Our Project Services:

• Project / programme planning and management

• Requirements gathering, analysis and development

• People and skills requirements definition and identification

• Mentoring / coaching

• Process design

• IT solution design

• Software evaluation

• Software implementation and integration

Background

It should by now have become clear (at least to the UK public sector!) that big-bang, centralized, over-specified IT projects managed by “waterfall” type project planning methods are unlikely to result in success, even when subjected to the occasional “Prince 2” style project review.

Our experience of multiple successful projects over the last ten years has led to the realisation that the following ingredients are critical to success:

• open and honest communication at all times

• involvement of all key parties in the initial solution design

• extremely close client collaboration incorporating all relevant people, but with different levels of commitment

• weekly or bi-weekly project meetings (face to face or by phone) with all key team members and other attendees as required

• clarity on aims and objectives, tight specification of individual project components but only very loose initial specification of the entire project and an acceptance that specifications will change in the course of the project as component interactions and requirements become clearer

• overall project plans used as an initial resource estimation and budgeting guide and future aide memoire, giving way thereafter to task and issue list management

• use of modular technology, such that any one project component can be swapped for an alternative if delivery of that component should fail, without endangering the entire project

• analysis and evaluation of technology components before incorporation in the project but with a willingness to try new solutions

• iterative development with regular testing (without letting testing become an end in itself)

• selection of only the most talented and skilled team members from the widest possible skills base

• non-hierarchical management – all team members treated equally and with respect - “project manager” as facilitator and communicator rather than task master

• intensive use of multiple task and issue lists (public and private) as communication vehicles

• high level of delegation of responsibility to individual team members but with clear accountability to the whole team

• pairing of developers wherever possible (for fun and productivity)

• pragmatic but thorough approach to documentation made available through simple, online, collaborative document management systems