1. Project Planning & Estimating – Are we there yet?
Deb Smith
Mayo Clinic, Enterprise Portfolio Management Office (EPMO)

2. Introduction Education Employment/Experience
MS in Project Mgmt from SMU of MN October 2006
Undergrad in Electrical & Computer Engineering from University of Michigan
Employment/Experience
Mayo Clinic Enterprise Portfolio Management Office, Sr. Project Consultant
Adjunct Professor Saint Mary’s University MS Project Mgmt since 2006
Project/Portfolio Manager 8 yrs (Mayo)
IT Project Manager 15 yrs (IBM & Mayo)
PMI Certified PMP 25 February 2002

3. Discussion Overview Project Life Cycle Estimating Projects
What Makes Projects Different
“Adjust the use and rigor”
Questions and Comments

4. What is a project? Organized set of work efforts.
Progressively elaborated
Limited by time and resources
Have a defined beginning and ending
Project – “a temporary endeavor undertaken to
create a unique product, service, or result.” PMBOK® Guide

5. Mayo Enterprise Standard
What is a Project?
It is a temporary endeavor with specific start and end dates that can answer “yes” to one or more of the following questions:
Does the activity require independent approval?
Does the activity require specific funding and have separate budget? (e.g. Capital and/or operational expenses)
Is there a specific team focused on this activity outside of normal operations?
Can this activity be implemented independently of other activities?
Does this activity require more than 20 person hours? (this may be of IT Infrastructure and/or combined resource effort - still working this out)
This is Mayo’s definition of a project; does your organization have one? What is it?

6. Project Life Cycle Stages/Process Groups
Initiating — when a project is proposed, planned at a high level, and key participants commit to it in broad terms
Planning — starts after the initial commitment, includes detailed planning, and ends when all stakeholders accept the entire detailed plan
Executing — includes authorizing, executing, monitoring, and controlling work until the customer accepts the project deliverables
Closing — all activities after customer acceptance to ensure project is completed, lessons are learned, resources are reassigned, and contributions are recognized.
Planning
Monitor and Control
Majority of PMs time is spent in planning

7. Project Life Cycle Stages
Project Manager

8. Start Developing the Project Plan
Questions
Documentation
What is to be done?
Scope definition document
Why should we do it?
Business case or rationale
How should we do it?
Strategy & Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
In what sequence?
Network Diagram
Where should work be done?
Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS)
When should work be done?
Schedule Plan
Who should do the work?
Resource Utilization Plan
How much will it cost?
Cost Plan or Budget Plan
How do we judge process?
Milestone Plan or Earned Value (EV) Plan
Who is the client and the team?
What is the work to be done?
What timeframe?
What cost?
What is the quality?
What are the stakeholder expectations?
Where is the team? Are we global resourcing and what about procurement?
When is each task due?
How will it get done?
How will it get paid for ?
How is the project plan going to be developed?
Who, What, When, Where, & How

9. Mayo Enterprise Standard
Use as a checklist… may not need all the documentation; but you do need to think about all of these things!

10. Project Management
Project management includes work processes that initiate, plan, execute, and close work
Work processes require tradeoffs among the scope, quality, cost, and schedule of the project
PM includes administrative tasks for planning, documenting, and controlling work
PM includes leadership tasks for visioning, motivating, and promoting work associates.
Projects are most effectively managed with one person being assigned accountability
Project managers negotiate with functional managers
A project manager needs to develop strong communication and leadership skills in order to persuade subordinates to focus on the project when other work also beckons.

11. Estimating Projects

12. How to Estimate Have the right people make the estimate
Use history and experience as guide
The smaller the unit of work being estimated the better the estimate
Bottom-up approach best – most costly
Effort-based activities may be compressed by adding staff
The “mythical man month”
Some people tend to estimate optimistically. Keep in mind:
Actual productive time (~ 80%)
Learning curves/Rework
Competing priorities and dependencies not available on time (Document the assumptions and approach)
Emergencies/illness/Vacation
Do not pad the numbers
This is more an FYI but can be a whole course in and of itself! The point is to make the team aware that there is a science to estimating (grand formulas in some cases), but a couple reminders will go a long way in keeping them out of trouble.
The right people are usually those who are actually going to do the work or…
The right people may be those that have done this task in the past or at another agency
A more accurate sizing comes from starting with the duration at the most detailed level and rolling it up, as opposed to saying this goal should take xx days or weeks. Sometimes there is not enough information on the details when you do the sizing, so that then becomes a risk and we’ll talk about that next!
Do not pad as the project may not get approved if the estimate is too high or if money/resources are allocated where they are not needed it is taking away from other valuable projects.
Document, document, document your approach and assumptions right along side your estimate.

