Business Intelligence Project Estimation Techniques
"It depends". If you’re around SAP long enough, you’ll come to know this phrase well. Sometimes, it can be really frustrating to hear those famous last words, “it depends”, other times, it can lead to some useful conversations.
But, a customer wants an estimate using project estimation techniques they can take to the bank. There are a lot of studies that suggest that when as10 SAP BW Project Estimation Best Practices To Roll-Out Today [Calculator]ked to estimate something, the doer typically overestimates to give himself some wiggle room.
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When it comes to SAP BW, or SAP Lumira, or BusinessObjects xCelsius, Dashboard builder or Microsoft Analysis, it truly does ‘depend’.
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Why is that?
How can we get to a more accurate project estimate? I believe there are some key techniques which in many instances, have more to do with either assumptions or past project activities.
In the case of Global Rollouts, some of the key SAP BW Project Estimation assumptions include the following:
- Has the report been developed before for another global Location?
If it has, are the same business processes in use at the new location?
If the existing business processes cannot be standardized before the ‘global standard report’ is released into production, you most likely cannot ‘just turn it on and let it run’. - An additional, and almost underappreciated aspect of Global Rollouts is the additional time required to gather or validate requirements due to the language differences.
- Regarding an estimation factor to use to account for the multiple language overhead, it can range from 1.5 to 2.5 times as long, more if the language skills have to be overcome with translations versus using bilingual consultants.
- If using bilingual (or multi-lingual), you must add additional time not only for the translation process of any specific process, but as well, the time lost doing any other existing tasks where the Multilanguage aspect is not relevant.
More than a few times, you will be asked to come to an impromptu meeting to translate. - Dramatic increases in required consulting time also come from having to work in multiple time zones.
It may well be the case that, depending on where the HQ is and the deployment location is, there may only be a small 2 hours window where both teams coincide with each other. - If you take into consideration the previous points, i.e., the multilingual aspects and the time zone differences, you may well get a multiplier effect as far as increased development time requirements.
- Additional complexity is to be expected (and thus, additional development time) when the project scope includes a combination of tools, such as SAP Lumira and SAP BW or BusinessObjects.
This is not because the tools are necessarily more difficult to use, but rather because they fundamentally represent new capabilities never before introduced in most business environments. - Estimating dashboard development time is one of those areas where ‘it depends’ truly is the case.
For here, in addition to needing highly skilled datawarehouse consulting skills, you also need to be somewhat artistic and exceptionally skilled at uncovering requirements from the business user, while keeping expectations in check. - In many cases, the implementation done in the past may include ABAP code which could be replaced by now standard SAP BW functionality.
In order to estimate how long it would take to deliver the new reports, the consultant will have to make an evaluation of ABAP code.
This evaluation will take time and it will also take additional time to determine if standard SAP BW functionality can replace the code. - In those cases where code is to be retired, there is also some additional activity required in terms of migrating the old to the new and testing and deploying.
Project Estimation Tools and Professional Judgement Required
Reading through the list above, you’ll notice that only a few of them are numerical. That is because it takes a while to really be able to use our SAP BW Estimator and professional judgement to arrive at an estimate you can live with.
That is why we keep our current FREE SAP BW Project Estimator simple, as we know every situation is unique and you will need to work with us to really get a trustworthy estimate. By the way, you can run the calculator by clicking on the button below, and if you need help with your estimate, we can help.
We would love to hear from you in our comments section below.
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