Project Management Principles

The purpose of project management and control mechanisms is to ensure project success in meeting the schedule, the budget and your expectations. The processes proposed here, based on the PMI, are proven, effective and familiar to the proposed project team.

Communications Management

The purpose of communications management is to share the right information, at the right time, with the right people, and in the right format. Good communications management means expending effort on communicating information which contributes to project success or where lack of information can lead to failure. We will do this by identifying the correct target audience for different categories of communications.

Both formal and informal methods will be used to share information. Formal communication methods are those that follow well defined procedures, while informal communications are more casual. Weekly status reports that contain information about progress and issues are a well known formal communication tool. Other examples include decision requests, and risk logs. Voice mail messages and conversations over lunch or coffee are examples of informal communications which we will document when pertinent.

Implementation

Communications Management is implemented through three essential processes, all of which will be a joint responsibility of our Project Manager and your Project Manager. The processes are:

• Identification: process of identifying information to be shared, when it should be distributed, who should receive it, and how it should be prepared;
• Reporting: process of collecting and preparing the information; and,
• Distribution: process of disseminating the information, and for formal communications, storing the information in the project archive.

A weekly status report will be used to communicate progress and issues at a weekly status meeting. A sample Status Report is included in the Appendix.

Quality Management

The purpose of Quality Management is to assure that the right things have been done. Its scope is far broader than that of testing where the focus is on proving that the specifications have been accurately translated into a working system. Quality Management is a business centric approach that is involved in all aspects of the development process. The goal is to assure that the system will achieve the business objectives for both today and tomorrow's user community.

Quality management has a role to play throughout project development:

• Requirements: assure that the user requirements have been accurately understood by the business analyst and translated in a manner that both allows the developers to produce the correct system and testers to create the correct test cases.
• Development: assure that all appropriate standards and development practices are followed, to assist the development team to resolve any inconsistencies between specifications or requirements while assuring that all the business needs are still met.
• Acceptance Testing: assure that the testing is complete, that all the business functions meet the user requirements, that the test data used reflects the true business data, and that the testing has been sufficient to demonstrate that the system will perform in the production environment

Implementation

Quality Management practices will be implemented in the following areas:

• Standards will be developed and enforced to assure that all system deliverables meet the needs of the project team and will continue to provide value after implementation:
  • Consistent use of business terms
  • Documentation: Business cases, business rules, user requirements, development specifications, use-cases, test cases, user training material, user acceptance test specifications, release description
  • Programs: Common templates and layouts, database accesses, exception handling
• Reviews:Conduct reviews of design and code for critical components of the systems to verify and increase their accuracy, to assure maintainability, and to assure the use of industry best practices.
• Conversion Practices: Verify that all interim (test) data conversions use a statistically significant sample of data and the data chosen captures all the business events.
• User Acceptance Testing: In conjunction with Client Staff, design, document and conduct acceptance testing.
• User training: Provide required user training. The intention is to have Client staff from each of the functional areas participate in the user acceptance testing of their areas. This will provide management with an increased confidence that the functions will integrate with their operation and provide training to the staff at the appropriate level. However there may still be some initial training required.
• Production readiness: Assist the user community in identifying and implementing any operational or procedural changes required in their areas prior to the new system going live.

Risk Management

The purpose of risk management is to proactively identify and mitigate the impact of risks.  Risk is the possibility of an event's occurrence with unwanted or adverse consequences.  In a project, the adverse consequences could be in the form of diminished quality of the end product, increased costs, delayed completion, or client dissatisfaction.

Our approach to managing risk employs structured processes and methods. This provides a disciplined environment to assess continuously what could go wrong, to determine which risks are important to deal with, and when to implement the strategies to deal with those risks, recognising both the potential value of opportunity and the potential impact of adverse effects.

In such an environment, risks are continuously identified and analysed for relative importance, and the information is used for decision-making in all phases of a project.  Risks are mitigated, tracked, and controlled to effectively use resources.  Wherever possible, problems are prevented before they occur and personnel consciously focus on what could affect product quality and schedules.

Important features of such an approach are:

• Making risk management an integral and vital part of project management;
• Thinking toward the future, identifying uncertainties, anticipating potential outcomes;
• Managing project resources and activities while anticipating uncertainties;
• Encouraging open communication at and between all project levels; and
• Viewing the system within the context of the larger, business-level requirements.

Implementation

Risk management is implemented through four essential processes, all of which will be a joint responsibility of our Project Manager and your Project Manager.  The four processes are:

• Identification: process of identifying possible future occurrences that could have a cost, schedule or performance effect on the objectives;
• Quantification: process of quantifying a risk, both the probable effects as well as the probability of its occurrence;
• Mitigation: process of developing and implementing plans to respond to the identified risks; and
• Controlling: process of reviewing a risk on a regular basis to assess its current status.

All of these four processes are fully iterative throughout the life cycle of the engagement.  In addition, risks identified and their corresponding mitigation plans must be revisited regularly to ensure that evolving circumstances have not affected the viability of the mitigation plans.

Risk Management is proactive decision-making that avoids problems before they arise.  Anticipating what might go wrong will become a part of everyday business.

Change Control

The Change Control process is the primary vehicle for monitoring and controlling the change that occurs during the normal life cycle of a system or project. This process normally includes an impact assessment and recommends a course of action.

Change requests may impact the project scope, budget or contracted specifications.  Consequently, it is imperative that the changes be properly documented, controlled and managed.

Implementation

The following are the basic steps for change management:

1. Identify a need
2. You Review and perform an Impact Analysis
3. We Review and perform our Impact Analysis
4. Log the Impact Assessment and Recommendations
5. Implement the change if approved
6. A Change Request Form is included in the Appendix, along with suggested questions to review when assessing the request.

The time spent by us in performing an evaluation of a change shall be chargeable.