Which estimating method estimates costs for each project deliverable and then spreads those costs over tasks?

• A. Bottom-up
• B. Analogous
• C. Parametric
• D. Top-down

Answer: (D)

The approach being tested is building estimates from the ground up by estimating costs for each deliverable or work package and then allocating those costs to the associated tasks. This is bottom-up estimating. It starts with the specifics of each deliverable, assigns a cost to each, and then aggregates (sums) those costs to form the overall project budget, often spreading the deliverable costs across the individual tasks that implement them. This method yields detailed, task-level budgeting and can provide a precise view of how the total budget breaks down.

Top-down estimating, in contrast, starts with a single total project cost and then divides it down into components, which is less focused on the finer-grained deliverables. Analogous estimating uses cost data from a similar past project to form the estimate, rather than building from the current deliverables. Parametric estimating uses unit costs and quantities to model the total, which also doesn’t build from each deliverable’s cost in the same way.