October 2010

Tuesday, we talked about putting together a “big picture plan” for your project. And, yesterday, we provided step-by-step instructions for preparing a schedule for a specific task and identifying the resources you’ll need. Now let’s talk about preparing a budget.

Preparing a Budget

Depending on the task, there may be a lot of cost components in your budget. For many projects – for example, a document review project – the biggest cost component will be people. Let’s continue to use the document review task example.

When you prepared your schedule, you determined the number of man-hours required for the core part of the task. Take that number and multiply it by the billing rate of the team doing the work. This will most likely be your biggest cost component. Now let’s add on other costs:

• In addition to the team doing the work, you’ll need quality control reviewers. If you want to do thorough quality control work, It’s safe to estimate that you’ll need 1 quality control person for every 4 reviewers. Calculate the number of man-hours for quality control and multiply that by the billing rate for the quality control staff.
• Build in project management and supervisory staff hours. Maybe your quality control team will double as supervisors and all you’ll need to add in are the costs for a full-time project manager.
• Determine how long training will take, and add in the costs for everybody on the team to attend training.
• If you’re using a service provider to host your documents and provide an online review tool, add in the costs for that (some service providers charge monthly for storage; others charge monthly for storage and monthly per user).
• Add in the costs for up-front work like preparing procedures and coordinating efforts with the service provider.
• Add in costs for processing data and loading into the online review tool.

That may be it. But think through incidental costs you might incur and include them in your budget.

We’ve covered all of the basic components of planning a project, but we’re not done with planning yet. One of the tasks on a large electronic discovery project is yet another planning task: Preparing a plan for gathering data. Next time, I’ll walk you through putting together a data-gathering plan.

So, what do you think? Do you have any questions about the budgeting process? Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Yesterday, we talked about putting together a “big picture plan” for your electronic discovery project. Now let’s move on to the nitty-gritty and get into resource, schedule, and budget details.

Identifying Resources and Preparing a Schedule

You need to do detailed planning for each task that you listed in your big picture plan. This means calculating a schedule and a budget and determining the resources you will need. For some tasks — like processing data – your needs will be primarily computing resources. In many cases you’ll be looking to a service provider for this work, and they can provide schedule and cost information. For other tasks – like document reviews – your greatest need will be people. This is where schedules and budgets are absolutely critical and need to be done carefully. Tasks that involve a lot of manpower hours are the ones that can get you into the most trouble with meeting deadlines and staying within budgets. Here are some very clear steps for preparing your plan:

• Determine how many units there are to be processed. For a document review, that would be the number of documents or files that need to be reviewed.
• Determine how many units can be processed in an hour (if you don’t already have a good feel for this, do some “time and motion” tests or talk to experienced peers).
• Divide the total number of units by the number of units that can be processed in an hour. Now you have an estimate of the total project hours needed to complete the project.
• Determine how many available calendar hours you have to do the work (for example, if your project needs to be completed in four weeks, you have 160 calendar hours).
• Divide the total project hours by the calendar hours to determine the number of people you will need.

Build in some time for project start-up tasks like preparing instructions and training the review team, and build in some time on the end for tasks like final quality control reviews. That’s it. You know how many people you need, and your schedule is done. Tomorrow, we’ll walk through preparing a budget.

So, what do you think? Have any stories to tell regarding resource identification or scheduling difficulties? Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Yesterday, we introduced the series focused on Applying Project Management Techniques to Electronic Discovery and the areas we will cover over the next few weeks. Today, we will begin the discussion with planning the project.

It is unlikely that any project will be successful without good planning – both “big picture” planning and the planning of specific tasks. First you need to look at the 10,000 foot view and identify all the pieces and how they fit together. Then you need to look at the specific pieces and prepare a plan for accomplishing each.

“Big Picture” Planning

Let’s walk through a common scenario to illustrate preparing a big picture plan. Let’s say you are responsible for managing the electronic discovery tasks on a case, starting with the collection of documents and carrying through to production.

As a first step, identify the tasks that are required. Your task list might look like this:

• Determine where responsive materials may reside and prepare a data collection plan.
• Make forensically sound copies of potentially responsive materials.
• Identify a service provider to process data and load into a first pass review tool.
• Use the first pass review tool to cull the collection (this should be done by litigation team members who are familiar with the case and the documents, and who are responsible for case strategy and making decisions. They should work together with search technology experts).
• Identify the review tool to use for identifying responsive documents.
• Assemble and train the review team
• Manage the document review team
• Generate the production set.

Of course, the tasks on your list will depend on the scope of your project and the size of your collection. You many not need to include all of the tasks on this list, or you may need to include more.

For each task on your list, determine by when it needs to be done, who will be responsible, and a general approach (for example, you may determine that you’ll need a contract team for reviewing documents).

There you go. You’ve got your big picture plan for moving forward. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about planning specific tasks.

So, what do you think? Need any help with “big picture” planning to get your project off to a good start? Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

All too often, electronic discovery projects fall apart. Deadlines are missed, costs exceed estimates, work product is flawed, and there aren’t good records of what was done. These problems can result in costs and hours that can’t be billed, dissatisfied clients, and in really bad situations, sanctions imposed by the court.

In so many cases, the problems can be avoided – or at least minimized – if basic, “common sense” project management techniques are applied. Project Management is not complicated or difficult. It is simply applying common sense principles to the projects that we handle.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about common sense project management techniques and how they can – and should – be applied to electronic discovery projects. We’ll cover several areas:

• Planning a project: Identifying the tasks that need to be done, putting together a “big picture” plan, and creating schedules and budgets for each task.
• Creating procedures: Why are documented procedures important and how do you prepare effective procedures?
• Assembling the right team: Who should do the work on a given task and how do you determine that?
• Training the team: Why is training important and what should be covered?
• Doing effective quality control: Why are quality control reviews important, how should they be done, and how often should they be done?
• Monitoring the work: How do you ensure that you’re on schedule and within budget for a project?
• Reporting: What kind of reporting should be done and how often?
• Effectively managing your staff: Some quick tips for getting good work from your staff.
• Effectively managing external resources: What can you do before a project starts, at the start of a project, and throughout a project to ensure that service providers are meeting schedules, budgets and quality requirements?
• Effectively managing your time: Some quick tips for managing your time so you’ll be as productive and effective as possible.

Tomorrow, I’ll begin talking about “big picture” planning for the overall project. See you then!

In the meantime, what do you think? Know any project management “horror stories”? Are there any specific project management areas you are having trouble with? Please share any comments you might have or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.