Infosys-Oracle Blog : Total Project Estimation- Non Developmental Time estimation

Guest post by
Jaideep Ranjan Vijayakar, Principal Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

As they say "A journey of a thousand miles begins but with just one step" so too any Implementation project begins but with its estimation. Many a project flounder due to inaccurate estimates made to start with. Without an accurate estimation of effort and timeline it's difficult, if not impossible, to allocate the correct resources to the project or determine milestone dates and phase durations.

Typically most IT companies drive their estimates from the technical components that need to be developed as a part of the implementation. There is a wealth of data available on the time taken to develop components based on the complexity (SMC) and type of component (RICEWP). This is similar to the Function Point or LOC approach to estimation. However this does not take into account the time and effort spent in getting the business requirements to a stage where the Functional Designs are ready to begin the technical effort. We are able to estimate the technical effort and staffing fairly easily but struggle to understand the Functional Effort or System Analyst effort that is required to support the development.

To ensure that the efforts are comprehensive we need to take a comprehensive look at the following activities that make up the development lifecycle.

1.Requirement/Proof of Concept/Analysis

2.Functional Design

3.Technical Design/Build/Unit testing

4.Testing (SIT/UAT)

5.Config/Implement

7.Performance Testing

8.Regression Testing

DBA

Project Management

Now providing estimates for each of these activities is not an easy task. However a simple way to arrive with a ballpark estimate is to base the effort on the core development piece around which these activities are centered. The complexity of the development component can be a proxy for the effort required for the requirement gathering, testing and other activities. This may not be true in some cases but at least it can be used as a benchmark, which can then be tweaked if required by the project managers for variants.

Another way to arrive at estimates for the Requirement analysis and Functional design phase is what I call the Recursive Meeting approach. This considers the complexity of the business processes which are being solutioned for and factors in the number of meetings, revisions and reviews that would be required to freeze the requirements and functional designs. It also tries to understand the Key Stakeholders/Participants required at each step of the process. Typical participants are Global Process Owners, Subject Matter Experts, System Analysts along with the Process and Functional Consultants. By providing estimates of average meeting time for each revision and guidelines on how many revisions would be required based on process complexity we can arrive at effort estimates required to decompose requirements down to the component design level. The table below gives an indicative view of this approach.

^Step	^{Step Details}	^Participants	*^{Sample Duration}**	^{Comment/Output}
^1*	^{Decomposition of requirements}	^{Global Process Owners, SMEs} ^{System Analysts} ^{Process Consultants, Functional Consultants}	^{0.5 Days}	^{Step 1-3 is an Iterative Process}^{till Requirements Finalized} ^{Sample Iterations Estimates} ^{3 Iterations for Simple} ^{5 Iterations for Medium} ^{7 Iterations for Complex}
^2*	^{Document Details from Step 1}	^{System Analysts} ^{Functional Consultants}	^{0.5 Days}
^3*	^{Review Requirement Documentation}	^{Global Process Owners, SMEs} ^{System Analysts} ^{Process Consultants, Functional Consultants}	^{0.5 Days}
⁴	^{Analysis of Requirements- High Level Fit Gap}	^{System Analysts} ^{Functional Consultants}	^{2 Days}	^{High Level Fit Gap Analysis}
⁵	^{Confirm Fit Gap Analysis}	^{Global Process Owners, SMEs} ^{System Analysts} ^{Process Consultants, Functional Consultants}	^{0.5 Days}	^{Confirmed Fit Gap Analysis}
⁶	^{Determination of RICE components}	^{Global Process Owners, SMEs} ^{System Analysts} ^{Process Consultants, Functional Consultants}	^{1.5 days}	^{Draft List of RICE Components}
⁷	^{Confirm RICE Components}	^{Global Process Owners, SMEs} ^{System Analysts} ^{Process Consultants, Functional Consultants}	^{0.5 Days}	^{Confirmed List of RICE Components}
⁸	^{Prepare Functional Design Documents}	^{System Analysts} ^{Functional Consultants}	^{Depending on Complexity}	^{Functional Design Document}