Andrew BudkiewiczProject Manager| Eli Lilly& Co LtdBasingstoke, United Kingdom
Hi all,
In my organisation we carry out internal IT projects, there has always been a concern that the creationand approval of the firm estimate (full requirements, published Project plan, resources assigned from a central pool, project costed out and estimate approved by the business sponsor) is too long. The trigger for this estimate being when the business case is submitted into the portfolio.
In response to this perceived long approval time a 6 sigma project was initiated and set the PM the target of 40 working days from business case submission to business sponsor approval, the main justification for this is that quotes received from external vendors come in normally
How does the 40 days compare to your experiences, at the moment the average actual duration is around 53 days?
In my experience in a PMO the main reason for this target date not being met is that the PM does not hold the business integrator who is responsible for supplying the approved baselined full requirements over in a timely manner (current target 20 days) mainly because the BI is also classed as the customer Saving Changes...
Sort By:
Hans RobbersSenior Director| SalesforceVlissingen, Netherlands
Andrew
In my opinion 40 days or 8 weeks seems more than sufficient, dependent on the level of detail for the requirements. It should be possible to speed up the process by
- defining the level of detail for the requirements to such a level it is suffcient to have a understanding for estimating.
- or organising a couple of requirement gathering workshops driven by IT an the BI as the sponsor
In both cases the level of detail is the level for estimating. I assume you use PRINCE II and I suggest at the end of each stage to re-validate the business case and update if required, there are more details available and thus the estimation of cost can be refined. Steering Committee to approve if you exceed the set tolerance boundaries
good luck Hans Saving Changes...
Richard HowProgramme Management Consultant| How Associates LtdHarthill, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
is a one size fits all answer suitable if all the projects are of different size and complexity?
The amount of time taken to complete a thorough estimate is impact by the size and complexity of the task to be completed.
If you have a clear set of steps to go through for all estimates then you could agree the duration of each step at the out set of each estimate thus giving you a plan for the estimation phase and clearly setting the stakeholders expectations. its overkill to take 40 days to estimate a 20 week project but there will be serious gaps if you estimate a 2 year project involving multiple systems and departments in 40 days. Saving Changes...
