Excutive Summary

• Our Project Schedule Template or Project Scheduler
• Project Planning and Scheduling Generally
• Conflicts of Interest in Project Schedule Development
• The Root of the Change Order
• Project Timeline Estimation
• Our Work in Project Planning Scheduling

Introduction

Creating a project plan or project schedule is one of the most important steps in the process of IT implementation. However, it is also one of the most difficult. The input to the project schedule includes the following inputs:

1. The Consulting Resources
2. The Scope of the Functionality to be Implemented
3. The Maturity of the Implementing Company
4. The Availability of Internal Resources
5. The Implementation Complexity of the Selected Software

Inaccuracies in these assumptions lead, to a project schedule which will be inaccurate as well.

Conflicts of Interest in Project Schedule Development

One of the major problems with project plans and project schedules is that while they may be developed by companies with the domain expertise (expertise in the software), they are often developed by those with a conflict of interest. Many software vendors and consulting companies “backward engineer” the length and cost of the project to get the business. The approach of underestimating the implementation project and then submitting changes to the plan at a later date (after the sale is consummated) is called “change ordering” the client.

The Change Order

Now a change order can be valid or invalid. In many cases, the scope creep was promoted by the customer. In that case, the consulting company or vendor is blameless. We have been on many projects with client driven scope creep, and most projects do have a tendency to increase in scope. In many cases, change orders are deliberate on the part of consulting companies or vendors. In fact, we have seen proposals on the part of some software vendors that promote the idea of implementation timelines that we know are completely unattainable.

However, in either case, the change order is driven by some assumption that was made in the project planning phase that was inaccurate. Our view is that all project schedules produced by biased entities (those that serve to gain implementation business or software sales) should be verified by a third party without any financial bias.

The Brightwork Project Estimation Calculators

We help the process by the development of project schedule template and project schedule calculators as you can see below. The Each project schedule template is customized for a particular application. Each is a specific project scheduler.

Our Work in Project Planning Scheduling

As developers of the most comprehensive project planning and scheduling calculators, we are in a good position to offer project timeline and project planning and scheduling services.

Our calculators provide straightforward answers to project schedule questions of the project timeline. However, with consulting, we can offer the following additions.

• Checking the assumptions that are used to populate the calculators.
• Developing a complete project plan. All of our project plans can be interactively logged into and input provided directly into the project planning software.
• A project timeline with a full sequence.
• We can turn around the project schedule very quickly and at a reasonable cost. Some companies use our project planning and scheduling services to verify plans that they receive from software vendors or consulting companies.
• We provide this service remotely and we can support implementations anywhere in the world.

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