Obviously, the cheapest time to cancel a project is before it begins. It is well worth your time to scrutinize projects before beginning investments. Ensure every project has a business case for action; specific, quantifiable, and validated benefits; a business sponsor; and alignment with the business goals. Be sure that you identify risks and costs objectively and thoroughly. The following are examples of risk factors to consider when evaluating a project as they could affect the project cost:
- Size
- Organizational structure
- Number of parties involved
- Technical complexity
- Length of schedule
- Knowledge of technology being used
- Experience of project management team
- Skills of staff
- Experience with tools being employed
- Data conversion
- Implementation complexities
- Flexibility in schedule
- Number of interfaces
- Amount of new infrastructure components required
- Amount outside of project team control
Identify actions to mitigate risks and establish procedures to monitor them as the project progresses. Have a strong governance process to review and prioritize projects based on the feasibility and business case.
Requirements
Clearly documented requirements reduce waste and ensure that applications meet the needs of the business. Verify that you have documented standards that are followed when requirements are defined. Use prototyping tools or process modeling tools to help develop and visualize the requirements. Redesign the business processes as that is where you find the majority of cost savings.
Design and Development
Chapter 4—Business Applications—outlines options for doing custom development and advantages to having a buy before build strategy. Whenever possible, do not develop an application unless it is required and unless there are no vendor packages or other options available. In the event you are implementing a vendor package, the design and development phase consists of configuring the software package and designing minimal customizations, interfaces, and conversions.
Design and develop applications with reusability in mind. Every time you reuse a portion of code, you save money. Look at the needs of the entire enterprise rather than the needs of one specific department. The more you leverage a solution, the less expensive it is by functionality or user. Review the design with others for additional input.
Document and follow concise standards for coding and development. Minimize the number of development languages as each additional language bears costs and resources to support. Plan development tasks with schedules and date commitments for tasks that are less than one week in duration in order to minimize the 90 percent-done syndrome (90 percent done for 90 percent of the project schedule).
Reduce development cycles and costs with agile development methodologies to get faster results with less cost and effort. Compared to traditional waterfall methodologies with agile software development, companies have improved time to market and quality with increased collaboration and productivity.
Pay particular attention to interfaces and have an overall interface strategy or application architecture. In fact, most application problems that occur can be found in bridges and interfaces between applications. Many companies that have a strategy to purchase vendor packages find themselves in the legendary plate-of-spaghetti interface dilemma where 80 percent of effort and projects go to figuring out and maintaining all the interfaces rather than adding new functionality.
Test and Validation
Detecting and fixing errors early cost much less than fixing errors at the end of the process or when the system is in production. Depending on your development methodology, introduce testing as early into the development process as possible. Testing small units of code along the way is much more efficient than waiting until completing an entire system before finding issues.
Have clearly documented test plans. Typically, it is cost beneficial to automate testing with test tools, particularly for regression and stress testing. Ensure the test environment is an accurate representation of the production environment as struggling with incomplete test environments is time consuming and costly. Having a quality assurance program with checkpoints to minimize downstream errors saves time and money and provides consistency in testing in all areas. Identify and report quality metrics to improve processes and quality. Complete user training and certification as an untrained user costs the company money. Document the system to minimize support costs.
Post-Implementation Review
Many companies have great intentions to review projects after completion but often do not do so as they rapidly move on to the next project. Carefully reviewing project successes and issues helps to reduce costs in the next project if you implement corrective action. Take time to survey users and review project metrics to track quality, delivery, and satisfaction. Document lessons that you have learned and apply them to subsequent projects. Mistakes cost money.
Although the post-implementation survey or interview should include many aspects of questions related to the project, the following are questions related to cost reduction that the review should include:
- Did the project deliver the projected savings identified in the project justification proposal?
- If no, what savings were not achieved?
- What savings have been realized from the project?
- Have any savings been realized that were not anticipated?
- Will any additional savings be realized in the future? If so, when?
- What must we complete to achieve the savings identified in the initial project proposal?
- Was the project completed on time?
- Was the project completed on budget?
- What could have been done to complete the project more efficiently?
- How efficient and effective were project team meetings?
- Were the objectives of the project clearly defined?
- Were the objectives for your work and tasks clearly defined?
- Was your role clearly defined?
- Were you adequately involved in project decisions and activity?
- Did the executives sufficiently support the project?
- Was cross-functional participation adequate?
- Was the team committed to the project schedule and budget?
- What were the main bottlenecks or frustrations in the project? How could they be avoided in future efforts?
- What suggestions do you have for improvement? What would you change in the next project?
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