How Do You Know That SAP BW Project Will Take 9 Months? [Calculator]

Can You Really Estimate a SAP BW Project in Five Minutes?

If you are like us, you get many, many SAP BW project offers each day?  Usually, they say something like “SAP BW Consultant wanted for 9 month project”.  

Then, a long list of required qualifications are given regarding what the SAP consultant needs to know.  So far, so good.  However, what is ‘NEVER’ stated is how do they know it will take 9 months?

The truth is, they don’t. 

We previously covered the SAP BW Project Estimation Rules of Thumb we use.

Working with SAP BW Consulting [Consultation]

Quickly summarized, they boil down to:

• For a report based on standard Business Warehouse Content, you can safely estimate the duration, typically 1-3 months for the first go live.
  
  The only Business Content that is considered close to 100% useable out-of-the box is Finance, everything else is more of a guide.
  
  
• For everything else, you cannot.  SAP officially says 3 to “N” months.

So What Should We See in These SAP BW Project Consulting Request?

• What stage of implementation is the SAP ERP Project in?
  
  
• What stage is the SAP BW Project?
  
  
• If it is a new SAP Business Intelligence project, then has the system been installed and tested end-to-end.
  
  
• What SAP BW Project estimation has been done, how, by whom, using what assumptions, to arrive at a ‘9 month project’?
  
  
• If it is an existing project, what is live?
  
  What does "live" mean for that particular customer?
  
  
• Does the project involve any travel other than to and from one work location? 
  
  
• What version of SAP and BW are they on?
  
  
• What other projects are going on both within the SAP environment and in the wider company environment?
  
  
• What other SAP BW resources are available and in what capacity will they be working?
  
  
• Will any of the work be done off-shore.  
  
  If so, add N additional months per report.
  
  Have the severe, negative effects been accounted for in terms of loss of direct face-to-face communication with the business users and the increase in communication channel complexity?

As you can see, there are a lot of questions to be answered to really have an idea of how long you will need your SAP BW Consultant. 

If you want to avoid project estimation problems, we highly recommend you consult with the experts to get answers to these questions in order to have a ‘rough’ idea of how long your project will actually take.  

On the other hand, if you would like a way to quickly estimate how long your SAP BW project will really take, you could just use our handy online SAP BW Project Estimator.

Do You Have Other Factors You Use To Estimate BW Projects With?  Let Us Know!

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