I’ve seen a few projects where customers said they didn’t need contingency, because they decided to adjust the budget as changes happen.
How does this sound to you?
To me, this sounds pretty bad, because there is an important distinction between adjusting the budget based on change requests and consuming the contingency reserve.
If projects were completely predictable, there would be no need for risk management. Everything could be planned and executed according to plan. However, we know better. Unexpected things happen, disrupt the original plans and cause time and cost overruns. In IT projects, these overruns are far too common to be ignored.
The degree of fit is an important indicator of your project’s alignment with the standard functionality.
After you determine the degree of fit, and understand what it means for the project, do you just passively accept the findings, or do you do something to make them more favorable?