Guidelines
Note: all guidelines are subject to periodic evaluation for effectiveness.
Definition of project
In the context of these pages, a project is a PDP activity that consumes significant resources.
- for manpower resources, a project is significant if it will consume more than 80 hours.
- for financial resources, a project or purchase is significant if it will consume more than 1000 euros.
See below for motivation of these thresholds.
- Rationale
- Why do we define and track projects.
- One Page Memo
- 1-page memo motivating project start.
- Periodic Report
- 1-page memo about project progress each quarter.
- Final Report
- Memo and optional technical appendices accompanying project completion.
Motivation of thresholds
A project carried out according to these guidelines will cost, at the very least, five hours: one hour to construct the 1-page start memo and four hours to construct the final report. That overhead should be low compared to the actual work of the project. Using a figure of 10% as the maximum allowed overhead for project tracking and reporting, we get 50 hours as a threshold for manpower consumption.
Similarly, the cost of the time consumed motivating a purchase should be small compared to the actual purchase cost.
- a standard employee cost to Nikhef is 100k/yr for 1600 overhead-free hours = 62,5 euros per hour
- cost to construct the 1p memo is 1 hour = 62,5 euros = 10% of 625 euros.
To err on the safe side with project overhead, these thresholds are bumped to the nice round numbers of 80 hours and 1000 euros. These thresholds should be periodically evaluated for effectiveness.
