There's a fairly extensive decription/outline of a kick-off meeting in the "Holding the Kick-Off Meeting" topic of the "project accelerator" at the bottom of the gantthead.com screen. You might want to check that out as well. Saving Changes...
I am looking for a general rule of thumb to use in estimating needed testing (and repairs after testing) for IT application development projects. Currently, our projects are running about 35% to 40% of total project time for testing and fixes, although we only schedule about 10% of total development time for testing and repairs. How can we improve these estimates.
I need a similar rule of thumb for estimating project management time for a project. Currently they allow us about 10 to 20% of development time for PM time to be added to project time.
Anyone know of any books/magazines with this kind of info? Saving Changes...
You need a testing strategy that is consistent accross all projects. If there is 30/40% time spent testing, I suggest that there is not enough proofreading before your applications are released for testing. Saving Changes...
Testing should be an integral part of development and accomplished throughout the project. All that should be left to do at the end is final integration testing and user acceptance testing. If your testing time is distributed throughout the project then management is less likely to go in and slash the time you have planned for it. Saving Changes...
You should publish the Project Request information along with the Agenda prior to the meeting inviting all whose management areas are impacted by the request. Saving Changes...
Andrew LindsayBusiness Engagement Manager| Wood GroupHouston, Tx, United States
To improve estimates for project management or testing activities you could review the actual effort from previous (similar) projects and use that as the starting point metric rather than sticking with a 10% or 20% metric which is never going to be met. Perhaps allowing the correct amount of budget for these activies would create the space to find a better approach and drive down the effort required in future - reducing the metric. Saving Changes...
John ZacharProduct Dev Manager| Association for Project Management (APM)Brackley,, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
There seems to be two discussions going on here - first project intiation -
I try to hold a project initiation workshop (PIW). Those that should attend would be project manager, sponsor, champion if different than sponsor, senior user, some regular users (2 or 3), a couple of the project team members (probably team leaders). I would expect to achieve the following during the intiation workshop: a first stab at the scope of the project (what will be deliver), a first stab at a stakeholder management plan, a fist stab at a benefits realisation plan, etc.
What I strive for is to help all involved gain an understanding of just how big the project is. In order to produce the benefits realisation plan for example, and good understanding of what benefits are to be expected needs to be inplance. To determine the scope fo the project, what will be delivered, a good understanding of what the problem is, and how it will be solved has to be inplace. You can then ask yourself, if I deliver all these products, will I meet my objective, satisfy the CSFs and solve the problem. If I am expecting these benefits, what product or deliverable will permit the benefit to be acquired. Looking at the products, if I am spending money on this product, what benefit will it contribute to - if there are gaps, then they need to be filled.
In terms of testing, if it is taking 30/40% of your project budget to 'test', then your experience suggests that estimating 10% for testing is wrong. Use past experience and estimate 30/40%. Even if it isn't the most effective way to do it, just the fact that it becomes predictable, and therefore you can set expectations has tons of merit.
Hope this helps
JZ Saving Changes...
Rafik BWFM CoE – Strategy & Optimization| SecuritasCharlotte, Nc, United States
Hello All,
My group is beginning a project to upgrade our corporate portal environment. This involves adding new HW, developing new content designs, and migrating existing content into the new designs. Has anyone gone down this path before? Is there anyone willing to share project plans??
Actually ANY Web-related project plans would be helpful!