13. 10 Tips for Increasing Estimating Accuracy
Create and use planning documents
Identify assumptions and constraints
Simplify
Prioritize deliverables
Use complexity factor
Manage “iron triangle”
Track actuals
Modify plans/forecasting
Use lessons learned
Use more than one method to arrive at an estimate
COST
Quality
TIME
SCOPE
Maintain an ongoing "actual hours" database of the recorded time spent on each aspect of your projects. Use the data to help estimate future projects and identify the historically accurate buffer time needed to realistically perform the work.
Create and use planning documents, such as specifications and project plans.
Perform a detailed task analysis of the work to be performed.
Use a "complexity factor" as a multiplier to determine whether a pending project is more or less complex than a previous one.
Use more than one method to arrive at an estimate, and look for a midpoint among all of them.
Identify a set of caveats, constraints, and assumptions to accompany your calculations, which would bound the conditions under which your estimates would be meaningful. (Anything that occurs outside of those constraints would be considered out of scope.)
If the proposed budget or schedule seems inadequate to do the work, propose adjusting upward or downward one or more of the four project scoping criteria: cost, schedule, quality, and features.
Consider simpler or more efficient ways to organise and perform the work.
Plan and estimate the project rollout from the very beginning so that the rollout won't become a chaotic scramble at the end. For instance, you could propose using a minimally disruptive approach, such as a pilot programme or a phased implementation.
In really nebulous situations, consider a phase-based approach, where the first phase focuses primarily on requirements gathering and estimating.
Develop contingency plans by prioritising the deliverables right from the start into "must-have" and "nice-to-have" categories.
Refer to your lessons-learned database for "20:20 foresight" on new projects, and incorporate your best practices into future estimates.

14. Ensure success of each team member
Consider partial time allocation
Determine collision or collaboration points
Develop efficient ways to organize and perform the work

15. What Makes Projects Different?

16. What Makes Projects Different?
Projects vs. operations
Large or Small
Complex or Simple
Process Improvement or Product Development
Waterfall or Iterative Approach
Projects are temporary
Projects have both routine and unique characteristics
Operations consist of the ongoing work needed to ensure that an organization continues to function effectively

17. Projects vs. Operations
Q: When is maintenance a project?
A: When it is a temporary endeavor that delivers a unique product, service, or result.

18. Size and Complexity

19. Product or Process Improvement

20. Waterfall vs. Iterative
Plan Driven
Adaptive

21. Agile Project Management
Organize the project into short iterations
Only plan in detail for nearby tasks.
PM emphasis is moved from planning to execution
Project planning and definition focus will shift to supporting decisions during project execution instead of up front in planning.
Analogy: Project Manager is “surfing the rolling wave!”

22. Adjust the Use and Rigor

23. Project Mgmt Plan - How Scope Mgmt Plan Schedule Mgmt Plan
Cost Mgmt Plan
Quality Mgmt Plan
Staffing/Resource Mgmt Plan
Communication Mgmt Plan
Risk Mgmt Plan
Stakeholders = Who is the client and the team?
Scope = What is the work to be done?
Project Management Plan = How will the project be executed, monitored, and controlled
How will it get paid for ?
How is the project plan going to be developed?
How will it get done?
-- What timeframe?
-- What cost?
-- What is the quality?
-- What are the stakeholder expectations?
-- Where is the team? Are we global resourcing and what about procurement?
-- When is each task due?

24. How much is too much?
What is your ratio of documentation to deliverables?
What is the percentage of time spent on planning vs. execution?
How many different groups/organizations must be coordinated?
Has this been done before?
Are there critical resource constraints?
What documentation do you need to get funding?
If you are managing a 6 month project it doesn’t make sense to spend a month on planning… unless the project could jeopardize human safety… unfortunately, there is no formula, or tried and true way to define what should be done when. Project Management is both an art and a science… the science is the data gathering, monitoring, controlling, organizing, etc… part of the art of PM is knowing when to use what tools or documents. If in doubt, ask someone. Get a coach/mentor… be a coach/mentor…
Again this is part art; part science… most folks say 10 to 20% of time/cost is spent planning… if you’re at 50% then you should rethink it
The more communicatin and collaboration that is necessary… the more complex the project will be and the more planning you will need.
Does someone have a tried and true template you can use:
Can only one person do the job? Is that person in high demand on other projects? How was your project prioritized compared to others?
What do you have to submit to get funded?

25. Minimum Required Formal Documents
Project Charter
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Communication Plan
Risk Identification and Owners
Status Report
Charter defines and legitimizes the project; it gives the PM authority to manage.
WBS defines the work that must be done. It is derived from the scope statement and is developed to the work package level. The schedule and resource assignments are derived from it.
Communication plan defines what information about the project gets communicated to whom. It can be status, issues, working sessions, etc. It also should point to an organizational change mgmt plan if one is needed. Collaboration is much more than communications; it involves interaction to produce some 'joint' result. Collaboration integrates your ideas and mine into a whole
All risks must be identified at the very least… and owners need to be assigned to them to ensure that they are monitored. Doesn’t do any good to identify them if you just put it on shelf and don’t manage them.
Status Reports are usually required by management and inform everyone of the progress of the project. They should be easy to read; one page, at-a-glance reports that can drilled down into if deemed necessary by managers or stakeholders.

26. Find out if your organization has a recommendation for project documentation. e.g. Mayo’s recommendation…

27. Plan the work!
Work the plan!
NET: Failing to plan is planning to fail

28. Questions, Comments, Suggestions