Resource planning

Thu Jan 17 12:18:02 EST 2008

Hi Mike,

I'm not sure we'll agree on this one. I hear you saying the best way to move forward is from the highest degree of certainty possible (e.g. asking for help from an experienced consultant). But sometimes this option is not readily available. What then? Dealing with risk is required instead, and it takes us out of our comfort zone (frustration, mistakes etc). It's good that we've got some metrics out there, which is what I think Ramanan was after. 

Interesting thread, nevertheless.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu]On Behalf Of Mike Pokraka
Sent: 16 January 2008 19:38
To: 'SAP Workflow Users' Group'
Subject: RE: Resource planning

Hi Phil,

I don't know if you were referring to my responses when you talk about "consultants who can dictate terms of reference". This is not the attitude I would like to convey, my apologies if it came across that way.

This has nothing to do with being a consultant or not. I would take the same stance if I were working for the company concerned. In fact, it was also thanks to a disagreement with my bosses over similar 'strategic issues' that I fled my last full-time employment :-) 

It is a simple fact of life that none of us know everything. The tricky part can be knowing when to ask for help (I'm not talking about questions on the WUG). When the stakes are small, we get by with learning on the job. With 50-100 workflows however there is a lot more at stake which is why I was very firm in my suggestion that Ramanan get outside help in. You can slice this any way you'd like, it can only benefit the project in terms of cost, time, frustration, knowledge. It would take a very shortsighted project manager to disagree. 

Take your suggestion about building a plan as an example: That could benefit enormously from having someone with serious project management experience get him started on mapping out all the assumptions. The problem is that all these assumptions interact with each other on a project of that scale, and that in itself can be a major undertaking. Many of these questions cannot be answered over the WUG, it NEEDS someone to talk to people and get an idea of the way they work etc. 

Cheers, 

Mike

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Kisloff, Philip B
Sent: 16 January 2008 15:11
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: RE: Resource planning

Hi Ramanan

I have a lot of empathy with your situation. You have been tasked to come up with a plan for a major workflow implementation. Some elements are known, some are unknown. It's complex, and you feel you may get some of it wrong. How you must envy those consultants who can dictate terms of reference, or else walk away. Fair play to them. Then there those of us who have to play with the hand we're  dealt.  Uncertain requirements, limited resources - the usual project scenario.

If I was in your position, I would do the following: Build a plan around a clearly written set of assumptions. Make it clear that if these assumptions are wrong, then so will be the plan. Get buy-in around these assumptions. It helps if they are realistic, and can be justified. Monitor your assumptions constantly, and be quick to point out when they diverge from reality (a blame-free culture helps). When your assumptions need changing, be quick to amend the plan, and communicate that. Get buy-in from the project sponsors around this approach. It shouldn't be too difficult (a blame-free culture helps). Have a plan B for less ambitious scenarios. Have this plan agreed, too.

Expect to be blamed when things go wrong - you had a choice whether to take this on, right ? Just remember what Count von Moltke said  -No [battle] plan survives contact with the enemy ;)

Good luck, and let us know how it progresses.

best regards

Phil

 -----Original Message-----
From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu]On Behalf Of Srinivasan Ramanan
Sent: 16 January 2008 13:43
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: RE: Resource planning

Dear Mike,
I do understand all the points in your e-mail. I completely agree that more effort put on planning makes the steps easy in realization.
The situation is I have is:

                 We expect that there will be 100 workflows in the ECC6.0
                 We do also have some workflows running at differect geographical locations. The count is 50. 
                 We just doubled it up that when all locations get into ECC6.0 , we predicted that count to go to 100.
                 We have 4 personnels who already developed and are administering the current 50.
                 But please bear in mind that some WFs may not be upto best practice, thats why needed some resources to bring these current to a best practice levels and also contribute for newer ones.

Having said all that, whats on the planning side. No Functional specifications exist for the TO BE workflows, which I have numbered as 100.
We expect them to be completed by Feb 2008 end.
March is the kickoff for realization. Actual work begins in April.

Now all the requird resource allocation is started, but in progress. I am in the process of estimating the needs for WF and I know I have 4 personnels. It always take some time to complete the re-trainng in-house personnels or recruit new developers.

So I have started my resource planning I think very well ahead ( as you said no numbers will be whispered until a meaningful estimate is in hand ), and I hope to come up with a better resolution by end of Feb 2008. 

