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How long should it take?
Observations on the practice of estimation
I had heard this story long time back. There was this gentleman visiting a historical fort situated in a small village. He was walking his way to the fort but unaware of how far the place was. On the way, he saw an old man sitting on the steps of his house soaking the morning sun and asked him “Baba (loose translation: the revered), how long will it take to reach the fort?” The old man remained silent. Assuming the old man to be hard of hearing, the visitor continued his walk. In about two minutes, the old man called him back and told that it might take him forty minutes. Looking at the nonplussed and almost angry expression on the visitor’s face, the old man added “Son, unless I know your pace, how would I be sure of the time you would take?”
I wish the many of us in the project management community had the same patience and wisdom which the old man had in this story, when it comes to estimating and scheduling.
Through this blog I wanted to bring out some prevalent mistakes in estimation and scheduling.
Delivering Business Value with PMO
An effective IT PMO can deliver breakthrough results in most PM areas including increased throughput, speed & reliability, significant reduction in resource burn-out, higher productivity, leading to high benefit/ cost ratios for IT investments.
Fill It, Shut It, Forget It
Long before Hrithik Roshan[1] became their brand ambassador and set hearts “Dhak, Dhak, Go”, Hero Honda used to run an advertising campaign – “Fill it, shut it, forget it”. They were referring to the fuel economy of their bike which was claimed as 80 kilometres per litre. That’s why the line “Fill it …”
This popular ad-line popped up in my mind from nowhere, when a close colleague remarked that his project just goes on and on and on. I began to wonder if the Hero Honda tag line “Fill it …” applied to project management too. I see more people looking at project management as a template filling game. The biggest and most talked about template we fill up is the risk management template. Fill it, save and close it and forget it seems to the practice of risk management.
My observation has been that using standard checklist people do prepare a list of risk or a risk register as described in PMBOK. But the question is, do we move beyond risk identification and manage risks at all? So in-spite of all the great intent with which register and plans are prepared, projects continue to fail. In my view this is perhaps due to two problems
