What is Expert Judgement?

Expert Judgement is one of the best and very useful techniques used during most of the project management activities. It’s a common technique used throughout the project management processes (among the project management process groups) such as charter development, project management plan development, project execution, monitoring, controlling, closing, etc… It is applied to all the management and technical details whenever needed. When it comes to Project Management, experts are known to be internal or external assets an organization keeps to provide inputs for planning and estimating during planning processes. The experts are mostly needed when the project management team feels that their opinions are very crucial for the success of the project.

The method ‘Expert Judgement’ has a lot of positive outcomes when used properly at the planning phases in Project Management. Not only it saves time for planning and estimating projects, but also it highlights risks that can have an impact towards the project outcomes, hence coming up with a risk response plan will become much easier for the project management team. In addition, the quality and accuracy of the estimations and planning phases become much greater. Most of the projects fail due to inaccurate estimations and less efficient risk management planning, hence it’s always recommended to go for expert judgement when developing the estimates and risk identification process.

Experts do have their own specialized knowledge, training and skills which can be used for different areas. These experts can either be a group or an individual and it’s project management team’s responsibility to identify and select the correct expert for necessary activities.

Experts can be available from many different sources. Few of them are as follows; (Source: PMBOK 5th Edition)

• Within the same organization, but from different business units
• Internal / External Consultants
• Internal / External project stakeholder (it can be customer or sponsor as well)
• Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• Professional and Technical Associations
• Other Industry Groups
• Project Management Office (Even among the project managers, there can be subject matter experts who can act as Experts for projects)