No matter the IT project – commercial or federal system deployment, agile or waterfall development methodology, cloud or on-premise solutions – you need more time to test. You just do.
Too often testing gets short changed. Even in today’s age of agile development methodologies and apparent low-risk cloud deployments, a great project manager spends more time testing. A good rule of thumb is a 2:1, or preferably a 1:1, ratio of time spent developing/configuring the system to time spent testing the system. Inevitably something will go wrong and having the time to correct the problem is paramount. Equally important is having the time to communicate the problem. The extra time will allow the project manager to reset expectations or potentially design a temporary work-around. Lastly, when you test earlier you have a better sense of what will go wrong and you can plan your help desk resource needs better.