Project management is the discipline of organising and managing resources in such a way that the project requirements are completed within the defined scope, time and budget constraints.

A project itself is a one-time undertaking to create a unique product or service as opposed to a continuous or repetitive processes designed to create the same product (or service) over and over again. This one time undertaking often means that personnel from a variety of departments will need to work together as a team which under normal circumstances might not happen. This can often cause friction as different departments and personnel tend to have differing views & priorities which when combined with organisational politics can often cloud seemingly simple issues.

Therefore a project manager not only needs to be able to manage processes, activities and resources but he/she also needs excellent people and political skills.

Rainbow Solutions believes that it has those necessary skills and levels of experience to be able to project manage your IT software implementations to the standard that you desire.

Whilst we have managed a number of different IT implementations over the years we recently decided to formalize that knowledge by undertaking a Prince 2 Practitioner Course as this is an internationally recognised standard for both public and private sector project implementations. Simon Cohen of Rainbow Solutions took the course in 2006 and is now a fully qualified Prince II Practitioner.

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Project Planning is the mechanism through which the progress of a project is planned and reported. Schedules such as Gantt charts are often used to represent the utilisation of the project team, the order of tasks to be performed and their stage of completion.

Project planning also enables the critical path of a project to be defined which in itself can highlight any potential 'risky' areas or tasks which might cause delays to other tasks being performed.

Rainbow Solutions believe that proper project planning is the cornerstone of a successful implementation, as it is not only a useful as a checkpoint of progress to date but it can also highlight risks and potential exceptions to project scope.

Therefore Rainbow Solutions plans it projects thoroughly and methodically. We also provide realistic timescales and projections when estimating resource allocation by first having taken the time to understand the issues and realities of those to be assigned work packages.

This in itself helps to minimise the number of project issues that are very time or scope sensitive which in turn helps to manage risk out of the project.

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Rarely, if ever, does an implementation occur without project issues being raised at some stage. The question then is how these issues are handled and how are their associated risks managed.

Rainbow Solutions believes that proper project planning and the use of simple, but effective, project monitoring and control techniques often averts many of project issues that would otherwise surface.

However, when issues occur that could not have been foreseen, Rainbow Solutions will act promptly and decisively to ensure the issue is managed or dealt with switfly. This helps prevents issues that may start out being rather small from escalating into real risks to the project.

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Project monitoring is the ongoing process by which objectives and activities are routinely monitored to ensure that actual progress conforms to the project plan. This adds a level of control to the project which should enable it to be completed on time and to budget.

By monitoring a project closely, it is possible to create early warning signals to detect if a task or activity is like to veer outside the planned scope (into exception). These early warning signals enable the project manager to try and correct the situation and keep the within set tolerances.

We at Rainbow Solutions Ltd believe that whilst monitoring a project is very important it should be kept simple so that it is not a burden to the everyday running of the project. Quite often if the project has been planned in sufficient detail then the monitoring should be a relatively straight forward exercise.

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The project review process is very important but is often overlooked due to time commitments of the project team who invariably move on to new work at the end of an implementation.

All projects face issues, some of which can be predicted or expected, others seem to come out of the blue. A project review revisits these issues and determines which were handled well and which weren't. In all cases it is possible to learn the lessons of what worked and what didn't in a given set of circumstances so that future issues on any new projects can hopefully be resolved through experience.

Many 'old-school' senior developers often used to say to me that you should be able to design your test plans before writing a single line of code. Whilst I've never known that to happen in reality, UML does enable the customer to visualise the end result of a development before any programming begins. This can in many cases provide reassurance to the customer to 'sign off' and agree to a proposed solution with a 'real' understanding of the target outcome. Additionally, this in turn provides a simple graphical structured framework for the developer to work to which should minimise development time and rework.

Rainbow Solutions believes in the importance of project reviews and is experienced in managing the process for the benefit of all concerned.

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Simon Cohen of Rainbow Solutions qualified as a Prince2 Practictioner in 2007.

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