Forecasts

A forecast is an estimate of the final cost of the project, created at any given time during the course of the project.

You can have an unlimited number of forecasts in Cobra. Each forecast is defined with a different class and can use a different set of rates and/or method for calculating or maintaining the forecast.

A forecast in Cobra is defined by the Estimate To Complete (ETC). To report an Estimate At Complete (EAC), you add the actual class and forecast class together:

Estimate at Complete (EAC)=Actual Cost + Forecast (ETC)

Cobra performs this calculation during reporting by selecting the cost set EAC.

To report on multiple forecasts, you create new cost sets and include the forecast and actual cost classes needed for your report. This is useful for maintaining a customer forecast, an internal forecast, a statistical forecast, and so on.

Use the Retain EAC method to edit the Estimate At Complete (EAC) value and report the new EAC value. This is useful if you want to report the same value month after month.

Freezing the forecast lets you copy the actual costs and forecast to a new class to support gated actuals.

Cobra lets you generate forecasts using either manual or statistical entries.

You can run the Calculate Forecast process through the Calculate Forecast Wizard, the API and the Cobra Web Service.