Project Management: We guarantee your project success. Yes, that's what we do. We help you manage, execute, govern, and measure your projects. All our consultants are certified project managers (PMP) and have worked for some of the largest companies in the world. According to Standish group study, only 34 percent of projects become successful. Why it is so?

1. Poor planning: Who are your IT managers and do they get enough opportunity to plan or under pressure from senior management they tend to think planning as a waste of time because they believe that time is better spent doing something rather than planning. Do you involve your project team members in planning? Do they have the skills and experience to make complete plans? Or you always ask them to implement the solution. These are fundamental questions that need to be answered first.

2. Unclear goals and objectives: Many IT projects are elaborated progressively and in these scenarios project managers rely on rolling wave planning. As a result, the goal of a project may be only partially clear due to a poor requirement gathering in the definition stage of the project. In such case, the scope and schedule developed by project managers cannot possibly be accurate because their objectives are unclear. Defining clear requirements for a project can take time and lots of communication.

Our approach: Our certified project managers have adequate experience/ skills/ knowledge and specialized in rolling wave planning.

3. Poor Stakeholder Management: Project stakeholders' interests may be positively or negatively impacted by the project and that is why stakeholders' influence on the project is the most important thing to consider. Stakeholders who are found later will make changes and could cause delays. Any change that is made later is harder to integrate and is much more costly.

Our approach: We identify stakeholders and bring them early. We make every effort to obtain all the requirements before the work begins. This is important to understand the project requirements. We define scope, create WBS, and plan the project as per the requirements. A requirement found later may have negative consequences to the project and to the company in terms of changes, delays, cost & budget overruns and possible project failure.

4. Scope creep and Feature creep due to objectives changing during the project: Scope creep refers to uncontrolled and unexpected changes in user expectations and requirements as a project progresses, while feature creep refers to the uncontrolled addition of features to a system with a wrong assumption that one small feature will add nothing to cost or schedule.

Our approach: We help you not to understand project trade-offs and make decisions regarding objectives on the basis of rational insight. We prevent project Scope creep and Feature by implementing effective scope control methodology. This process involves controlling the changes to the project baseline and comes under Monitoring and Controlling process group. One of the important (if not the most important) functions of a project manager is to prevent uncontrollable changes. We will help you proactively focus on controlling the scope as well as analyzing the impact of scope changes to the other areas of the project such as cost, schedules, resource planning, deliverables etc.

While preparing the project scope management plan, we will set up change control process and follow this process during scope control so that you can determine where changes in scope are coming from and what you can do to minimize the effects.

5. Unrealistic time or resource estimates: Many times project managers make costly mistakes while estimating time or resource. One common mistake they make during the creation of the Work Breakdown Structure is often assumed that the time on task equals duration.The time on task is the time the task will take to complete without interruptions, whereas in reality, duration is the time the task actually takes to complete including interruptions.

Another common problem is using linear approximation when estimating schedule. For example, if you double the number of developers, you can cut the project time in half. In reality, doubling the number of developers produces a non-linear result.

Our approach: We always work in a collaborative environment with the team and have the team buy-in and also consult with the project stakeholders as much as possible while preparing the detail project scope statement so that we do not make costly mistakes while preparing the WBS. Also we employ effective techniques to estimate the amount of time each activity is expected to take. Once you have estimated the activity durations we use the inputs of all major processes to produce a viable schedule consistent with Management expectations

6. Improper delegation of task and responsibilities: Many times project managers fail to delegate tasks and responsibilities to the team such a way that it should fit a team member's job description. When team members are asked to work outside their specialization (often as added responsibilities), they not only go through a learning curve but also tend to lose focus on the project objectives. This always results in confusion among the team members and eventually cost and time overruns.

Our approach: We help you to organize the team such way that everybody should work under his/her own specialization so that the team as a cohesive whole performs the work diligently and within time and budget and thus raise efficiency above standard. We also inspire people, share the project vision with the group and create a very motivating environment. Our project managers display enthusiasm and bring can-do attitude.

7. Lack of executive support and user involvement: IT managers face many difficulties in managing projects and the lack of executive support and user involvement are the two main reasons of IT project failures. Many times IT project manager's work as project coordinators or project expediters and without executive support they cannot personally make and enforce decisions. The second reason is user involvement and often the project planners fail to plan human solutions to the very human users that the product is proposed to serve.

Our approach: We carefully listen to the executive management and the project sponsor and try to find out whether they have reservations about the project. If so, what is their vision for the project and what are their business objectives of the project. We try to work as an interface between the business and technology sides of the company so that we help our customers align business with their projects.

8. Failure to communicate and act as a team: Projects sometimes fail due to improper communication. Many large IT projects are so complex that these projects always require large amount of analysis and work. The project teams are busy doing the analysis and project managers do not communicate progress regularly because they believe that progress will not be seen by the executive management.

Our approach: A great deal of a project manger's time is spent on communication. We help your IT managers communicate with the stakeholders effectively and on a regular basis. We prepare a project presentation, list all the project related issues and concerns, report progress and inform changes and updates to the project management plan.

We manage stakeholders' influences effectively. Another important function of a project manager is to prevent uncontrollable changes. Stakeholders have greater influences over the requirements as well as changes in a project. We help your IT managers to manage stakeholders' Influences effectively; show them the impact of changes to the project and to the company. If changes are necessary; we come up with a solution that everybody agrees. We work with the project team diligently so that they agree with the solution.

9. Lack of proper risk management: Another potential cause for project failure is the IT managers' inability to categorize all the risks qualitatively and quantitatively and implement corrective measures.

Our approach: We identify past, present and potential risks that the current project faced, facing or will face in the near future. We carefully and methodically categorize all the risks qualitatively and quantitatively and implement corrective measures. We assign one or two persons from our team as risk owners. These persons identify the risks, discuss the risks with the team and the project manager, find solutions and implement them.

10. Inappropriate skills: In this rapidly changing, technology-driven business environment and the constant changes of technology make it hard to predict the skills the IT department will be needed.

Almost all large IT projects require a diverse range of skills. Many teams lack the breadth, and depth they require. Also dearth of qualified people in the labor market and high attrition rate of the industry add many problems to the projects. Often, projects mangers spend substantial amount of their time in recruitment related activities.

Our approach: Our project managers have excellent planning, oversight, organization, and communications skills; experienced technology skilled people do not necessarily have these abilities. We ensure that everybody works under his/her own specialization so that the team as a cohesive whole performs the work diligently and within time and budget and thus raise the efficiency above standard.