HI Gurus,

Would like to know whether SAP have a provision for carrying out the Project estimation and effort required to handle SAP Projects, in my case it would be SAP BW Projects as example.

Also , please let me know if there are any third party tools or any standard template that can be followed when one requires to setup some metrics for Project estimation and effort.

Please, need your inputs or suggestions.

Regards,
ND

I am sure that SAP has a method but it can be very difficult to give a standard estimate since each project is different in terms of scope, readiness, standard versus custom development, etc. It would be possible to give an estimate for a standard SAP solution if we can define the scope but normally your business will not have time to understand and make required changes to business process. This is the reason they can give you an estimate but most likely you will have to continue 'time & material' to complete the project to go with your infra-structure/knowledge. Consulting companies work by assigning consultants full time to your project making it very difficult for the organization to keep up the learning of the standard applications. What therefore will happen is that the consultant will keep developing based on trial and error until it works somewhat. So, it really matters how much resources your organization can invest in training and involvement. My advice, get the smallest team (the best people) from the consulting company and extend the project over a longer time to be able to better manage (don't burn all your budget on a short time). Do a proto-type where everybody can test but you need at least one good consultant that and govern. Believe me, you don't want to implement anything SAP being under the gun like need to implement because old license to legacy system is running out or something like this (trust me - it will always be cheaper to extend the old license or fix it or whatever).

Hi ND,

I am not aware of any specific template from SAP. Also, all the estimations, that I do is based on my previous experiences.

But as a guideline, I would suggest that you define the project phases and activites. Phases can be based on the ASAP methodology. For each phase define the activities which would be carried out to finish that phase. Once this kind of detailing is done, efforts can be calculated for each activity. The cumulative effort will lead to cost estimations. You should take some amount of buffer on the total for contingency.

What is important is that you should highlight your underlying assumptions clearly. Any change on these assumptions would lead to a change in the effort estimates.

AS DB said, MS-Project is a very good tool which can be used for calculations as well as trackking.

Thanks
Rakesh