Introduction

Thinktank Consulting was approached by the management of a relatively small software development company that was looking for some help with their issues. At the time they had approximately ten to fifteen small clients that they sold their product to and were obligated to support these clients to generate cash flows to sustain the company. At the same time the firm was selected to participate in a tender for a very large contract with one of the larger players in the Asian telecommunications market. The management felt that they had a very good chance of winning this contract providing they can produce a major upgrade to their product.

Problems

The issues mentioned by the executives of the software house included: excessive workloads, projects (both from Professional Services and Product Development areas) frequently being late, Change Requests implemented for customers frequently required rework and “buggy” upgrades to the existing software product.

Constraints

Quality and richness of features of the new version of the product was of the first priority to the company, because of its Asian bid. At the same time the management was concerned about maintaining the cash flow generated by the CRs requested by the existing small customers. Time factor was also important; however the senior management has indicated that they were willing to be somewhat flexible in order to obtain superior quality.

Introduction

Thinktank Consulting was requested to provide its expertise on a flagship strategic project initiated y a global digital imaging corporation. The project was expected to involve basically every area of the business and focused on building a web-based front-end system that would allow business customers search, select and order various products offered by the company. The new system was also required to have a real-time interaction with a complicated ERP system that has just been deployed in North American headquarters.

Problems

Although the company had some basic project management methodology in place, the level of sophistication was insufficient for the upcoming project. Documentation was available, however different project teams used different templates. There were no key documents identified by the IT department. In general following project management was more voluntary rather than obligatory. For example, sign-offs on key documents were very frequently obtained after the development process has already started thus causing misunderstandings and confusion. In addition there were no clear guidelines on the relationship between IT and Business sides. Thinktank was notified that the senior management was considering using this project as a pilot for gauging and planning all future project management and business analysis practices.

Constraints

Quality of the product was of the first priority in this project. In order for the system to be accepted and used by the customers and all the internal departments involved it had to be attractive, user-friendly and efficient. It also had to integrate seamlessly with the existing ERP system.

Time factor was also important; however the senior management has indicated that they were willing to be somewhat flexible in order to obtain superior quality. The budget part was a bit more complicated: the executives were prepared to be generous with resources but did not want to invest in any kind of business analysis or project management software packages.

Introduction

In 2001 we were contacted by a small bioinformatics company started by group of biotechnology scientists and computer programmers. The company was in the process of developing a new bioinformatics platform for the biotechnology sector. The team was expected to develop a working prototype of the platform as soon as possible in order to test it at several locations including Centre for Disease Control, UBC Medical School and Canada Genome Centre. The next logical step was to present their platform and independent reviews to the venture capital companies.

Problems

The main challenge facing the team was that the biotechnology experts had very differing ideas on how the system should work and what it should do. Developers on the other hand, did not have any background in cutting-edge biotechnology science and had a very difficult time understanding the requirements. The process that started with great fanfare and enthusiasm has stalled after about one month.

Constraints

As was mentioned before time was of an issue. The window of opportunity was defined to be 6 to 12 months. Furthermore, due to tight financial situation the company could not afford to invest in additional resources or provide developers with biotechnology training. Quality and the scope of the product were somewhat less of an issue since the company was expected to produce a working prototype with relatively few functions. However the prototype was expected to perform exceptionally well in order to gain acceptance and positive reviews of independent experts.

Solution

One of the first issues that became obvious to Thinktank Consulting was the fact that the company had a very weak understanding of the system development life cycle (SDLC) process. And while full-scale implementation of project management and business analysis methodologies would have definitely benefited the company, lack of time and budget warranted a simpler and leaner approach.

ThinkTank Consulting developed a customized course covering key areas of Requirements Gathering, Vision and Scope and Software Requirements Specifications documentation and their relationship to the basic Project Plan.

Introduction

Thinktank Consulting was contacted by a medium-size European software company producing various value-added services for the telecommunications industry. The organization has experienced a very fast growth in terms of revenues, full-time employees and the portfolio of services it offered.

The executives felt that now was the time to venture into the non-telecom domain by providing professional IT services to other organizations and by developing their own mobile apps business line.

Problems and Challenges

The senior management of the company had several concerns about the future development of the organizational goals. They included:

• Our projects are getting bigger, especially the professional services ones. Do we have the in-house skills and capabilities to handle them?
• We started experiencing certain problems with our projects already. They include poor quality of product, need for rework and missed deadlines. What are the root causes of these problems?
• We are entering two new business domains with very steep learning curves. How do we balance our best resources without damaging the existing business lines?
• We seem to have too many project ideas. How do we handle the resource allocation?
• We need more project managers and business analysts, but they are not readily available in our market. What options do we have?

Constraints

As the company employees have been already heavily involved in multiple projects already, the time factor had to be considered as we did not have the luxury to “remove” the resources from their projects for a prolonged period of time.

Solution

Thinktank Consulting has identified three problem areas for the company. They included:

• Lack of project management capabilities
• Lack of requirements management (aka business analysis in the IT and software development world) capabilities
• Absence of project proposal prioritization and strategic resource allocation (project portfolio management)

The following steps were undertaken: