When planning a Dynamics 365 CRM and Power Apps implementation, one of the most common questions clients ask is:

“How is the project effort distributed across requirements, development, testing, and deployment?”

In this article, I break down a real-world Dynamics 365 CRM project plan by percentage of effort across each major activity — from requirements gathering through deployment.

This breakdown reflects a typical enterprise CRM implementation using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform best practices.

Whether you're a CIO, IT Director, Project Manager, or Delivery Lead, this guide will help you:

  • Estimate resource allocation

  • Plan budgets more accurately

  • Set stakeholder expectations

  • Understand where development effort truly goes

Here is an image of my current breakdown of project activity by percentage:

On top of the breakdown for these activities, I would still add:

  • Project Management: 20%

  • Delivery Lead Oversight: 5%

  • Project Management Office: 5%

Happy software engineering!