Great Time Management Techniques
The Six Keys to Success

Key #2: How, Part 6/6

Now we need to complete the last part of great time management techniques key How before moving on to the next key. In the How key you have learned

• The steps to take
  
  
• The order to take them
  
  
• The resources needed
  
  
• The time required

Estimating the cost of the CTS* is the last but certainly not the least important part in learning the use of the How key.

The reason the time management techniques key, How, leads you to estimate the cost is to help uncover the impact it will have on your CTS*.

• You may not have the money in your budget to do this activity at this time
  
  
• You may need to get higher level approval to spend the money (adding more steps)
  
  
• It could add unit cost to your product impacting sales and profitability
  
  
• It could verify the actual value your efforts are providing

It’s not unusual for an activity to seem plausible at the outset but as the steps are developed the economic value begins to deteriorate to the point that the CTS* is dropped.

Let’s look at the great time management techniques spreadsheet and add our estimated cost to it.

Step Description	Resource Requirement	Estimated Time (hours)	Actual Time	Estimated Cost ($)	Actual Cost
Collect data on causes of rework	Sally & Me	40 X 2 = 80		80hr X $12/hr = $960
Record the collected data	Lisa	8		8hr X $10/hr = $80
Analyze the collected data	Me	16		16hr X $20/hr = $320
TOTAL		104		$1360

Cost of an activity is typically made of any number of things such as:

• Labor, materials, tools and equipment
  
  
• Consultants, contractors, design services, modeling, and testing
  
  
• Product or raw material used during testing
  
  
• Utilities required (water, natural gas, electricity)
  
  
• New programs or software, training, overtime

As the activity progresses you will want to add the actual cost to the spreadsheet to see how your costs are related to time and predict your completion performance.

Most of you would naturally perform a cost analysis of this sort but I wanted you to see how important this part of the process can be and the impact it could have on your timeline.

Now we are ready to move to the next key, When, Part 1 in Great Time Management Techniques.

*CTS – Critical to Success activity

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