Project description	Commitment vs. Business as Usual (BAU)	Result vs. commitment
Assist outside vendor in bringing a major project back under control	Project was projected to be 6 months later than externally committed date. Plans for staffing, developing programs, testing, etc. did not exist. Staffing was 90 people.	Detailed plans established, project reorganized, and was completed on committed date with no additional staffing.
Large engineering project.	Schedule improvement from 25 to 13 months, staffing cut from 35 to 18 for an overall decrease of a factor of four in dollar cost.	Dates and cost objectives met or bettered. Some quality problems with the final product due to breakdown in testing approach.
Enhancements to an existing product	90 person team, executing a 3 year plan committed to double their productivity by adding additional work without adding people or changing the base plan.	After 12 months, average output per person was determined to be 164% of business as usual. Plan was re-cast at this new level of performance.
Joint IBM/customer effort to develop and test prototype	Business as usual: 12 people for 12 months to do phase 1 (75% of total) Commitment: 12 people for 6 months for the total project, equivalent to a 2.7x increase in productivity.	Project delivered total function on time and achieved 2.8x normal output per person.
Develop new products	Project personnel located in multiple sites in Europe, USA, and at a software vendor. business as usual was 2 years, Commitment was 1 year with same staff.	Commitments were met.
New product	4 person group committed to 4x cost improvement compared to BAU, including reducing elapsed time from 12 to 8 months	Schedule and cost objectives were met. A redesign of the product was done to reduce the size of the effort that accounted for 1/3 of the savings.
Engineering project	Improve schedule from18 months (BAU) to 12 months. Staffing was also to be reduced resulting in a commitment for an overall productivity improvement of 1.8	Dates and resource commitments were met. This higher level of productivity has been maintained in subsequent projects
Complex engineering project	BAU schedule was 28 months. Commitment was to reduce schedule to 12 months using BAU staffing. High quality and minimal overtime were also committed	Schedule and quality were met. Resource savings of 19.2 personyears compared to BAU estimate. Overtime commitment was met, mainly because commitment was vague. Vacation and education breaks were given priority, however
New engineering project	9 months prior to externally committed completion date, project was projected to require 18 months more work. Commitment was to meet original schedule without additional staff and without compromising quality	Product was shipped on time. Quality was excellent and additional, important, unplanned function was added.