Project Management
Anything in business will fail unless it is managed. Management is something that is taught in Universities and Colleges but these teaching are nothing without experience.
Project Pride
SoftElephant uses project management in all aspects of the work we do. Take a moment to review our Project Pride and see how we have used our Project Management Skill to help our customers succeed!
Project Management Life Cycle
- Initial Concept - Every great idea starts with the light bulb going off. Taking it from that initial concept requires a better understanding of the idea
- Initial Research - Every great idea starts with the light bulb going off. Taking it from that initial concept requires a better understanding of the idea. Research allows you to take the time to evaluate the idea and options for implementing your idea. It gives you the chance to see who else out there has a potential solution or why you need your own solution.
- Initial Design - Taking the lessons learned during your research phase you need to make a quick design to address the key risk areas and see if a solution can be crafted before investing too many resources.
- Proof of Concept - During the proof of concept you are verify your initial idea and making sure that you have a viable option for moving ahead or making the decision to cut your losses by not moving forward.
- Detailed Design - Your idea is a go. You have lots of questions that you have not answered in your initial research and need to take the time to make a plan. The plan will manage the risk, timeline, and budget to move you forward to the final solution. Time spent in this phase can save thousands of man hours by solving the problems before too much work has been wasted in the later stages of construction.
- Implementation - The design has answered all of the key questions and addressed the risky areas of the project. It's time to implement the project to meet the specifications of the design.
- Testing - To ensure your project will work upon completion you need to complete iterative tests and send the failing parts back to Implementation.
- Training - Once you have a significant number of features implemented its time to introduce the users to the environment to prime their brains for the project and to get the initial feedback that will allow for a smooth and success deployment.
- Deployment - Once you have completed the Implementation, Testing, and Training stages of your project and you are now ready to deploy the system to the masses. Make sure you have multiple plans just in case everything doesn't go 100% on the first try. If the project has lots of risks it might make sense to do staged rollouts where you slowly bring the whole project online to reduce the risk.
- Training - The majority of problems in any system are related to operator error. It is important to continually train new and existing users of the system to ensure that they understand and know how to use the system.
- Support and Maintenance - Once the project is online and being used in day-to-day operations it is important to have someone there to answer the questions that may arise as well as to be there to fix things when they break. Proper maintenance will ensure that your user's productivity remains high and prevent wasted employee time.
- Migration - Eventually every system comes to stage where it can be turned off, needs to be expanded, or needs to be moved onto other systems. Migration allows systems to grow and expand while the business changes and evolves.
If you have a project stalled or in need of fresh experience at any stage of the Project Management Life Cycle, Contact Us to contribute to the success of your project.
Benefits of our Experience
- Real world experience working in multiple industries such as, financial services, construction services, medical, telecommunications, and information technology.
- Over 15 years of experience with all aspects of Information Technology from advanced research and design to the basic desktop and application support.
- An ability to apply all solutions to focus on the sweet spots of business and positively effect the bottom line.
- Uncanny ability to relate technical geek speak into a language that business owners can understand.
In Conclusion...
SoftElephant has experiences in all stages of the Information Technology life cycle. From the early stages of concept formation and design to the support stage and finally the migration onto new platforms. If you have technology projects that are growing too big to for you to manage, or need the skills of someone well versed in technology and it's applications, Contact Us.
