C2 Consulting believes that the key to effective project management is ensuring the continued involvement of all key staff in each project. In order to achieve this, our project managers use the following deliverables and techniques:

Establish the Business Need.

Ensure Involvement of User Community.

Manage the tasks through a Project Plan.

Realistic Risk Assessment.

Strategic control through a Project Board.

Regular Reporting on progress.

Ongoing mitigation of Risks and Issues.

Controlling parallel activities through Project Teams.

Using the correct methodology for the project.

The best design, the most appropriate technology and the best team will not deliver a true solution to time, cost and quality without a project manager leading them.

Deliverables and Technique Details

A clear definition and agreement of the Business Need for the project, the benefits to be obtained and the estimated costs in the form of a cost benefit analysis. Top

Involvement of the Users in all project activities ensures user commitment to the project and a solution that actually works and provides the business benefits. Top

The use of a High-level Project Plan which includes all milestones from each department or third party involved in the project. These milestones should be taken from detailed project plans produced by each area of the business involved in the project. These project plans should be kept up to date by each business area and any changes to milestones should be passed to the project manager with justifications. Top

A realistic assessment of the overall risk the project represents and ensuring that sufficient contingency is added to the project plan in order to deliver the project to the agreed timescale. Top

Use of a Project Board to control the project where all departments and any third parties are represented. The remit of the Project Board is to manage the strategic direction of the project. Top

Regular reporting on progress against an agreed project plan. Reports should be produced for each Project Board by each department involved to an agreed format and discussed at the Project Board. Top

Proactive management of project Risks and Issues via an initial Risks and Issues workshop followed by Risks and Issues as a standing point on the Project Board agenda. Mitigations for Risks and Issues should be agreed by the Project Board. Top

Use of Project Teams within the project to work on specific aspects of the project. These teams should be made up of business and technical staff who will be working together to perform specific tasks such as Data Conversion, User Acceptance Testing or Training. Project Teams should meet weekly to discuss progress and plan the work for the following week. The results of these meetings should be passed to the Project Manager for inclusion in the Project Board reports. Top

Using the correct project management methodology for the business solution. A variety of variants exist on two major methodologies - The traditional waterfall method and the iterative or prototyping method. Top