Project Management

Gartner Defines Portfolio Project Management (PPM) as:

A strategy for oversight of a portfolio or related interdependent projects, with the intent of limiting duplicate work efforts and leveraging decision-making and skills across projects. PPM takes a holistic view of projects and their relationships, and focuses on the potential for project benefits to be leveraged across the enterprise. PPM tools, which support this strategy, are high-end, multi-project management tools with:

• Resource profiling and allocation capability
• Integrated time reporting
• Executive information reporting (such as "red light" and "green light" status
• Project accounting interfaces

Wikipedia defines Project Management as:

Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.
The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time, and budget.
The secondary - and more ambitious - challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve the project goals and objectives.

BAC Project Management

The biggest failure of a consulting company is the ineffective management of projects. BAC approaches this problem on multiple fronts to ensure our projects come in on time and under budget.

First and foremost, 24% of our staff are trained PMP Certified Project Managers. In addition, we have had a proven Project Management Practice in place for over 10 years and have been deploying Microsoft Project Server since its inception. Furthermore, we use the tools that we deploy.

For every project we create a SharePoint site for each client engagement so that each team member (both internal to BAC and our client's personnel) post all documents associated with the project in the repository.

As the economy tightens, Project/Program Management becomes more critical. Making sure that the projects are done right the first time saves you money. Blackstone & Cullen has tremendous success in delivering proven processes and technology.

Georgia Technology Authority (GTA)

Georgia Technology, responsible for managing all internal technology projects as well as providing oversight and guidance to other state agencies in the managing of their projects, required a unified method of project reporting. Read more: Georgia Technology Authority Enterprise Project Management Case Study

Merial

Merial was in the process of implementing a major upgrade to their ERP system and centralizing operations to a single global data center. The project was getting out of control and in jeopardy of missing the deadline. Read more: Merial Enterprise Project Management Case Study

Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT)

The Information Technology Division (ITD) oversees large projects that involve big money. ITD wanted to standardize a project management process and environment. Read more: Georgia Department of Transportation Enterprise Project Management Case Study

 

• Microsoft Enterprise Project Management
• Microsoft Officer SharePoint Server
  

Blackstone & Cullen Engagement Delivery Process

Delivering on time and on budget is always a challenge. BAC has developed a solid and proven process to ensure we are always in synch with our clients.

We begin by developing a project charter or business case. This document is normally about 20-25 pages in length and describes the Business Need, Benefits, Critical Success Factors, Measures of Success, Approach, Scope, Deliverables, Cost Estimates, Project Control Strategies, a Work Breakdown Structure and a Communications and Issue Resolution Plan. It defines the total amount of work that must be done. This is jointly created document, with both our clients people and BAC people in the charter. Once the document is created we both sign it agree to move forward.

The WBS is converted to a detailed project plan. We collectively sit down at the project inception and jointly pre-approve the work to be done by both our clients people and BAC people as both teams are assigned tasks in the project plan. We both pre-approve the plan and move forward with a two week tactical plan that we will update weekly.

At the end of the first week, we have a project status meeting. We openly discuss our progress to date and review joint activities. If all is in order, we both sign off on the previous weeks work, and that status report is attached to your weekly invoice. We then layout the work to be done in the next two weeks both our clients people and BAC people and we jointly pre-approve the work.

Occasionally a change in scope is needed as new business requirements are uncovered during the project. For example, last week the client wants the screens to be Green but the senior executives want the screens to be red no problem, that is a change in scope that was not identified at the beginning of the project. We have several options, BAC can make the change or the client team can make the change. We truly do not care who does the work. Our goal is to jointly deliver a successful project. If additional funding is available, BAC is happy to do the work, if not, it is likely the client team will do the work. We are all in this together.

Weekly we jointly review the project status, pre-approve work scheduled for the next two weeks and continue the process to project completion.

In our nearly 20 years of business this project delivery methodology has proven to be the cornerstone of our success and customer satisfaction. All work is jointly pre-approved weekly. Ensuring on time and on budget delivery.