Tony ApplebyDirector, Strategy and Solutions| Delegata CorporationAlameda, Ca, United States
Are there any general rules of thumb (or better: documents) that can assist a PM in estimating how many applications per system an analyst might be able to work over a given period of time during the Discovery Phase of a project? An industry standard does not appear to exist. Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Anthony, the number of applications is relative to their size and complexity. Also are these new from the ground up, packages or existing applications? In general I estimate around the analysis of end-to-end cross functional business processes and then drill down to the applications that support those processes. In any case we are talking about change and the impact of change on applications. The analyst should be spending his/her time defining the value-gap between the existing operations and systems and what is needed. Out of that analysis (discovery process) a map to the application can be developed and from that and impact analysis derived. In my experience an analyst can handle about 3 to 8 integrated application modules at any given time. For example, if you were seeking to improve the order processing function (from order to shipment, billing and subsequent collection) in a distribution environment the analyst would need to understand how the company buys and sells product. This would no doubt impact the order entry, credit management, inventory control, routing and shipping, billing and collections. Hopefully this would be seen as one application with many modules.
Complexity and breath of the changes to be addressed is the key to estimating any phase of a project.
I am interested on your use of the term “Discovery Phase” a term I coined in the early 1980’s to describe the first phase in my Structured SDLC. Most SDLC’s begin with requirements definition. I found early on that requirements must be discovered before they can be defined. This led me to understand that in order to discover application requirements I had to understand the business rules, operations and value propositions of the company. This led to the development of cross functional analysis tools and finally to an entire process improvement front end to my SDLC methodology.
Are you using “Discovery Phase” in that context? Saving Changes...
"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
