Situation
The Interactive Media arm of the mega-billion dollar organization required a standard means of delivering quality internet technology and application development services to marquis clients such as Hertz.com, NFL.com and USOpen.com. The project management organization consisted of 300 project team members, including a Vice President, 5 supporting directors, one contract manager, and three consultants.
IBM’s Interactive Media needed to develop an integrated methodology based upon project management methodology, software development lifecycle (SDLC) methodology, and traditional media production methodology. The integrated methodology was providing the foundation for the visual digital branding and supporting e-commerce back-end engines for each of the clients they were serving.
Task
WiserWulff’s assignment at IBM Interactive Media covered all aspects of project management methodology: scope definition, project planning and scheduling, baselining and status report (for schedule, labor, and costs), variance and root cause analysis, scope/change management and status communications. WiserWulff was also tasked with establishing the project management office (PMO) infrastructure that drove the implementation and adoption of this methodology across a 400 person organization. This PMO implementation also included a project governance process model that provided for validating and driving the adoption of the project management methodology through documented audit and review processes.
Actions
WiserWulff undertook the following actions to achieve the initative:
- Organizational project management maturity model assessment
- Process design and development
- Project management consulting and advice
- Training material development and delivery
- Process documentation
- Change Management consulting
- Methodology support
- Project management technology implementation
Results
The engagement resulted in the following benefits:
- Well-defined scope definition statements (represented in a statement of work with standard scope definition sections)
- Clearly articulated project schedules for both schedule and resource
- Project plans were base-lined, forming the foundation of variance analysis
- Status reporting included tracking of actual resource time which provided accurate project costing/charge backs
- Project reporting based upon standard data driven out of project plans that provided confidence in information
- Clearly articulated scope definitions enabled smoother process for scope management
- Smoother on-boarding of PM’s and projects
- The growth of the maturity of the organization’s project management was enabled
- Made an immediate impact on streamlining the business while allowing for rapid process improvement