BOE in Project Management

Question

The only definition that for the term BOE that I know of is the "Bank Of England". However, while reading an article on project management, I saw the term mentioned about 3 times (the article was about estimates in PM).

Does anyone know what does the term BOE stand for in project management? (again, the term most likely relates to project estimating)

Answer 1

Well, it's not Bank of England, and it's not BOE, it's actually BoE (with a lowercase o) and it stands for Basis of Estimate.

The BoE is an explanation on how each and every element in your project management plan was estimated. That element might be a WBS element (how did you get the number of hours in the WBS element). It can also be a risk element (how did you get the risk multiplier), a CBS element (how did you get the cost of a cost element in the CBS), etc...

It's odd that there are is no abundant information on this important topic in project management.

Here's a very comprehensive yet concise link on this topic: http://www-ilcdcb.fnal.gov/rdr/basis_of_estimate.pdf