Project Management

The project is initiated through a detailed consultation stage to gather your requirements and to investigate, analyze, assess and discuss options. Depending on your requirements, and the size and scope of the project, we will work with you to define the following control documents.

	Business Case
	Project Scope
	Quality Plan
	Risk Management Plan
	Project Controls
	Project Definition
	Project Plan
	Test Plan
	Change Management Plan

See also:

PRINCE2 Methodology

NB. The size of a project very much determines the level of detail required, as the project management overhead must be proportional to the project. Some documents may be combined, while some may be very brief or omitted altogether.

	Business Case This will define the reasons for the project being carried out, and the final expected outcome. These reasons may be, to take advantage of new opportunities, to protect your current business, to modernize your business, to save money, etc. At this stage we will give you our honest opinion on how well the project will work within the required environment (such as the Internet), and offer our own suggestions. The overall business objectives for the project will be defined within the Business Case.
	Project Scope All involved parties must clearly understand what is to be included in the project, and what is not. This is referred to as the Project Scope, and defines the boundaries of the project.
	Quality Plan This defines the Quality Criteria for the project. These will help to ensure that the outcome of the project conforms to your expectations. These criteria must be quantifiable and measurable. These may include the accuracy of data displayed, the speed of an update, browser compatibility, website availability, numbers of clicks required for specified actions, security issues, etc. These will be defined within the Quality Plan.
	Risk Management Plan The Risks to the project must be identified and classified, so that they can be monitored and managed throughout the project. These risks may be internal to the project (e.g. staff sickness) or external (the business environment changes). The consequences of these risks occurring may cause a slippage in the projects timescale, a reduction in functionality, financing problems, etc. These are defined in the Risk Management Plan, and an "owner" is assigned to each risk. These owners are responsible for monitoring the risks at all times and to take action if the risks occur.
	Project Controls The control points for the project are defined, such as feedback reports to the client, how issues are to be management, how exception are to be management, review points, etc. These ensure that all parties are kept informed at regular intervals (or at exceptional instances, such as when a risk occurs) of the progress of the project. These will ensure that the project management remains "open" at all times.

Once the project has been defined we will try to understand the important data issues, if any. These may include data definitions of the data required, database requirements, and also the issue of how the data will be updated and maintained. We will then define the formal Project Definition for the project and product the Project Plan.

	Project Definition This defines what the project is. It is constructed from the customer requirements, the Business Case, the Project Scope, how the project is to be delivered by KlyNET, and the Project Plan.
	Project Plan Before committing to major expenditure on the project, the timescales and resource requirements must be established. This information is held in the Project Plan and is needed so that the Business Case can be evaluated and the project can be controlled. It must include the consequences of the Quality Plan (e.g. test points). NB. For larger projects the overall plan may involve a number of stages, with deliverables to the client at the end of each stage, and decisions on progression to subsequent stages of the project. This way you will start to see the results, and benefit, from your investment as soon a possible, as well as control financial investment.
	Test Plan We also develop the Test Plan. This is designed to verify that the business objectives within the Business Case, and the quality criteria within the Quality Plan, have all been met.
	Change Management Plan This is implemented before development starts, to control changes to the customer's requirements. This is necessary in order to assess the impact of changes prior to agreeing them at that time. In most instances small changes can be incorporated with little or no overall impact. For significant changes we will advise on the options available at that time. Care must be taken that changes are not agreed that introduce a risk to the overall success of the project. Changes may have an impact on the Risk Management Plan. For e-commerce and website projects, changes may be included in the First Code Build, the Second Code Build or as a follow-on project.

Development, testing and implementation (e.g. making a website 'live' on the web) is carried out according our E-commerce & Website Development Process or Office IT Infrastructure Development Process, and finishes when the client signs off, stating satisfaction with the outcome. At this point we transfer into E-commerce & Website Management Services or Office IT Infrastructure Management Services, which ever is appropriate.

Methodology

PRINCE2 Methodology
If required, we are able to integrate within a PRINCE2 project management environment. PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) is a structured method for effective project management. It is a de facto standard recognised and used extensively in both the public and private sectors, both in the UK and internationally.

For further details visit the Association for Project Management (APM) Group's PRINCE2 website.