Sizing ERP Implementation Projects: An Activity-Based Approach

ERP implementation projects are large and risky projects for organizations, because they affect large parts of an implementing organization and lead to changes in the way an organization performs its tasks. For these reasons ERP projects can be considered different from implementing large information systems and should be treated as such. The costs needed for the effort to implement these systems are hard to estimate. Research indicates that the size of an ERP project can be a useful measurement for predicting the effort required to complete an ERP implementation project. Unfortunately, this measurement does not yet exist. Therefore research should be performed to find a set of variables which can define the size of an ERP implementation project. This paper describes the first step for this research. It shows 21 logical clusters of ERP implementation project activities. The clusters are based on 405 ERP implementation project activities, which were retrieved from literature. The clustering itself was performed by applying a formal group session technique. Logical clusters of ERP project activities can be used in further research to find variables for defining the size of an ERP implementation project