DiscoveryMining

Project Management. This is one aspect of an eDiscovery project that is critical to your case’s success. Your Project Manager needs to understand requirements, define the project scope, and actively assess risk, as well as identify and communicate change requests that either affect your overall review strategy and/or your project budget.

The importance of a competent eDiscovery Project Manager isn’t the topic at hand however. We already know the critical nature of this role when engaging a project that essentially turns unstructured datasets into structured datasets. Rather, I would like to raise the question “How do we account for this type of service from a cost and budgeting perspective?” Do clients prefer to have this service built into the costs of processing and hosting their eDiscovery project or is it preferable to separate the cost as a line item all together?

Here at Discovery Mining we provide Project Management services as courtesy to all projects, whether it is a 2 GB case or a 20 TB case. Your Project Manager is responsible for the coordination of the forensics and collections, data processing, reporting, training, supporting and ultimately, the production process. From end to end, the Project Manager is your advocate for the Discovery Mining system and with a partnership approach in mind, they will guide you on how to best use Discovery Mining in order to reach your goals. This is all built in. If you request something that is outside the normal scope of support, are we going to charge you? Sure, but we always let you know up front in case you want to change your mind.

Other firms in our space account for these services differently. The services outlined above are all billed by the hour. Do you have a question about a processing report and need to pick up the phone to speak with your Project Manager? You can expect another one-hour “Project Management – consulting” line item on your invoice. Receive your invoice at month-end and need more details on what this one-hour fee was for? Pick up the phone and call your Project… actually, that may not be the best idea as that may result in another hour billed.

Some may argue that splitting the processing and support charges provides transparency during the budget planning and vendor selection phases. I think it does quite the opposite; as accurate project scope is often unclear at the onset. Is it reasonable to expect one to be able to make accurate budget assessments of how many Project Management hours will be billed based on GB count and the expected duration of the review period?

I believe our approach of providing Project Management as a courtesy service is not only key to the success of your discovery project, it is also key to keeping your costs from skyrocketing due to unforeseen billable hours of Project Management services. If your costs do skyrocket, it is more likely due to the handful of custodians at your client’s Timbuktu satellite office that happened to have been forgotten.