As an advertising agency owner, it’s important to make sure that every project stays on budget. This means constantly measuring estimate to actual to ensure that we don’t go over our allotted time and resources. We use the Level of Effort (LOE) in hours as our standard unit of measurement for project budgets, and it’s an important part of our process.
Let’s take a look at how this works in practice. Say we’re working on an animation production project. Our initial estimate for the project is 500 hours of LOE (regardless of what you charge to the customer). This includes everything from concept development to final delivery. We break down the project into individual tasks grouped into deliverables and estimate the time it will take to complete each one.
We start off strong and things are going smoothly. The team is working efficiently and we’re making great progress. However, around the halfway mark, we notice that we’re starting to fall behind schedule. We take a closer look at our estimates and realize that we underestimated the time it would take to create some of the more complex animations.
This is where measuring estimate to actual becomes crucial. We need to adjust our budget to make sure we have enough time and resources to complete the project on schedule. We might need to cut back on some of the less essential elements of the project or bring in additional resources to help out.
In the end, we’re able to deliver the project on time and within budget, but it required careful monitoring and adjustments along the way. Without measuring estimate to actual, we could have easily gone over our budget and missed our deadline.
But why is this so important? Well, there are a few key reasons:
- Keeps projects on track: By measuring estimate to actual, we can identify potential issues early on and make adjustments to keep the project on track. This ensures that we meet our deadlines and deliver the project as promised.
- Helps with future estimates: By tracking our actual time spent on projects, we can use that data to improve our estimates in the future. This allows us to be more accurate and realistic when pricing projects, which ultimately leads to happier clients and more successful projects.
- Increases profitability: When we stay within our budget, we’re able to maintain profitability on our projects. This allows us to invest in new tools and resources that can help us deliver even better work in the future.
Now, let’s get back to our animation project. One of the things that made this project particularly challenging was the level of detail required in the animation. We needed to create a lifelike rendering of a creature that was both visually stunning and believable. This required a lot of attention to detail and a significant amount of time.
As we were working on the project, we realized that our original estimates for the time required to create these animations were, well let’s just say “woefully” inadequate. We had underestimated the amount of time it would take to get everything just right.
This is where the progressive and on-going measuring of the estimate to actual became crucial. By keeping a close eye on our progress and comparing it to our estimates, we were able to identify the issue early on and make adjustments. We brought in additional resources to help with the workload, and we adjusted our schedule to allow for more time on the animation work.
In the end, the animation work was a huge success, and the client was thrilled with the final result. But without measuring estimate to actual, we could have easily gone over our budget and missed our deadline.
So, what can we learn from this? The importance of measuring estimate to actual cannot be overstated in your workflow management. It’s a critical part of the project management process, and it helps ensure that we deliver high-quality work on time and within budget. Whether we’re working on an animation project or any other type of project, tracking our progress and making adjustments along the way is essential to success.
But it’s not just about staying within budget. Measuring estimate to actual also helps us to improve our process and become more efficient. When we identify areas where we consistently overestimate or underestimate the time required for certain tasks, we can make changes to improve our process and accuracy. That results in better future estimates and allows you to be more competitive.
For example, let’s say we consistently underestimate the time it takes to create a certain type of social media post. By measuring estimate to actual, we can identify this trend and make changes to our process to streamline the creation of these posts. This might include creating templates or improving our collaboration process to reduce the amount of back-and-forth between team members.
In the end, these changes not only help us to deliver projects more efficiently, but they also improve our profitability and client satisfaction. When we can deliver high-quality work on time and within budget, our clients are more likely to refer us to others and work with us again in the future.
In conclusion, as an advertising agency owner, measuring estimate to actual is essential to success. By tracking our progress and comparing it to our estimates, we can identify potential issues early on and make adjustments to keep projects on track. This not only helps us to deliver high-quality work on time and within budget, but it also improves our process and efficiency in the long run. So, whether we’re working on an animation project or any other type of project, measuring estimate to actual should be a critical part of our project management process.
