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This article is continued from last week’s column on Hiding Project Overruns. 

Part One: http://computersight.com/computers/hiding-project-overruns-part-one/

Dumped Requirements Deflation

“Dumped Requirements Deflation” is the other side of the coin from Change Order Inflation.  It is a situation where the project has some minor requirements that may no longer be needed, or of such low value to the project that it becomes clear some of the work can be removed.  For example, requirement “X” might be a simple data entry program supporting a table that doesn’t change once it is loaded at project startup.  In this example, the value of $20,000 was put it into the original software estimate.  The Project Manager can approach the client and offer to reduce the costs of the project by dumping that requirement. The client is told that a $10,000 savings can be had by removing this requirement. By dumping a $20,000 requirement and crediting the project with $10,000, the overrun was just reduced by the difference assuming costs haven’t already been incurred for the dumped requirement.  $10,000 of additional project money has been allocated without the client’s knowledge. 

This one is great for the project manager.  It makes the project come in closer to budget and scores points with the client for saving them some money.

Strategy to avoid Dumped Requirements:

If you as the client feel that this may be happening to you, it follows much of the same routine as in “Change Order Inflation” as discussed in Part One of this series.

• Have a consultant help you.  They should be knowledgeable in databases and programming as well as project management.
• Ask for the details of the savings by low level tasks.
• Take out your original project plan that estimated the project.  Specifically you will be looking at the requirements for the dumped item(s).
• Drill down and require that the technical lead justify the hours saved.

Keeping the original estimates can be very valuable for the client on software projects.  You can go back to these estimates and hold your project manager to their word.

Next week in part three, we will be covering Management Reserve Inflation.  Management Reserve Inflation is a method of inflating the project baseline so even if the project is completely uncontrolled there is a good chance it will come in on or below budget.

Part three of this series can be found at:

http://computersight.com/computers/hiding-project-overruns-part-three/

About the author:

Lawrence (Lance) Geeck is managing partner of Geeck Consulting Services. He has 30 years experience in managing software and hardware integration operations in roles such as CIO, CTO, Director of Development, Director of Project Management Office (PMO) and as a strategic consultant. Lance can be reached at Lance@Geeck.net.  

 Links to other articles by the author:

Starting a Project Management Office

Discussed are the types of project offices, tips whether a PMO makes sense, goals of a PMO, and roles of the members.  This article is located:

http://bizcovering.com/business/starting-a-project-management-office/

Offshore Improvements

Discussion of “Test Driven Development” programming concepts in an offshore development environment.  Discussed are the issues of quality where the design work is done in one location and development in a physically separate location.  This article is on the Dr. Dobb’s website: http://www.ddj.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=SO1CJ5SHLZCIWQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=184415327