How can you create a realistic timeline for an enterprise software project?
Enterprise software projects are complex, costly, and often involve multiple stakeholders, requirements, and dependencies. Creating a realistic timeline for such projects is crucial for managing expectations, resources, and risks. However, it is not easy to estimate how long each task, phase, and milestone will take, and how they will affect each other. In this article, we will share some tips on how to create a realistic timeline for an enterprise software project, based on best practices and common challenges.
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Bharti G.VP-SAP Business & COE, APAC, I help CXO achieve Sustainable Enterprise Digital Transformation and simplify complex…
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Pablo Junco BoquerExecutive Director at Microsoft • Forbes Tech Council Member • MSFT HOLA WW ERG Co-Chair
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Miguel PinillaTechnology and Supply Chain Executive @ Salduba Technologies | PhD, Manufacturing Information Systems
The first step to create a realistic timeline is to define the scope and objectives of the project. What is the problem that the software will solve? Who are the users and beneficiaries? What are the features and functionalities that the software will provide? How will the software integrate with other systems and platforms? These questions will help you outline the scope and objectives of the project, and avoid scope creep and ambiguity later on. You should also document the assumptions, constraints, and dependencies that will affect the project, such as budget, resources, regulations, and technical specifications.
The next step is to break down the work into manageable and measurable units. You can use a work breakdown structure (WBS) to identify and organize the tasks, deliverables, and subtasks that are needed to complete the project. A WBS will help you estimate the time, effort, and resources required for each unit, and assign roles and responsibilities to the team members. You can also use a WBS to track the progress and status of each unit, and identify potential risks and issues.
The third step is to use a suitable estimation method to calculate how long each unit will take. There are different methods to estimate the duration of tasks, such as expert judgment, analogy, parametric, or bottom-up. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, depending on the level of detail, accuracy, and uncertainty involved. You should choose a method that fits your project context, scope, and complexity, and apply it consistently. You should also consider the factors that may affect the estimation, such as dependencies, risks, quality standards, and contingencies.
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Pablo Junco Boquer
Executive Director at Microsoft • Forbes Tech Council Member • MSFT HOLA WW ERG Co-Chair
On my experience, I've found that having a mix of both optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints within a proposal team, and sharing these perspectives with those who will execute the project, consistently results in the development of a more realistic timeline for an enterprise software project. Furthermore, initiating actionable milestones at the project's inception proves vital for validating estimations in comparison to project ambitions and for monitoring the team's velocity, ultimately contributing to successful project management.
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Robin Farmer
Programme managers need training to identify and eliminate group think in the estimation phase. If people 's opinions are ignored or they feel pressured to agree in this phase a number of problems will emerge later - lack of ownership, passive resistance and a blame culture will damage what was sold as a collective aim.
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Arvind Suryakumar
Engineering Leader
Remember that any change you bring involves a learning curve across everyone involved. Bake the learning into your estimates and schedules to ensure your team is not on a date driven death march. Carefully assess the nature of changes you plan to bring in and harmonize differing views among the team to instill a sense of strong ownership at the ground level.
The fourth step is to create a schedule that shows the sequence, dependencies, and deadlines of the units. You can use a tool such as a Gantt chart, a network diagram, or a critical path method to visualize the schedule and identify the critical activities, milestones, and buffers. A schedule will help you communicate the timeline to the stakeholders, monitor and control the execution, and adjust the plan if needed. You should also review and update the schedule regularly, and report any changes or deviations to the stakeholders.
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Arvind Suryakumar
Engineering Leader
Deviations are a constant in a the agile world of project execution. While it is key to detect deviations and communicate them regularly, it is also important to explore ways to minimize the deviations and present options and tradeoffs while communicating. This ensures you earn and maintain stakeholder trust, as well as gives your audience a clear picture and potential ways they can extend meaningful help. Remember sometimes presenting a menu of options to offset the date impact of deviations from plan is a mini project in itself. So don’t hesitate to set reasonable DFADs (Date For A Date) while communicating to buy the time you need to present a thoughtful response.
