation upfront can be an unnecessary distraction.

Configure your canvas estimation setting

The Canvas Properties will allow you to configure the cost estimation parameters.  These parameters are:

  1. Enable/disable the Cost Estimation Features by select Feature Options drop down.

  2. Define your own Cost Estimation Ranges.

  3. Set your Cost Estimation Risk Profile.

  4. Select your currency.

By default, the Cost Estimation feature is enabled for all subscribers.  You can choose to disable this feature by using the Feature Options drop down in the Canvas Properties Estimation tab (see image above).  

A pre-defined set of estimation ranges (Cost Estimation Sizing Parameters) can be changed by altering the Range To column.  The Range From and Diff columns are automatically calculated. 

You can choose to set your Cost Estimation Risk Profile.  This is essentially a ratio between 0 to 1 to indicate whether your estimate should lean towards optimistic or pessimistic.  So, if you chose a cost estimate range from $25k to $50k then would you say that you would lean towards the higher end $50k (pessimistic) or lower end $25k (optimistic)?  How this parameter affects the Computed Estimated Cost is explained in the next section.

Also, you can choose a currency to for your locale.  Currently, we only support Dollar, Euro and Pound.

Estimating actions

In Jibility you define actions for each capability that requires change, delivers to an objective and is tagged a priority.  In terms of granularity, an action is the lowest level item of your strategic roadmap.  Therefore, providing a cost estimate for each action will give you the most accurate overall cost estimate for your strategic roadmap.

For each action you can define the estimated cost by:

  1. Selecting an Estimated Cost Range; or

  2. Selecting "Custom" to enter a specific value.

Estimated Cost Range

When an Estimated Cost Range is selected the Computed Estimated Cost Value is
calculated based on the following formula:

Computed Estimated Cost Value = O + (P - O) * R

Where: 

O is the optimistic low range value
P is the pessimistic high range value
R is the risk profile from 0 to 1 where optimistic is 0 and pessimistic is 1

Note, the Computed Estimated Cost Value is automatically rounded to a level of precision that is determined based on the estimation range.  For example, if the range is from $0 to $100 then the computed estimate is rounded to the nearest $1.  If the range is $1000 to $10,000 then the computed estimate is rounded to the nearest $100.  All ranges over $100,000 are rounded to the nearest $1,000. 

Custom Estimated Value

When "Custom" is selected, then you can enter a specific value instead of a computed estimation value.

Refining initiative estimated costs

The Cost Estimation feature enables you to define an estimated cost for each action.  Given that an initiative is comprised of actions, the estimated cost for an initiative is the aggregated cost of all the actions for the initiative.

For each initiative, there can be additional costs which are not reflected in the cost of each action.  The additional cost can be the overhead cost of managing the initiative or a one-off cost for the setup of the initiative.  Jibility provides an Estimated Additional Cost field to cater for this in the Initiative step (as shown below).

Tips: If you do not want to provide a cost estimate for each actions, you can choose to provide a cost estimate at the initiative level only. To do that, you can enter an estimated cost for an initiative by using the Estimated Additional Cost field only.

Prioritize initiatives within budget constraints

When Cost Estimation is enabled, and you have defined the estimated cost for each initiative, the Prioritize Initiative 2 x 2 can be used to prioritize and scope the initiative to meet your budget constraint.

In the example diagram given below, the lasso was adjusted to change the priority zone.  As the priority zone is changed, the total estimated cost for all initiatives within the lasso is shown on the bottom line as Priority Zone Estimated Cost.  The Total Estimated Cost is the cost for all initiatives on the 2 x 2.

In the above example, the user had roughly $1M budget, so it looks like the initiatives specific to the digital projects comes close to this budget.

Initiative Summary published document

Finally, the total estimated cost for each initiative is shown in the Initiative Summary document when the Cost Estimation feature is enabled.  In the properties panel for this document, you can choose to show the estimated cost or exclude it.

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