Project Description
The corporation contracted with Project Masters to provide on-site consulting services to determine the necessity of and create project management software templates for the Account Management Department. The consultant also was tasked with determining the tasks within each template that would serve as deliverables against which work accomplished would be tracked and milestones identified. Additionally, the consultant developed an information structure within the software tool to capture necessary direct billing information. Further, tables, filters, sorts and reports were developed to allow for accurate financial management and project status. Finally, export maps were developed to allow the project management tool information to be shared with other software applications. The Project Masters consultant provided training to the account management staff on the proper use of the tool and managed a partnering supplier to provide configuration change management services.
Medical Company Challenges:
The client lacked formal means by which to track and manage account management activity and had taken the step of identifying a project management software tool, but lacked the competency to implement the tool in a meaningful way and to train staff on the use of the tool for management purposes. No formalized project management was in place and the project management tool was not incorporated into the enterprise in a way that would allow for information sharing.
Challenges:
- Purely the nature of change created an environment for the Project Masters consultant to approach staff training using effective and motivating methodology.
- An investment of time to understand the client’s business model and goals was necessary in order to produce effective tools for managing toward objectives.
- Security concerns were identified and required user roles to be assigned to appropriate user groups.
- The global resource pool required cleansing.
- A Master Project could not be found and therefore was established to support three levels of the organization: Global, Team and Project.
- Task lists in the software tool were showing task duration of 0 (zero).
Solution(s) provided:
- The Project Masters consultant provided tool based training for the Account Management staff in accordance with the structures and templates developed and approved by client.
- A process was developed to keep time tables in the time management system synchronized with the database with the ability to handle exceptions.
- The billing report in the time management system was translated to an excel report to allow users to see billing and budget information.
- Filters were added to tasks to remove milestones with 0 (zero) time allocations.
- Rate structures were set up for billable and non-billable time.
- Configuration activity was performed to display tasks due for a set period of time and allowed for roll up of tasks to consolidate project information for clients and the inside team.
- Converted existing templates into new formats
- Performed resource allocations with the project templates.
- Successfully managed configuration change management through a partnering supplier.
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