Services

PM101 Consulting has a wealth of experience in facilitating, writing and implementing company processes, procedures making sure that they align with the companies polices and business goals.

This can range from basic work flow diagrams to full Emergency Procedures and Business Continuity Plans.

The purpose of a business continuity plan is to prepare an organisation in the event of extended service outages caused by factors beyond there control (e.g., natural disasters, man-made events), and to restore services to the widest extent possible in a minimum time frame.

A completed BCP cycle results in a formal printed manual available for reference before, during, and after disruptions. Its purpose is to reduce adverse stakeholder impacts determined by both the disruption’s scope (who and what it affects to what extent) and duration (e.g., hours, days, months).

At its most complex, a BCP manual may outline a secondary work site, technical requirements and readiness, regulatory reporting requirements, work recovery measures, the means to re-establish physical records, the means to establish a new supply chain, or the means to establish new administration centres. Firms should ensure that their BCP manual is realistic and easy to use during a crisis. As such, BCP sits alongside crisis management and disaster recovery planning and is a part of an organisation’s overall risk management.

The development of a BCP manual can have up to six main phases:

• Analysis
• Solution Strategy & Design
• Implementation
• Assessing
• Testing and organisation acceptance
• Maintenance.

Purpose
Project Health Checks are part of the Governance area and primarily focus on particular standards or procedures, but the purpose of governance is to ensure they are followed. It needs to ensure people follow a formal set of procedures and standards. There needs to be a mechanism in place to monitor compliance. This can be as formal as an Audit function, a Project Health Check or as informal as periodic reviews. One way or another, metrics must be collected to ensure the goals set in the governance framework document are being met.

PM101 Consulting sees the benefits of conducting regular Project Health Checks as theses are designed with the customer to be inclusive and compatible with the customer’s project management framework, as with all, the prime objective of the Health Check to identify:

• The “true” project status
• The key issues and risks
• Project Financials are being managed
• Key recommendations for a way forward

The Project Health Check process establishes key issues at a high level and sets these in the context of the business and technical complexities of the project. This can then form the basis for further detailed analysis in specific areas or the starting point for appropriate ‘improvement programmes’.

Benefits
A Project Health Check is a high-level project performance examination. Examples of what the Health Check examines are:

• The project progress against methodology phase requirements
• The project performance against plan and budget and customer requirements
• The clarity and degree of understanding of the scope and desired project outcomes
• Project Budget reviewed for assumptions, any recent changes and overall tracking to date
• Key Stakeholder satisfaction levels: Project Sponsor, Business Owner, project team and other key stakeholders level of satisfaction with delivery/progress on project’s critical success factors
• The roles and responsibilities (and their understanding) of the key project resources and key stakeholders
• Identified Benefits and realisation plans in place
• Good Governance is in place.

PM101 Consulting works with the customer in setting the initial guidelines and objectives required for the Mentoring & Coaching arrangement, basically it’s where a more experienced project manager coaches a less experienced project manager during a project.

PM101 Consulting provides the PM with direct hands-on guidance and mentoring during a project. The Coach mentors the PM in understanding project management principles and how to apply them within the customers company and on the project. The coaching can provide practical nuts and bolts learning about key elements necessary for successful projects, including cross-functional involvement; overcoming technical and team obstacles; determining deliverables the team will create, proper management involvement, etc. Coaching is especially useful in organisations where Project Managers are created “overnight,” for instance, by designating a capable technical lead to take on a PM role with no or little prior management training.