What is the Remaining Work (RW)?
Remaining Work (RW) is the estimate at a specific point in the execution of a task, project stage, or project of the workload required to complete it.
We are talking about what it takes to complete an activity, not what is originally planned for the project.
If the challenge of the project pilot is to achieve the balance between the effort initially planned and that reestimated during the execution of the project, the calculation of the Remaining Work (RW) show a positive or negative delta.
As the Remaining Work (RW)is based on an estimate of loads, it is expressed in man-days (MD).
The monitoring of this KPI is mandatory as part of the Delivery of a project.
Who is responsible for the Remaining Work (RW) ?
He is the pilot of the project. However, he relies on his team: the Remaining Work (RW) of a unit task is estimated by the employees who carry out the task, while the consolidation at scale – activity, project stage or project in its entirety – is carried out by the project manager who aggregates the Remaining Work (RW) of the unit tasks.
When to estimate the Remaining Work (RW) ?
The calculation of the Remaining Work (RW) is carried out periodically and shared as part of the project reporting as well as in governance bodies.
The calculation of the Remaining Work (RW) not only makes it possible to understand load deviations and react accordingly during the project, but also to anticipate the landing of the project.
Should the Remaining Work (RW) be valued?
Yes, you have to! Expressing Remaining Work (RW) in terms of (MD) workloads is not enough: for example, simply replacing a resource on a project can reduce or increase the expected workloads on a given task and affect an entire project.
The Remaining Work (RW) will therefore be valued by cross-referencing the JH expenses of the different profiles and their Average Daily Rates (ADR) in order to obtain the corresponding budget.
The project pilot will rely on the two expressions of the Remaining Work (RW) – in expenses and in budget – to define the best trajectory.
As can be seen in the 4 scenarios opposite→
Remaining Work (RW) and Agility
If the Remaining Work (RW) is easier to estimate in the context of a project delivered in waterfall or iterative method, it remains a mandatory step for the pilot of a project delivered in agile.
It is indeed possible to calculate the Remaining Work (RW) of a Backlog, where each User Story is estimated in Story Points: an SP qualifying an effort, the (MD) loads to process the entire Backlog as well as the number of sprints are extrapolable.
Similarly, we can estimate the Remaining Work (RW) of a sprint or the Remaining Work (RW) on a flat-rate or budget-capped project that is delivered in agile.
Agility is synonymous with predictability.
0 Comments