Developing an Implementation Plan with Iterations by Russ Pitts
Ok, so you have
come to grips with understanding that applying the iterative concept, as
defined by OUM is simply breaking up the project effort you have estimated for
each phase into one or more six week calendar duration blocks of work.
Idea being the
business user(s) or key recipient(s) of work product(s) being developed never
go longer than six weeks without having some sort of review or prototyping of
the work results for an iteration…”think-a-little”, “do-a-little”, and “show-a-little” in a six week or less
timeframe…ideally the business user(s) or
key recipients(s) are involved throughout.
You also
understand the OUM concept that you only plan for that which you have knowledge
of. The concept further defined, a project
plan initially is developed at a high-level, and becomes more detailed as
project knowledge grows. Agreeing to
this concept means you also have to admit to the fallacy that one can plan with
precision beyond six weeks into a project…Anything beyond six weeks is a best
guess in most cases when dealing with software implementation projects.
Project
planning, as defined by OUM begins with the Implementation Plan view, which is
a very high-level perspective of the effort estimated for each of the five OUM
phases, as well as the number of iterations within each phase.
You might
wonder how can you predict the number of iterations for each phase at this
early point in the project. Remember
project planning is not an exact science, and initially is high-level and
abstract in nature, and then becomes more detailed and precise as the project
proceeds.
So where do you
start in defining iterations for each phase for a project?
The following
are three easy steps to initially define the number of iterations for each
phase:
Step 1 => Start with identifying the
known factors…
…Prior to starting a project you
should know:
· The
agreed upon time-period for an iteration (e.g 6 weeks, or 4 weeks, or…) within
a phase (recommend keeping iteration time-period consistent within a phase, if
not for the entire project)
· The
number of resources available for the project
· The
number of total number of man-day (effort) you have estimated for each of the
five OUM phases of the project
· The
number of work days for a week
Step 2 => Calculate the man-days
of effort required for an iteration within a phase…
Lets assume for
the sake of this example there are 10 project resources, and you have estimated
2,536 man-days of work effort which will need to occur for the elaboration
phase of the project. Let’s also assume
a week for this project is defined as 5 business days, and that each iteration
in the elaboration phase will last a calendar duration of 6 weeks. A simple calculation is performed to
calculate the daily burn rate for a single iteration, which produces a result
of…
((Number of resources * days per
week) * duration of iteration) = Number of days required per iteration
((10
resources * 5 days/week) * 6 weeks) = 300 man days of
effort required per iteration
Step 3 => Calculate the number of
iterations that can occur within a phase
Next calculate
the number of iterations that can occur for the amount of man-days of effort
estimated for the phase being considered…
(number of man-days of effort
estimated / number of man-days required per iteration) = # of iterations for
phase
(2,536 man-days of estimated effort
for phase / 300 man days of effort required per iteration) = 8.45 iterations,
which should be rounded to a whole number such as 9 iterations*
*Note - It is
important to note this is an approximate calculation, not an exact
science. This particular example is a
simple one, which assumes all resources are utilized throughout the phase,
including tech resources, etc. (rounding down or up to a whole number based on
project factor considerations). It is
also best in many cases to round up to higher number, as this provides some calendar
scheduling contingency.
