Thanks to Paul Solomon for notifying all of us on his mail list that the final release of the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide is out. While many in the project management domain may view this 438 page guide as completely over the top, it is in fact a seminal source for good project management practices in the areas of cost, schedule, technical performance measures and programmatic risk.
In FY (Fiscal Year) 2008, the federal government spend $412 Billion on it products, services, and other expenditures. The monthly details- the Federal Balance Sheet - shows the distribution of these funds along with the income.
Here's the point. Learning how to manage the cost, schedule, and technical performance aspects of a project or program - any project or program - is critical to its success. The development of technical products - either in the context of a full CMMI Maturity Level 5 Technical Solution (TS) and all the accompanying Process Areas scattered around the globe, or two guys sitting in the same room with their customer banging out C# code. And all the instances in between these two extremes. In all cases - even if it's your own money - someone, somehow, in someway - you need to know the following:
- How much is this going to cost when we're done?
- When will we be done?
- What are we going to get of value - business value - when we're done?
- What are the impediments to getting done?
The answers to these questions probably shoudl not emerge from the primordial swamp water. Some kind of estimate up front is needed. Event a "guess" is better than nothing.
So take a look at this tome. It's insight into the processes used by those accountable for the $412 Billion, or at least those subject tot he Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) when they are spending our money. For those of us working in that domain as well as the enterprise IT domain, where the numbers are a bit smaller, but not that smaller on an individual basis (it's not uncommon to spend $100M on an ERP system in a large corporation). This guide book has some things to say about some important aspects of "managing projects," not just writing code in your favorite agile method:
- Measuring techncial performance (is the product on track to meet its technical, operational, and business requiremenst) in terms of qualtiy along with the cost and schedule metrics
- How is schedule and cost data correlated with this techncial performance measure?
