I intend to develop the below model in a future post, but for the moment, here’s the gist of it:
If your organization is low on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) then don’t bother with overly engineered and prolonged project estimation processes (that you know and I know are at present entirely inaccurate)!
Rather:
- Determine the overall projects’ yearly budget for the business unit;
- Use that total allocation to determine monthly projects’ budget;
- Use the monthly allocation to determine maximum level of resources your budget can buy;
- Prioritize your requests and, starting with the highest priority start iterating your development in an Agile fashion (so deliveries are realized in a visible fashion);
- You will not run out of money because you are only spending what you’ve allocated and the only unknown is how much delivery you will obtain over time. Given the massive inaccuracies of cost and time estimation in IT projects in low maturity organizations it is unlikely your organization will be any worth of and my assessment is that you will end up getting better value for money as a result!
Disclaimer: I have NOT tested this theory in practice and all it represents is a thought experiment that seems logical to me. Comments and criticism are welcome.
Think about it!
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Shim, It’ll never fly.
Where do you come up with these crazy ideas!
Ha, ha, ha.
I think you were there when the seeds were planted.
Anyway, it needs some ‘progressive elaboration’ but we’ve got other things to worry about now.
Cheers, Shim.
It will work to a fashion. I would be ensuring that there is a programme set up to define and mature your organisations ability to effectively run projects.
A preferred option may be to buy maturity into an organisation via a 3rd party. I have successfully done this on a few separate occasions, particularly when introducing a new technology or framework into an organisation. If your organisation is open to having symbiotic relationships with 3rd parties then this can be a very effective model to use.
Of course there are 1,001 models depending on your organisations culture, needs, maturity and desire for real change.
Good luck and go for it, as it’s a much more honest model than pretending that an estimate is accurate or useful.
Cheers,
Andy
Hey Andy, not sure how quickly this is going to catch up. As David Wilson (see in Complexity CAN be managed…but only once it is measured) points out, reducing complexity often results in reduced functionality. I don’t think this is a problem as the focus will shift to delivering the functionality really needed and giving up on those adding complexity with diminishing returns.
Anyway, there’s more work to be done and that’s exactly what we’re here for.
Cheers, Shim.