Introducing Evolutionary Project Management in a development organisation environment is usually done by visiting the organisation 1 to 3 days a week, for a total of some 10 to 15 days. Outside Europe, an extra day of travel per visit may be charged.
Example Evo Introduction Plan
This Introduction Plan will put two or three development teams of 5 to 10 people each on track, as described in Booklet 2: How Quality is Assured by Evolutionary Methods (pdf, 294 kb). Note that we can work out any other program. The basis is always win-win. If my involvement would cost the same amount as you are saving: DON'T DO IT! The savings we are going to make (less loss, or preferably: more profit) should be at least twice the amount you will spend on my involvement, although I agree that this is not so easy for you to judge up front. Imagine the revenues if we save one month of your project: we save the cost of the project, plus the extra revenues being one month earlier. How much late were your recent projects? Remember also the Satisfaction Guarantee: you are never stuck with me. I expect that together we can save some 30% on your current project within a few weeks. You work out the benefit. Note however, that there must be genuine pain about the situation in your project or organization. People really wanting to do something about it. Otherwise there is no hope for improvement.
Note: The following is just one example of how we could organize it if the organisation is rather 'far away':
1st visit:2nd visit, several weeks later:
Wednesday: Discussing the progress in general: what can we add and do better.
Thursday and Friday: closing the current TaskCycle, analyzing the results of the
past week, learning from it, and planning the next week, based on what we
learnt. Because people have done this now for several weeks, they will
understand some details better now.
3rd visit, several weeks later: similar to 2nd visit.
It is important to close a full TaskCycle loop in the first visit, because this way a lot of small but important details come to life. Between visits, I will check the progress of the pilot projects on a distance. This will take me a few hours per week.
At the end of every visit we analyze what we did, whether it was useful and whether and how we think we should continue this process. At the end of 3 visits we can decide that we did enough or that we want to carry on to disseminate further into the organization or improve even further.
Because it is my experience that it is very difficult for anyone to understand exactly what we are going to do, until we are actually doing it, I work with two types of guarantee: Satisfaction and No Cure - No Pay. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. How would you know the taste before you actually tasted it?