Project Controls

Opportunity

A large bank launched a complex digital program to deliver a new online service experience.

The program included 20+ projects, a mix of seconded internal SMEs and contractors, and a vendor-supplied plan estimating delivery in 26 weeks at $500M.

Executives were hopeful — but skeptical. Technology, business, and PMO teams were each managing plans using different methods, and leadership lacked confidence that timelines, funding, and year-end financials were reliable.

Process

• Effort-based planning was introduced to create alignment and decision-grade visibility across the program:

• Replaced duration-based vendor schedules with effort-based models

• Modeled internal seconded SMEs separately from contracted resources

• Made partial allocation and role-level constraints visible

• Aligned technology, business, PMO, and Finance around a single planning method

• Enabled month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter forecasting using effort, not assumptions

• Established a defensible baseline to manage vendor change requests

Result

• Delivery estimate corrected from 26 weeks to 104+ weeks before execution

• Cost visibility increased from $500M to $1B+, enabling informed ROI validation

• Executives reprioritized functionality earlier to validate SME alignment on scope

• Forecast accuracy improved to within ~1% month-over-month

• Capital could be reallocated to other initiatives when effort or resources were unavailable

• Year-end accruals and WIP calculations were materially improved, eliminating prior surprises

• Vendor change requests were constrained using validated effort assumptions
  

Critical insight

Internal SMEs were heavily over-allocated. Although formally seconded, they continued supporting operational roles, resulting in <50% true project utilization — a constraint that drove the extended timeline and would not have been visible without effort-based planning.

Opportunity:

A large utility provider was rolling out new equipment across a wide geographic region, impacting a large user population over 100+ km.

After more than two years in delivery, the project was late and requesting an additional round of funding with revised dates based on updated project manager estimates.

Senior management needed confidence that this would be the final financial request — and that the project would actually finish.

Process:

Effort-based planning was applied to understand what work truly remained and where delivery risk was concentrated:

• Modeled remaining work using effort rather than revised durations

• Identified role-level constraints within regression testing

• Made contractor extensions and renewal timing visible

• Evaluated internal vs third-party cost tradeoffs

• Examined cross-project resource usage to surface hidden constraints

Result:

• Identified two internal SMEs as the true bottleneck driving delay and cost

• Confirmed that continuing with the existing approach would extend contractor renewals and increase spend

• Original request: $1.5M for 26 weeks

• Leadership chose a strategic alternative: 40 weeks at $1.2M, supported by proactive client communication

• Reduced reliance on high-cost third-party contractors by shifting work to internal resources

• Exposed a “vital” shared resource contributing to multiple projects without owning deliverables

• Eliminated a false bottleneck that had been slowing multiple initiatives

Management response:

“We would have done this entire project differently if effort-based planning had been used from the start. We need to apply this organization-wide.”

Why This Mattered

Effort-based planning turned a late-stage funding request into a deliberate executive decision. Leadership was able to choose a longer delivery window in exchange for lower total cost, improved predictability, and restored confidence — rather than being forced into another surprise extension.

Opportunity:

A large retailer was launching its first online service offering while simultaneously undertaking major updates to warehouse configuration and operational processes required to support it.

Although the initiatives were tightly connected, both projects were planned and executed independently, with no documented cross-project dependencies.

Effort-based planning had been used initially, but no ongoing controls were applied. Over time:

• Plans became outdated and unverifiable

• Tasks and deliverables no longer tied back to financials

• Scope continued to grow without clear impact visibility

As misalignment increased, leadership assigned a new program manager to regain control.

Process:

Effort-based planning was reintroduced — this time with active controls and financial alignment:

• Refreshed plans based on actual remaining work, not outdated assumptions

• Aligned effort models to historic spend to validate forecast accuracy

• Corrected estimates that had been created by senior staff rather than delivery-level resources

• Re-leveled plans to reflect realistic resource capability, utilization, and iteration cycles

• Explicitly modeled cross-department and cross-project dependencies

• Implemented controls to show how delays in one initiative impacted the other

• Enabled “wait-state” strategies to prevent wasted effort and spend while dependencies cleared
  

Result:

• Final delivery dates and budgets were recalculated with confidence

• Dependency-driven delays became visible and manageable rather than disruptive

• Teams could advance non-dependent work without wasting money or effort

• Finance achieved accrual accuracy within ~2%, a significant improvement

• Leadership gained precise visibility into when funding was required — and when it was not
  

Finance outcome:
The clarity was strong enough that it was joked other departments could “borrow” money from the program — because leadership knew exactly when capital would be needed and when it would not.

