Professional Project Management
The management of a medium-sized company has approved the development of a successor product, but is troubled by doubts, because the estimated development costs are considerably higher than originally assumed.
After analyzing the situation, Kontrapunkt Technology uncovers a number of inconsistencies:
- The project team evidently has no shared understanding of the new product requirements.
- A large part of the planned resources is still tied up finishing another project.
- According to the current schedule, the first integration of the subsystems is not planned until 48 weeks after project start.
Within three months, Kontrapunkt Technology, together with the project team, the group leaders and management, reorganizes the project:
The resources of the competing project are consolidated, and its remaining work is limited to what is strictly necessary. Most of the team is fully released and now focuses entirely on the new project.
The existing product requirements are carefully reviewed and segmented by the whole team. This groundwork alone resolves numerous misunderstandings. Kontrapunkt Technology then works out the incomplete or still-missing requirements in small groups, taking care not to confuse specifications with solutions. Shared understanding of the content deepens, and the team's ability to articulate requirements is actively strengthened.
The system architecture is critically analyzed. The team recognizes that partial integrations can be carried out on already-existing platforms. Clever parallelization of work packages makes it possible to integrate every two to three months — in effect, continuously. This means a substantial reduction in risk, a drastic increase in quality, and safeguards the planned market launch.
Result
Based on the consolidation of resources, the sharpened requirements and the introduction of continuous integration, the effort required to deliver the work packages is re-estimated and confirmed.