Forecast Calculations

Most forecast methods depend on accurate values of cumulative actual costs and earned value and on the latest estimated dates for the remaining work in the project.

As a result, most project managers generate new forecasts only after all schedule status information has been updated, earned value has been calculated and posted, and actual costs have been entered.

If you are generating a statistical forecast, Cobra allows you to calculate new performance factors. When generating statistical forecasts for the project, Cobra automatically creates new forecasts based on the existing budget for spreading purposes. For subsequent forecasts, you can have Cobra spread ETC according to either the existing ETC spread or the budget spread.

If you are generating a manual forecast, you do not need to recalculate performance factors for the program since they are not used. If this is the first time you are preparing a manual forecast for the project, however, you can use the Reclass feature to create a copy of the budget spread which can then be calculated to account for incurred actual costs.