1.4 Duration Estimates are done by Management
Project failure as one that either goes over budget, over schedule or both, or fails to deliver what the stakeholders actually expected. Every project and organization may differ and should be treated appropriately by using the correct project management and software design methods. Below are the failure factors for duration estimation of a software company.
1. Lack of clear link between the project and the organization’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.
2. Lack of clear senior management and ministerial ownership and leadership.
3. Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders.
4. Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management.
5. Lack of understanding of and contact with the supply industry at senior levels in the organization.
6. Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits).
7. Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps.
8. Inadequate resources and skills to deliver the total delivery portfolio.
Example:
The effort to complete a project is 100 man days but an employee can only spend 80% of their time doing productive work then the duration is 125 days to deliver the project.
Estimation will be affected by a number of factors e.g. sick, holiday, training, going to meetings not related to the project. All the daily tasks that an employee will be expected to undertake. The bottom line is "how productive is a person each day in your organization".
1.10 The Project Manager is too worried about losing job or making people angry.
Being too self conscious about the job safety would hinder the Project Manager's ability to push the project forward. As a project is always filled with unforeseen circumstances, issues like over -budgeting, lack of resources , different views etc may cause a rift between the project team and the stakeholders.
In such situation, Project Manager have to be strong, do not fear to speak up to stakeholders for funds/ resources to push forward the projects.
External or internal stakeholders should be reminded or even rebuked should they do not keep to the dateline as Project Manager is the Managing Director of the project.
Example
A project manager who is afraid of losing his job would not be proactively managing the project as he feared that by being too aggressively and progressive, he might cause the wraths of some of the stakeholders (owners, other project team members).
He would only acts as a site coordinator which coordinates the main contractors with the stakeholders, both internal & external.
A lot of good ideas & innovations may also be refuted due to the manager's fears.
Conclusion
There are lots of debates online about project estimation and ultimately every project will be different because of the people working on it, the technology being used and the expectations of the stakeholders.
Software projects are all about developing new and innovative systems otherwise we would just buy the most appropriate product off the shelf. This means there is no blue print for accurate software estimation – software engineers are not laying bricks to build a house so there is no way to say how many bricks per hour a person can lay and apply that to all projects (the analogy being lines of code = bricks).
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To add on another titles:
ReplyDelete1.2 Sponsor is too busy to listen and too weak to support.
The contemporary role of project sponsors and steering committee members goes far beyond the traditional passive roles of project approval and review. It is critical that senior business executives who have sponsored an IT project must be actively involved, in effect, as an executive project manager in assisting the project manager in the following areas:
stakeholder involvement, commitment and conflict resolution;
benefits planning and realisation;
quality requirements planning;
risk management; and
project change control.
These roles are in addition to the traditional roles of approval, funding and staffing the project.
It is typical in most projects that the project manager has responsibility without authority. In other words, the project manager is not given the requisite organisational or financial power to achieve his or her objectives.
For example, a major stakeholder from a client business group who is organisationally senior to the project manager requests a small scope and objectives change. Without a powerful sponsor, the project manager has little choice but to document and accept the change which will lead to an extension of deadline and budget.
In another typical example, in the initial planning sessions, a senior business stakeholder agrees to give the project manager access to key business experts for defining requirements. During the project, the senior manager reallocates the priorities for the business experts and effectively makes them unavailable to the project manager. This leaves the project manager without any effective options but to slip the schedule until the business experts are available.
These are simple examples of the need for an effective and powerful sponsor as, in both cases, the project manager would be able to raise these problems with the sponsor where he or she would use their power base and authority to address the issue at an executive level.
Best rgds,
Meng Hoe