Mike Wyatt's Weblog

Identity Implementations and the Cone of Uncertainty

Two questions that often come up during conversations with customers contemplating initiating an enterprise identity management solution are, "How much will this project cost, and how long will it take?" These is clearly easy questions to ask...it is the answers that are hard! These are even a harder questions when, during the middle of a project, the vendor communicates that the cost of implementation will be materially different than what was originally discussed and agreed upon. Even with good change control processes and governance procedures, what both the vendor and the customer think the project will be in terms of cost, time, and functionality at the beginning of the project and what it actual turns out to be at the end of the project will at times differ by a wide margin. Why is it difficult to accurately size enterprise software implementation engagements? Many factors come into play including but not limited to:

• Customer: lack of knowledge of the vendor's solution's actual capabilities and boundaries

• Customer: lack of understanding the actual business requirements for the end solution - i.e rapidly choosing a solution based on a regulatory mandate without business specific requirements

• Vendor: lack of understanding the customer business requirements for the end solution - over focus on the technical aspects of the implementation

• Vendor and Customer: not investing enough time to accurately capture project requirements - i.e. writing a Statement of Work from an RFP vs. conducting a requirements definition session or workshop

• Customer: Architecture team driving requirements in the absence of end user involvement and buy-in

• Vendor: Overselling the solution where expectations for solution's capabilities are set artificially high - never confuse selling with installing!

The level of uncertainty of the outcome of a particular project is highest at the beginning of the projects and becomes lower over time. The terminology I like to use for this is the Cone of Uncertainty

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With an understanding of the notion of a Cone of Uncertainty, we can begin working on ways to reduce/eliminate/mitigate project uncertainties and move toward more accurate level of effort estimates, better mutual expectations for the project and projects that complete, on-time, on-budget, with agreed upon functional capabilities.

Posted at 02:14PM Oct 09, 2006 by Michael Wyatt in Identity Management  |