In many projects, forecasting feels harder than it should — updates are frequent, confidence is fragile, and schedules often reflect reality only after options are gone. Effort-based planning offers project managers and PMO professionals a clearer, calmer way to understand what is really happening in their projects and why forecasts change.

This interactive session explores how making effort explicit at the task level — validating effort estimates, tracking actuals, and re-estimating remaining work — improves visibility and stabilizes forecasts. By allowing task durations to flex based on real effort, participants will learn how to surface risk earlier, reduce unnecessary dependencies, and communicate clearer, more defensible forecasts to teams, sponsors, and executives.

Applicable across Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid environments, this approach provides a common effort-based lens that strengthens forecasting regardless of delivery methodology. Participants will leave with practical techniques they can apply immediately to active projects to simplify forecasting, improve clarity, and reduce surprises — without changing tools or governance.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Recognize why schedule-only planning often creates fragile forecasts and late surprises
• Explain effort-based planning in clear, practical terms that resonate with teams, sponsors, and executives
• Apply effort-based thinking at the task level by validating effort, tracking actuals, and re-estimating and relevelling remaining work
• Use effort visibility to simplify forecasting and make duration changes easier to explain and defend
• Apply effort-based planning concepts across Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid project environments

Terri Hitchcock is a project controls expert, consultant, and author specializing in effort-based planning, project performance visibility, and PMO strategy for complex programs and portfolios. She has extensive experience implementing controls on multimillion-dollar initiatives, helping organizations improve forecasting accuracy, reduce risk, and strengthen executive confidence without adding unnecessary process overhead.

Terri focuses on making effort explicit at the task level — enabling task owners to validate estimates, track actual effort, relevel remaining work, and allow schedules to reflect reality. Her approach has helped organizations surface risk earlier, remove unnecessary dependencies, and simplify project forecasting, saving tens of millions of dollars in avoided rework and late-stage corrections.

Terri is also the author of the book In Control (©2026), which explores modern approaches to project controls, visibility, and performance management.

We look forward to seeing you at our virtual event on March 3^rd

Event Date: Tuesday, March 3^rd, 2026

Location: Online (link to be emailed to attendees prior to the event)

Agenda:

• 12:00 pm    Speaker presentation
• 1:00 pm      End of session

Fees:

• $10  for Pre-Registered PMI Manitoba Members and Students
• $35+GST for Pre-Registered Non-Members

Event Info:  

• Registration closes Monday, March 2, 2026, at 5:00 pm 
• Event attendance is worth one (1) Ways of Working Professional Development Unit (PDU) 
• No refunds. Substitutions permitted providing the substitute is eligible for the same price.

Please email if you have any questions regarding:

• This event, Director of Monthly Programs -monthlyprograms@pmimanitoba.org
• Registration, IT Director, communications@pmimanitoba.org

PMI Manitoba Chapter no longer issues invoices for monthly program events. Registration can be paid through Debit or Credit Cards. 

Register!