According to the PMBOK Guide, within the Estimate Activity Durations process, external data such as productivity metrics and published commercial information are categorized as Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF).
* Definition of EEFs: These are conditions, not under the immediate control of the project team, that influence, constrain, or direct the project. They can be internal or external to the organization.
* Commercial Databases: Published commercial information often includes resource production rate databases and commercial cost-estimating databases. These provide standard productivity metrics (e.g., how many square feet a painter can cover per hour) that a project manager uses to calculate duration when internal historical data is unavailable.
* Role in Estimation: When estimating how long an activity will take, the project manager must consider the " environment " in which the work is performed. If the industry standard productivity for a specific technical task is published in a commercial database, that external factor acts as a benchmark for the project ' s own estimates.
Comparison with Other Options:
* Organizational Process Assets (B): These are internal to the organization and include formal/informal plans, policies, procedures, and historical information or lessons learned from previous projects. While
" internal " productivity records are OPAs, " published commercial " data is an EEF.
* Project management plan (C): This is a formal document that describes how the project is to be executed, monitored, and controlled. It uses the estimates but is not the source of raw productivity metrics.
* Project funding requirements (D): This is an output of the Determine Budget process. It forecasts the total funding and periodic funding requirements (e.g., quarterly, annually) based on the cost baseline; it has no direct role in estimating the time duration of specific activities.