CMD - Proposal Management System

Challenge

The project management department requests solutions for improving project management efforts and team communication. The system needed to support the project scope, tasks required for each department and role while providing a consistant and challenges while also providing a set of tools model reusable project profiles for easy reuse.
 

Solution

The first phase of the project focused on the identifying the company processes, methodologies, and terminology. The second phase would focus on evaluating vendor and or open source software platforms to defermine if such products would meet the needs of the organization. Prior to selecting a development path for the system I was tasked with conducting a cost analysis comparing the use of 3rd party solutions and licensing fees over a five year period verses the development of an internal "open source" system.
 

Results

The first phase of the analysis was accomplished in three weeks. An analysis was conducted defining the scope and cost of such a system. Furthermore an analysis of the current business processes, hours per project, and project definition was conducted to determine the "waist" or inefficiency of the current project management process (a very unpopular report). Based on the estmates and analysis the board decided the development was too costly to undergo and would take away too many internal development resources from client projects.
 

Robert's Thoughts

Although this project was canceled, it provided many great opportunities to learn about the complete processes with the organization. It provided a broad view of how projects were pitched, aquired, managed, and produced. The project was completely supported by the department managers of each department. Unfortunately the executive management did not agree that such a system would be valuable, nor would it increase production ergo profits. This very issue was the hardest to quantify, even with over ten years of whitepapers and vendor research. Sadly, the effort was scuttled because of changing opinons within the executive management that internal systems would just add to overhead and eat into profits.