How IT Consulting Firms Implement Projects Successfully: Part 1 of 2
How can I deliver on projects more successfully, more consistently, and at a higher level of quality?
That’s a question IT consulting firms hear frequently from their client base of CIOs. Today, we start the first in a series answering this question with practical tools and tips that you can implement in your own processes, using Darby Consulting’s methodologies as an example.
IT Consulting Firms Use Onboarding Methods
Our IT project management consultants are PMI-certified IT Project Managers and all go through an onboarding process at Darby Consulting. We have created our standard playbook for how to implement projects, and in doing so, have increased our project success rate by quite a bit.
Some sample onboarding processes you can implement are:
- setting up access to email
- how to use internal systems
- performance standards for delivering projects
- how to access proprietary tools and templates
When you have a lot of consultants or key team members that need to get on board quickly and get up-to-date with a project, implementing some key onboarding tools is a great way to guarantee everyone is on the same page.
Create an IT Project Management Playbook
Darby Consulting has developed a playbook for how to plan and implement IT projects successfully. When creating your own playbook, make sure you don’t overdo or over-engineer the process. It’s best to have a simple and clear flow of information that anyone can easily follow. You may want to include key phases in sequential order, and some of the standard pieces within those phases to help align your project team with the project goals.
From there, IT consulting firms, project managers and teams can implement the process, and also build from that process into a more expanded playbook that is specific to their IT project.
In the example from Darby Consulting in the video, you can see that we have our basic life cycle of initiate, plan, execute and close. We keep our basic playbook simple, and then we expand into a broader plan that has more detail for our IT project managers to dive into as needed.
IT Consulting Firms Create Templates and Tools
Our philosophy with implementing successful IT projects is to keep it simple and make it easy for our project teams. Keeping in line with this, Darby Consulting provides an at-a-glance feature so our team members can see all phases of a typical project. We also provide templates and examples as well as workshops for our project teams.
Videos are another great tool to include in your playbook. You can create videos on a variety of different topics and your consultants can spend 10 to 15 minutes watching the video and getting up to speed on how to use a certain tool or template.
At our IT consulting firm, we get great team members with a lot of experience who can pick up a new template – like a project charter, a communications plan, or a training plan – and can combine their knowledge and experience with that standard template or a tool and quickly customize it to the needs of that project. Using templates and tools in this manner has the ability to greatly accelerate the onboarding process and improve the quality of work. This way, your key team members aren’t spending all their time trying to reinvent the wheel, or finding tools and templates. Instead, they’re able to leverage getting their work done more quickly.
Implementing an onboarding methodology process allows you to have more quality control and standardization of execution, as well as complete higher quality projects across the board.
ABOUT DARBY CONSULTING – A Leading IT Consulting Firm
IT project delivery is what we do. For over 10 years, we’ve helped growing organizations consistently deliver successful IT projects – both software and hardware. We’ve pioneered innovative methods and tools tailored specifically for your success. And we’re affordable; we’ve built a cost-effective operating model so we can offer exceptional IT project services at prices that will surprise you. This means more projects completed on-time, higher end-user satisfaction, and increased growth for your organization.
Let us help you successfully plan and deliver your next IT project. Schedule a meeting today!
