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"Parabola are strong on Project Management. When they develop for us, we're confident we'll get what we want, on time and on budget."

David Tymm
Managing Director
Sunflower Learning Ltd

Project Management

Excellent project management is the basis of a successful project. This might seem obvious, but poor project management has been cited as a contributory factor in almost every failed IT project which has hit the headlines over the years.

Our projects are successful because we apply a pragmatic mix of IT project management skills and experience. For instance, we have some simple tenets which are applied to all our projects.

• Keep the project small - Even our largest projects are divided into manageable chunks. The team size is rarely greater than 3-4 people.
• Involve the client in the whole project - The more involved you are throughout the project lifecycle the better the chance of success.
• Get the whole project team to understand the business objectives - The project is a success if it delivers your business objectives and the best project teams understand this and keep it in focus.
• Use tried and tested technology - New technology produces high risks. We avoid it where possible and when we do use completely new technology we manage the risk with a proof of concept stage.

Some of the project management techniques we apply are illustrated below.

• Lifecycle planning - Choosing the right project shape and approach for each project.
• Estimation - As well as tried and tested estimation models we have a wealth of data from previous projects we can apply.
• Planning and scheduling - We produce a detailed schedule which will be used for Project Control.
• Risk Management - Identify, quantify and most importantly take appropriate actions to mitigate against the risks.
• Change Management - Requirements change, priorities change it's a fact of life. Change Management enables it to happen within the framework of the project.
• Project Control - We track project progress using our in-house Time Recording application. This data is combined with the Project Schedule etc to monitor and report progress. Control actions are then taken to keep the project on track.