When this is Achieved
Once all constituents of the project have been identified, it is necessary to translate the manpower and materials needed into a development schedule. It will be apparent immediately that the greater the objective, the greater the resources needed to fulfil the requirement; resources such as skills, labour, equipment, time and money.
Time and money are budgetary constraints where staff and funding are redirected to accomplish the goal; appropriate software platforms and hardware are dictated by the application needs; but the labour and skills involved are the human factors which frequently disrupt implementation targets.
The expertise of consultant, analyst, developer, technician, trainer and others directly involved in the creation — not implementation management — of the system will determine how close to schedule development proceeds. That is, providing management monitors progress and keeps a tight grip on scope creep: the 'I want this ...' spanner thrown in during phase and interface testing.
Systems development was once something of a black art, consuming time and money at a prodigious rate. Today, mainstream applications software maturation permits powerful, resilient solutions to be delivered within realistically defined timescales.