The fifth step is to involve the stakeholders in the timeline creation and management. Stakeholders are the people who have an interest or influence on the project, such as clients, users, sponsors, managers, or vendors. You should engage the stakeholders from the beginning, and solicit their feedback, input, and approval on the scope, objectives, and schedule. You should also keep them informed and updated on the progress, issues, and changes, and manage their expectations and satisfaction. By involving the stakeholders, you can increase the credibility, transparency, and alignment of the timeline.
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Robin Farmer
Many development projects get defocussed by frustrated stakeholders. Senior managers and senior client representatives will inevitably introduce mission creep due to their perception of lack of progress and changing market conditions. This stress in them will enter the development mindset and damage the project culture. Creating and maintaining a "warts and all" communication framework, not shying away from communicating a realistic progress assessment and accepting the threat of having a project stopped or even killed is always an option.
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Sean McLean, PMP
Fractional CIO | AI | Digital Transformation | Intelligent Automation
Communication planning is more important than ever before with remote and hybrid work. Regular standups are easy to maintain but many project sponsors and secondary stakeholders might require multiple communication channels to be agreed upon and executed. For example, a work culture could dictate Email + Slack + Project status update. Thankfully automation can replicate across all channels and reduce manual copy and paste.
The sixth step is to learn and improve from the experience and feedback of the project. You should conduct a post-mortem analysis at the end of the project, and evaluate the performance, results, and lessons learned. You should also compare the actual timeline with the planned timeline, and identify the gaps, variances, and causes. You should document the best practices, challenges, and recommendations for future projects, and share them with the team and the organization. By learning and improving, you can enhance your estimation and scheduling skills, and create more realistic timelines for enterprise software projects.
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Arvind Suryakumar
Engineering Leader
Retrospectives at the end of a project are a chance for the team to gather and discuss holistic feedback, however that’s too little too late, especially for medium to large projects. The team should retrospect at each delivery point to take stock and apply lessons learned to quickly course correct deviations. A common checkpoint is during sprint demoes. More frequent retros make them more efficient as well.
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Robert Freedman
Customer delivery and success leader.
Having done both enterprise implementation and custom development, I'd suggest using a custom development best practice -- the Agile Discovery phase. Enterprise products have never been more Discovery-friendly. Since enterprise projects tend to slip, often because requirements don't mesh with standard functionality, an Agile approach would start with a 30-60 day out-of-the-box implementation and gap analysis by key stakeholders. From there one can make the hard decisions -- do we need this modification/configuration -- and then estimate phasing and time to delivery for solution iterations 1, 2, etc. And don't forget to pad all of the estimates with at least 10%, since something always comes up.
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Vijaykumar Lulla
Create a collaborative environment for the team with the right process, tools and enablers. This includes enabling team members to feel empowered and contribute as a valued stakeholder. While a top down approach may be needed for a program to be successful (including meeting timelines) we need to ensure that traditional team building best practices are not missed out in the “agile” world and necessary investments of management time and bandwidth happens and a mechanism is put in place that not only assess and evaluate teams output but also look at aspects like improvements, risks, individual satisfaction, ability to apply innovation and continuous improvements- allowing for a bottom up view as an additional assurance
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MJ F.
Contrarian ¦ Women's Health Psychiatrist (almost) ¦ Liaison, ATCAMHS ¦ Embrace all of you
Keep it simple. Have a business plan and a product plan to market. Involve the stakeholders and end users in market research or scoping to ensure alignment on needs identification, authenticity of product and solution focus. Be loyal to the reason and flexible to market sensitivity. Maintain a strong quality assurance approach, value end user experience and information design. Professional expertise astride end user needs and experience afe essential
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Sean McLean, PMP
Fractional CIO | AI | Digital Transformation | Intelligent Automation
Develop a simple, efficient and collaborative retrospective model. This will help with proper project maintenance, success, and learning about resource efficiency. One or two solid post-project looks at budget - actual (quite easier if using a task capture tool for automated time entry) can save oodles of future project planning frustration.
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