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.
