Richard Doyen ⋅ Somerville, NJ Unacast ⋅ 8 years experience

Hi Matt,

I would be happy to discuss B2B sales and targeting potential buyers. I work for D&B in the technology markets. Please message me or LinkedIn message me. Would love you chat/help.

RS,
Richie

Matt Brady ⋅ Clarksville, TN U.S. Army, Specialist ⋅ 4 years served

John,

I'm not surprised you haven't seen much use of MC simulations in your career. It is relatively new to the world of risk management and business.

As far as the financial benefit to organizations:

It reduces cost by reducing financial risk - delivering a better understanding of total project completion time, total project cost and providing a framework to explore ways to reduce cost and completion time within a wide variety of conceivable scenarios. It helps identify what resources will be required to complete the project, not on average, but within a given margin of safety. I.E. in 90% of scenarios it will cost X or less and take Y days or less to complete. Further, it can be paired with portfolio analysis to help decision makers choose how to invest capital to achieve return targets within an acceptable margin of safety.

My assessment of MC gaining popularity is based off of...
- PMI including Monte Carlo simulation in their curriculum and discussing it in conferences https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/monte-carlo-analysis-product-development-7862 (conference paper)
- Increase in recent articles about MC sims for project management
- Several other MC products are sold to and used by PMs (Risk AMP, primaVera, GoldSim, FrontlineSolvers Simulations, Palisade, and soon ClearFactr).

Here's an intro to MC simulation from a PM that uses Oracle Primavera: http://quantmleap.com/blog/2010/07/project-risk-management-and-the-application-of-monte-carlo-simulation/

Here's a recent PM meetup in Nashville discussing MC sims: https://www.meetup.com/Nashville-Modern-Excel-User-Group/events/239644412/

Here's a meetup in Colorado: https://www.meetup.com/Rocky-Mountain-Digital-Project-Managers/events/235990377/

Here's Cisco's "High Performance Trading Fabric" which uses Monte Carlo sim for "Risk Analytics" http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/solutions/industries/docs/finance/HPT_Poster_hires_060311.pdf

I understand that not everyone knows about it, but it is being used and appears to be gaining traction. How prevalent is it? I don't know. That is one of the reasons why I am doing this survey. I would like to get a rough idea of what percent of PMs know about MC sims, what percent use MC sim tools, and what percent would consider using MC tools if provided with a cheap, user-friendly option. I'm not assuming there is a huge market for this. I am trying to determine how big the market is and whether adoption will increase with a uniquely positioned solution.

I also understand the risk of PM scheduling tools introducing MC sim functions - providing a one-stop solution versus a more complex two-solution workflow. This is why I am still evaluating the concept and seeking feedback here. I am trying to determine feasibility and potential for the market.

John Green ⋅ Cary, NC Information Technology ⋅ 40 years experience

My comment is still appropriate : the only value your software will provide is if it reduces cost to existing workflow.

How does it do this?

If you peruse my resume (LinkedIn : lancelotlinc) you will see the household-name firms I have worked for : BofA, MasterCard, Cisco, Monsanto, State Farm, MetLife, Amazon, etc. Not one place I ever worked did we do any Monte Carlo simulations or had a need for anything similar.

What is your value proposition ? Its not visible to me.

Your assessment that MC sims are gaining popularity is based on what ? Certainly this is not the case in my experience, not one time.

Matt Brady ⋅ Clarksville, TN U.S. Army, Specialist ⋅ 4 years served

Hi Drew,

API would be a great idea! It could allow sending project tasks from our project planning application to common project management tools. That should save even more time with data entry.

Thanks for your feedback!

Matt Brady ⋅ Clarksville, TN U.S. Army, Specialist ⋅ 4 years served

John,

Thanks for the feedback!

I think you are operating under the assumption that this is project management software. It's not . It's risk analysis software for project managers using Monte Carlo simulation. The basics of this are taught in PMI as part of their PMP certification and it is used by many project managers. It is not a replacement for waterfall, or Agile, or the crazy new project management method your boss claims is going to change the world: It is a supplement to project planning.

The current offerings in this segment include Excel plugins like RiskAMP and standalone programs like Oracle PrimaVera. Cost is extremely high ($ 1,000 to $ 9,500) and there is a fairly steep learning curve for all of these products. Plus, most solutions are unable to do proper Monte Carlo simulations while accounting for dependency relationship or require hours of setup for each project. Further, time and cost modelling is carried out separately, which dramatically increases setup time as they are inter-related in a project.

From what I've seen, Monte Carlo simulations have been gaining steam in the PM community as a project planning tool. The available options are extremely limited and difficult to use. That's the problem I'm trying to solve. There is already an established market for the product, I'm trying to determine if that market will expand if I provide an option with a much faster workflow and more features to improve the realism of pre-project simulations.

I apologize for not communicating the nature of the offering more clearly.

Drew Schildwächter ⋅ Wilmington, NC Salesforce ⋅ 8 years experience

I agree with John. It is difficult to pit your product, feature to feature, against existing products because, first, yours is still in development and, secondly, those will continue to evolve. What is a difference between applications today might not be one with the next release. Still, there are companies who will not want to spend money for a big name solution (yet) and if you occupy a niche at a decent cost then you may be able to carve out a market share.

Something else to keep in mind is where will this information go and where will it come from? Is your product to be built on an open API framework so that you could, for example, pull costs from a financials application and push outcomes for reporting to another system?

John Green ⋅ Cary, NC Information Technology ⋅ 40 years experience

The very first step before you do anything else is to write a detailed vetted business plan that outlines who your target market is, and what the expected R-O-I is compared to your expenses.

https://www.score.org/business-plan-resources

I don't know that the differentiators you mentioned ( very intuitive UI, fast workflow, and more realistic simulation possibilities) have any real value to the workflow established businesses use today. We have lived through many changes in the management of software workflow (Agile , Kan Ban , Waterfall, et. al.) and for all the hype, none have really changed the landscape in terms of efficiency or cost savings. They just take money from one pocket and put it in the next pocket.

With regard to your "very intuitive user interface", what is intuitive for one is not intuitive for all. Think about Microsoft Word redesign a few years back. The functions were the same (cut/paste/draw) but the upset caused by their "more intuitive" user ribbon at the top of the screen was more trouble than it was worth. Or think about the OS redesigns "Vista to Win7 to Win10" and how frustrated people got when they couldn't find the Accessories folder, made us feel like mice looking for our cheese.

I don't share your enthusiasm for your product as you have described it because , in my opinion , it adds no value to the existing products already in the market. It seems that its a solution looking for a problem to solve. I've been in software development business for 43 years and today we build application services (Web Services) for around $8,000 per service. The one area that would make your product valuable is enabling a team to develop the same service for half that amount. Cost reduction is the name of the game. If your product is unable to assist in that venue, then I don't see a market for your product as you have described.