What I really meant by empirical is a kind of stastical. I know that statistical also sometimes not considered scientific. You can not start planning at meticulous level like ( 175 mins for a development of WF task with ABAP coding of 1500 lines ). We will end up with very good perfectly executable plan, but would have missed the bus ( ie. deadlines ). So I have no option but to trade of some accuracy in my estimate to be in the game.

with sincere regards
Ramanan

  _____  

From: asap at workflowconnections.com
To: sap-wug at mit.edu
Subject: RE: Resource planning
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:28:09 +0000

<sigh> I just told you I wouldn't so much as whisper an estimate without about a month's research. 

Not even a day later you have a proposal. A proposal that ignores the majority of what I said before.  

I take back my statement about suggesting you get an Experienced consultant in. 

Instead, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND you get an EXPERIENCED consultant to help you out. 

Planning is not a game. It has a far bigger influence on cost and success than the build itself (which should take up less than half the time). SAP only charge a couple of thousand dollars per day. I say "only" because they'll save you tens of thousands (If you listen to them of course). How so? By not having to scrap or redo parts of a badly planned project, never mind the damage to your reputation. 

How do I know it's already badly planned? See first two sentences of this email. 

Please understand that I'm not having a go at you, but your two posts make it clear that you need a reality check. Not giving you an answer is the most helpful we can be. Anyone that gives you estimates on this list will do more harm than good because they will probably be wrong (Ask on SDN and you will get plenty of those).

Even though the WUG ranks just behind Wikipedia in knowledge content, there are just too many factors to do this with the help of a mailing list. Feel free to ask about specifics as you work your way through requirements gathering. 

Good luck, 

Mike

PS: Your use of the word 'empirical' is the exact opposite of its meaning. Your values are certainly not based on facts and observation. 

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Srinivasan Ramanan
Sent: 15 January 2008 15:01
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: RE: Resource planning

Thanks Mike,
I appreciate your inputs. Its really difficult to answer this question. 
What I did is: ( Since I am in the position to answer this to my company as an employee of the company )
I assumed these followings:
              10 complex workflows ( having more than 20 tasks )
              30 medium                 ( 10 to 20 tasks )
              60 simple                    ( less than 10 tasks )

It is decided to implement HR just for Organizational units purposes. It helps both roles and authorization management. Hence agent assignments could be not that complex.

Having a time line of 6 months only for these work, I am proposing:
                6 Personnels for development over  six months period
                4 to 6 Personnels for maintain and administer - for support after go live

Has anyone else could share some ideas if you have executed projects even not to this magnitude, but with some 10 - 20 workflows development. I need some info on how many personnels, how many workflows and how many months. It will be kind of easy to extrapolate. I do understand that it will only be an empirical value for resource planning. But we can start with min. resource and continue to agument as and when the workflows start  development phase.

regards
Ramanan

  _____  

From: asap at workflowconnections.com
To: sap-wug at mit.edu
Subject: RE: Resource planning
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:08:07 +0000

Hello Ramanan, 

That's a pretty major project, and there is a good reason all projects go through a planning phase. Faced with the same question I would estimate at least a month's work to come up with an answer that's anywhere near realistic. 

For starters there are many factors beyond workflow that will influence your requirements, such as size and makeup of the overall project team, length of project, willingness to invest in the right skills. Are you going to employ 4+ years' experienced consultants, or find ABAPers who have built the occasional WF, or train up inhouse staff? 

Next you have the workflows themselves. I've built approval workflows taking from two days to over a year. Even specific workflow scenarios are no measure: an invoice approval can take 10 days at one client and 5 months at another (also based on personal experience). 

You ask how many administrators? What sort of total volumes do you expect? (You obviously need to volume estimates of each of the workflows..). Do you use HR? More experienced resources building the WFs will pay off in reduced maintenance. The workflow I mentioned above created jobs for two administrators - just looking after the one WF.

Based on the info in your question, I would seriously suggest you engage an Experienced (with a capital 'E') consultant for at least a few days to get you started on answering it. 

If you insist on a guess: 50% chance you need between 5 and 10 people, 50% chance you need more or less than that. Flip a coin to see which one. 

Cheers, 

Mike

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Srinivasan Ramanan
Sent: 14 January 2008 21:58
To: sap-wug at mit.edu
Subject: Resource planning

Dear WUG,
There are 100 workflows expected to be up and running in ECC6.0
Please consider that it is not know exactly what are the workflows now.
But please consider that workflows will be used for create and maintain of all major master data objects and pretty much for regular task distributions like PO release, invoice processing etc.,

My questions are:

How many personnels are required at the Development phase for these 100 workflows?

How may personnels are required for 'maintain' and 'administer' the workflows? 

Anyone who worked at this level, please I value your inputs very much.
Please respond with your experiences and emprical calculations.

thanks in advance.
Ramanan

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