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It's typical to overestimate what you can accomplish in a day, and then underestimate what you can accomplish in a year. Effective scheduling demands knowing how long a task takes. But, it's impossible to be precise if you've never done it before. So start with a guesstimate. And then, keep track of how long the work takes so you can plan more effectively in the future. Revise your schedule as you become more accurate in estimating time. Highlight the dependent projects on your to-do list: the ones that can't be started until a previous task is finished. Line them up so they flow into a sequence, noting how long each step will take. Schedule backwards from your deadline, being sure to give yourself wiggle room for unforeseen circumstances. If you know the last step will only take three days, give it another day or so. Build in reporting dates and benchmarks. Ask yourself: where do you need to be 30 days out from deadline? 60 days out? Fill in the slow times with anytime projects, those that are independent of the rest of the tasks but still need to be done. Continue working backwards, including dependent tasks and the anytime projects, until the schedule is filled in. At this point it may be time to panic. You'll realize you should have started three months ago last Tuesday to finish by your deadline. Welcome to the world of too much to do, too little time. The hard question to ask is what can go? At this point, most consultants advise: you can have it cheap, you can have it great, you can have it fast. Choose two. Do a quick assessment to decide what you can let slip, cost, quality, or time. Make the adjustments and get to work! Copyright © 2005 Pat Wiklund. All rights in all media reserved. This article may be reprinted so long as it is kept intact with the copyright and by-line. Witchcraft Exposed! - Powerful Spells about Love, Luck, Wealth, Money, Protection, etc. Guaranteed Results from the European Wizards. Great Affiliate. Federal Grants! - Free Government Money! - FederalGrantSource.com free government money, business grants and cash grants directory. We guarantee results! This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Here Dave outlines a key strategy to employ at the very beginning of your project and some of the tools that you can use.
As the clock keeps ticking towards end of support for Windows XP we need to find ways to accelerate our Windows 7 Migrations. Just because you accelerate your Windows 7 Migration you don’t have to increase your budget. In fact what if you could do the opposite…accelerate the project and reduce cost. Wait a minute – this is an IT Project. The words “reduce costs” don’t really exist in a typical IT Project. Well maybe they can… Most Windows 7 Projects I have seen project over 80% of the costs for that project on Application Packaging and Remediation. What if there was a way to have an organization quickly rationalize their deployed applications. What if there was a way to remove unused software from a desktop prior to the migration. I can sum it up in one word: “Rationalization”.Well there are a couple of tools out there that can help us out with this. One is the Application Compatibility Toolkit “ACT” from Microsoft. It is a great tool that allows us to gain insight into our organization. This unfortunately requires an agent to be deployed on the workstations and requires us to scan them to see what is installed. Then pull the information back to a central database and try to analyze what is deployed. The second tool is one that many of you will already own and have probably deployed. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager has a software metering component that will allow us to use simply scan the machines using the Configuration Manager agent. One problem this requires a lot of configuration and won’t automatically pull back unused software to keep licensing in check. The third tool is one from 1E Software call AppClarity. You can checkout a link to this product here: 1E AppClarity I have personally seen AppClarity give money back to an organization in less than 60 Days after the acquisition of their software. Think about it…why waste money getting shelfware or unused software ready for your brand new Windows 7 Desktops. Once again “Rationalize” not only the amount of software that needs to be migrated to the new platform but also the amount of work. Checkout the screenshot below of this software package. It has revolutionized the way I approach Windows Migrations.
So in my perfect world that I live in I need a tool that will do the following for my Windows 7 Project:
If you can drive cost savings at the start of this project you will be well on your way. Gartner has estimated that it costs on average between $1000.00 to 3000.00 + per desktop to migrate to Windows 7. Most of this cost comes from the work required to migrate unused applications. What if you could get back all that time and save hard dollars by removing shelfware before your projects starts. This makes your project sponsors very happy and allows you to accelerate this project. Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate. Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far. About Dave Kawula
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Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.