Project Management

In addition to the technical skills on offer e.bi can offer Project and Engagement Managers to your project to ensure that it runs smoothly and efficiently. Adopting methodologies and best practices endorsed by organisations such as Gartner, e.bi can deliver a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) to help your organisation gain maximum leverage from your BI deployment and deploy Enterprise Quality Assurance using SPECS methodology. Most BI projects can be deployed using our level 1, 2, 3 approaches to project management:

Level 1 Project Management

Includes a full and exhaustive methodology usually requiring 30% + of the project resources to cover end to end planning, documentation and general project management. See our Project mandate below and description of PMI tasks.

Level 2 Project Management

Level 2 PM includes all necessary PM and documentation tasks defined by the customer in line with their internal methodologies for project delivery. In a flexible format the customer and e.bi agree the key deliverables and plan a PM resource and if required a technical writer to meet the customers requirements for the defined project.

Level 3 Project Management

A level of project management that sees a technical consultant tasked with the scope, design, deploy, test and deliver phases of a project. The customer accepts that the technical consultant is not a trained PM and as such has technical rather than business or project management delivery abilities. This method is usually used for perceived simple projects such as report creation over an existing environment with full internal support. The risk is minimised as the customer is also the data expert and has full and unrestricted development access.

Project Management Mandate

At e.bi we follow the PMI (Project Management Institute) methodology. Eight knowledge areas are carefully controlled:

1. Project Integration Management
2. Project Scope Management
3. Project Time Management
4. Project Cost Management
5. Project Quality Management
6. Project Human Resource Management
7. Project Communications Management
8. Project Risk Management

The following management principles govern the conduct of projects.

• e.bi will hold a kick-off meeting with key stakeholders to establish the business goals and objectives of the project and the success of the project will be measured by the achievement of these goals.
  
  
• e.bi and the customer will assign people with appropriate knowledge and experience that are committed to the agreed project goals.
  
  
• Communications protocols will be agreed and adhered to so that all stakeholders remain well informed on the direction and status of the project.
  
  
• All Team Meetings, Steering Group Meetings and workshops will have agendas and minutes that are distributed to all participants in a timely manner.
  
  
• Registers of Issues and Risks will be maintained and project management will focus on resolution of issues and mitigation of risks.
  
  
• All Project Deliverables for which e.bi is responsible will be subject to independent review before delivery to the customer.
  
  
• All Unit and System testing will conform to e.bi Testing Standards Document.
  
  
• All User Acceptance Testing will conform with the customer system testing standards or in the absence of documented standards to e.bi's Testing Standards Document.
  
  
• As a minimum, all tests will be documented with formal test scripts and results documented in a format which allows formal review.
  
  
• A formal sign off procedure will be followed for all project deliverables to confirm client acceptance.
  
  
• All changes to the scope of the project will be subject to formal change control procedures outlined in the Project Management Plan.
  
  
• A post implementation review will be conducted to ensure that quality procedures are revised to incorporate lessons learnt during the course of the project.
  
  

Project Phases

Implementation Team Structure