a lot of hours

Being a project manager for large corporate wide initiatives you see a lot of overhead that obviously can be eliminated if anyone had the time to look at the redundant activities, and had a knack to do something about them. Obviously most of the project resources, ok a few of the project resources, are intelligent enough to see this, but they are doing all of the work, so are too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

A few days ago, while scanning through one of the many status reports that come into my adipose email box, I noticed the total number of estimated "man" hours it would take to launch a few modifications to a pre-existing billing system.

Just a few foundational facts:

1. This is a pre-existing application
2. The changes were considered minor
3. The calculation of man hours starts after the requirements phase

Ok, Ok, Ok, so what am I getting at? I noticed it said the total man hours needed for this release would be not 2,000 not 20,000 but over 200 freakin thousand hours. Are you kidding me? I could build a functional space ship, fly to mars, eat breakfast with the closest martian, and fly home in that much time, and still have a few hours to hit the "Lusty Lady."

And we wonder why big corporations get a so called "bad" rap for not being nimble.