1. Project Management
Book
"A two year project will take three years, a three year
project will never finish."

2. Projects and Stages
At one extreme you could establish a single, three year
long project that would at the end of three years deliver
the new system: the "big bang" approach.
 It's more visible
 More focus from senior management because it's big
 Only one implementation, one disruption to the business
 Only one tranche of training
 Plenty of time to do it properly
 More holistic approach to design
 Nice clean switch from old to new
 No temporary bridges from old to new
 Everything being done only once so lower cost
 If it's going wrong, plenty of time to get out before the end

3. Projects and Stages
For the release approach these arguments are usually advanced
 Better team motivation
 Less spent on project control
 Greater flexibility for senior management
 Learning from experience
 Easier to handle change
 Less business risk: evolution not revolution
 Less waste on never-used functionality
 Easier to manage four small projects than one large one
 Easier to commit people for eight months than for 3 years
 Fewer people leave during a release project than during the
big bang project
 Earlier benefits realisation
 Lower cost overall (yes, it's on both lists)

4. The longer the project the greater the percentage of its budget will
be spent changing things that have been wholly or partially
completed

5. With releases you can much more readily react to changing
requirements:
- during Release 1 there will be some change to its requirements.
- the real benefit is that at the start of Release 2 you define its
requirements as the world then is, not as it was six months ago
- at the beginning of Release 3 you define its requirements as the
world is then, not as it was a year ago. Release 3 may also be able
to exploit technology that wasn't available a year ago - it's much
more difficult to adopt new technology half way through a big bang.
With releases you'll almost certainly
spend less on change. With releases
some of the cost of Release 3 could
be re-engineering what had been
delivered in Release 1, to improve
it based on experience of use.
This is either good news (you're
improving things) or bad news (it
costs you) depending upon your
point of view.

6. Resource Plan
 Where the process works best the Owner's
Representative meets informally with his IT counterpart
every month or so to discuss what's coming down the
track and what the priorities are. IT will suggest which
enhancements it makes sense to do together for
technical and cost reasons. Their discussion will include
consideration of the IT resource plan.