How Long Will My Project Take to Implement?

How fast can you implement your new HCM or Payroll system? Maybe you’re implementing SuccessFactors Employee Central and Payroll. Or EC plus Onboarding and Recruiting. Or whatever – take your pick. How long will it take?

There seems to be a lot of emphasis these days on how fast a consulting firm can help a customer implement their given project. One firm can get you there in 9 months – another says 6 months! It’s a selling point, because duration drives cost and they want your business. But it’s only one element of the overall cost. Let’s dig into this a bit more.

When you, the customer, want to implement some HCM software – doesn’t really matter the brand – you are expecting a certain scope of functionality. That scope isn’t always explicit – sometimes it’s ‘We want to implement Employee Central to eliminate our existing SAP On-premise system.’ We need a lot more detail than that to determine a project’s effort and  duration. We have to detail this out to really understand your desired implementation scope. Once you dig into that detail you might realize there’s a set of functionality you require, and a set that is more optional. Or there might be a series of phases that you implement. Getting into that detailed scope document is a valuable activity. 

But then, that desired scope has to be clearly communicated to your implementation partners. They need to understand that scope so that they can determine the consulting effort, and help you determine your part of the effort. Yes, your effort is required for this to go well! So now we have your desired scope, how much of it is done by you vs the implementation partner, and which parts are more important than others (or phases, iterations, etc). We’re getting to the point where we can determine the effort, but the duration is a different story.

The amount of effort does impact duration, but the part of the equation often ignored is how fast you can absorb the change and do your part. Not all customers are the same. Some of the smaller, simpler, newer companies can move quite fast. Larger, older and more complex companies will require more time. Do you have internal resources who can take on this projet? Or are they so busy that you need to hire some back-fill to make it work? Take a look at how you’ve done other projects lately – how fast were you able to move? Look at analogs in areas outside HR too – how long did it take to implement other large projects? 

So now we know how much work we have, and how quickly we can get that work done. We are getting closer to understanding the project’s duration. But not quite all the way there.

Sometimes there are consulting methods, practices or tools that can influence the duration. Automated testing tools, migration utilities and so on all make a difference. Sometime there are periods of the year where you don’t want to take a new system live, so you might add time to avoid those periods. You might not have enough slack in internal resources to move as fast as  the consultant expects. And sometimes your company just moves slowly. Bake all that into the analysis. Now we’re looking at a realistic project duration!

What about methodologies? Sure, you need a methodology. Some are better than others. Some companies are better with certain methodologies, and struggle with others. My advice is to pick a methodology in cooperation with your implementation partner. It will impact how you approach the work, but in the end your desired scope is the same. Just different paths to get there.

So, getting back to implementation duration and cost. Maybe your implementation partner is just really sure your project will require 9 months, but after reading this blog you think it is more like 12 months. If you can’t get it done in 9 months, then what? You have 12 months of work, force-fit it into 9 months – something has to give, and that is usually scope and/or quality. In the end, you got scope that a 9 month project could deliver. You are still short by 3 months. So that can be made up with change orders, a Phase 2 project, or you just give up on ever getting it. Any of those options results in a cost paid or benefit unrealized. That adds on to the total cost.

When you ask a consulting firm, software provider or consultant how long it will take for them to implement ‘x’ the only honest answer is ‘I don’t know, but I can help you determine that.’ Yes, that takes some additional time and effort to figure out, and it is also one of the best ways for you to have a successful project.