Why This Mattered

Effort-based planning only delivers value when it is actively governed. By reapplying EB with controls, dependency modeling, and financial reconciliation, leadership regained trust in both delivery forecasts and financial reporting — enabling the organization to confidently launch additional initiatives that had previously been delayed due to perceived financial risk.

Opportunity:

A large railway corporation was implementing a new tracking process.

PMO reporting consistently showed conflicting narratives between IT and the business about where bottlenecks existed and who was driving cost overruns.

Leadership needed to understand whether the issues were caused by:

• Poor communication and unclear ownership, or

• A genuine scope and dependency gap driving schedule and cost variance

Without clarity, reporting had become political rather than actionable.

Process:

Effort-based planning was introduced with interdependency and control mechanisms to establish a single source of truth:

• Conducted separate planning sessions with IT and business teams to independently articulate work and estimates

• Documented processes as waterfall-style tasks to clearly expose handoffs and dependencies

• Identified real vs. fake bottlenecks through dependency analysis

• Discovered missing ownership triggers between IT, business, and QA

• Reallocated SME effort from constant validation to training QA and IT resources on expected outcomes

• Introduced time tracking against planned tasks to validate utilization and execution timing

• Enabled dynamic plan updates to surface risks early and adjust sequencing
  

Result:

• Clarified responsibility for delays without assigning blame

• Reduced SME over-allocation by enabling broader team capability

• Identified missing tasks and misaligned scheduling assumptions

• Time tracking revealed average resource utilization of ~30%, highlighting execution inefficiencies

• Enabled teams to proactively identify next steps and mitigate emerging risks

• Significantly reduced animosity between IT and business teams by grounding discussions in data

• Restored PMO confidence in reporting accuracy and decision support

Executive outcome:

Leadership was able to objectively reassess ROI. While costs were higher than initially planned, the long-term operational and capital benefits justified proceeding, and the project was confirmed as strategically valuable through completion.

Why This Mattered

Effort-based planning didn’t just improve schedules — it removed politics from delivery. By clarifying ownership, validating dependencies, and grounding discussions in effort and data, the PMO shifted from conflict resolution to informed decision-making.

Opportunity

A boutique software development company operated with limited specialist resources across a portfolio of client projects.

Client-driven delays in requirements, approvals, and feedback created frequent stop/start patterns, forcing developers to shift between projects to remain billable.

While the firm consistently applied agile methods and T-shirt estimating, leadership noticed a recurring issue:

• Actual effort often exceeded expectations at invoicing time

• Not because work was invalid — but because rework was quietly inflating costs

Projects were rarely planned or priced with the assumption that client delays would materially increase effort.

Process

Effort-based planning was introduced to understand the true cost of fragmented delivery:

• Measured effort impact of stop/start work across multiple projects

• Quantified refamiliarization effort (requirements review, risk logs, change requests, context rebuilding)

• Compared planned effort vs. actual effort under interrupted delivery conditions

• Analyzed portfolio-wide resource switching and utilization patterns

• Connected effort variance directly to client-driven delays rather than delivery inefficiency

This shifted discussions from why costs were higher to what behaviors were driving the cost.

Result

• Confirmed that stop/start work materially increased total effort and delivery cost

• Demonstrated that rework was predictable — and therefore manageable

• Enabled leadership to reset client expectations around delivery sequencing

• Introduced commercial terms warning that stop/starts would trigger additional funding needs

• Shifted scheduling policy to align work completion with resource availability, not client convenience

• Improved forecast accuracy, invoicing confidence, and margin protection across the portfolio

Strategic outcome:

Effort-based planning transformed resource management from a reactive billing issue into a deliberate commercial strategy, protecting both delivery quality and financial sustainability.

Why This Mattered

At the portfolio level, effort-based planning exposed a hidden economic truth: Interruptions are not neutral. They create real, measurable cost — even in agile environments.

By making that cost visible, leadership was able to align delivery, pricing, and client behavior around how work actually gets done.