Workflow Definition and Golf: Beating Estimates

Workflow Definition and Golf: Beating Estimates
By Frank Mooney

I enjoy the game of golf despite not being very good at it. Due to circumstances and connections, I had the fantastic experience of being a caddy for a professional golfer during a tournament. During the round, he asked me what I did for a living. After some conversation about my background as a managed services consultant, he looked at me and said “We have a lot in common in that we are both trying to beat estimates”. He then went on to point out that golf was the only sport that provided everyone with an estimate… par. It became a joke for the rest of the round as we tried to determine how to beat the “estimate” at each hole.

Much like calculating par in a round of golf, workflow definition is a disciplined estimation approach that incorporates checks and balances to verify and validate the expectations that are supported by customized estimation models and the quality of work being performed.

Although the workflow definition process requires a slightly different thought process, the customized approach is based on a simple foundation:

  1. All roles require something from someone else to do their work.
  2. Resources within roles perform similar tasks (ties back to my motto: “Repeatability breeds Predictability”).

  3. Similar roles will create similar outputs.

The workflow definition process is proven to significantly improve organizational maturity by increasing efficiency and establishing baselines for monitoring content, timely delivery and quality.

Frank Mooney has a passion for working with clients to improve performance by creating proactive environments where repeatability is the standard, predictability is the result and success is the norm. Mr. Mooney is a keynote speaker on a variety of leadership, Managed Services and Project Management topics where he combines his enthusiasm and real-life experiences to provide an informative and entertaining learning opportunity. Frank is a Project Management Institute (PMI) certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with over thirty years of Managed Services and leadership experience. You can read more from Frank on Ciber’s blog.

PMHut Team

PMHut Team

PMHut.com is a website dedicated to providing PM articles, detailed project management software reviews, and the latest news for the most popular web-based collaboration tools.

Leave a Reply