SemanticBits

We have extensive experience in managing large, complex programs for federal government and commercial sector clients. Many organizations prefer to outsource the management of multiple projects and entire programs. We help them tackle their outsourcing complexities by offering personnel, systems, capabilities, and technical expertise to manage their programs. We are comfortable coming in at any point in the project life cycle. We also have expertise in project management, planning, organizing, directing, and controlling company resources for short-term objectives. We've acted as project managers for projects of all sizes - whether a project has just three developers or thirty developers, we are comfortable managing it.

Projects deliver outputs, and programs create outcomes.  We are comfortable coordinating several projects to exploit economies of scale and to reduce coordination costs and risks.  We focus on long term improvement and organizing components within an enterprise.  We can work with you to design strategies for long term benefits and improved capabilities and then implement those strategies across your enterprise.  SemanticBits effectively provides a layer above the management of projects and focuses on selecting the best group of projects, defining them in terms of their objectives, and providing an environment where projects can be run successfully.  Our program management capabilities focus on the following:

• Governance: the structure, process, and procedure to control operations and changes to performance objectives. We define a set of metrics to indicate the health and progress of the program in the most vital areas, and we act proactively to insure that those metrics are met or exceeded.
  
• Alignment: the program must support the higher level vision, goals, and objectives of your organization.  We can work with you to formalize this into a durable vision that can be met through reachable goals.
  
• Assurance: verify and validate the program, ensuring adherence to standards and alignment with the vision.  This is an iterative process over time.
  
• Management: ensure there are regular reviews, there is accountability, and that management of projects, stakeholders and suppliers are in place.
• Integration: ensure that component parts fit together properly to make the intended whole. Optimize performance across the program value chain, functionally and technically.
• Finances: track basic costs together with wider costs of administering the program.  SemanticBits has experience applying Earned Value Management techniques and tools to insure that financial goals are being met while resources are being utilized efficiently.
  
• Infrastructure: allocation of resources influences the cost and success of the program. Infrastructure might cover offices, version control, and IT.
• Planning: develop the plan bringing together the information on projects, resources, timescales, monitoring and control.  We are experienced in program management planning, which differs significantly from project management.  We leverage management tools to coordinate the activities across an enterprise and provide stakeholders global views of progress.
  
• Improvement: continuously assess performance; research and develop new capabilities; and systemically apply learning and knowledge to the program.

SemanticBits has a long history of managing small, medium, and large projects on-time, and on-budget.  We are experienced in interacting with stakeholders to define scope, communicate risks, construct and implement risk mitigation strategies, and manage resources.  SemanticBits regularly applies an Agile Unified Process (AUP) methodology that is well suited for running projects that range from one developer to tens of developers.  Our process is highly iterative, where an executable system is produced every month.  Furthermore, we incrementally add enhancements, which allows us to engage stakeholders early and continuously.  In our experience, this iterative approach is highly effective.  Among its many benefits are the following:

• It promotes consistent, predictable, incremental progress throughout the entire course of the project.
• It serves as an excellent means for bringing risks to the surface early so that they can be effectively mitigated or managed.
• It provides a high level of visibility into the project
• It allows one to obtain daily feedback on progress and status and to make constant course corrections, as and when necessary, to ensure the project stays on track.
• It is designed to maximize to the fullest extent the contributions of all team members. Under this approach, the team is able to adjust daily to issues and contingencies and to find the best course for achieving the project's key goals.

Furthermore, the features of AUP that we focus on include:

• tackling the most difficult and critical tasks in the early iterations,
• continuously engaging users for evaluation, feedback, and requirements,
• building a cohesive, core architecture in early iterations,
• continuously verifying quality,
• testing early and often, and
  
• managing requirements carefully

In our view, AUP provides an ideal framework for rapid progress. The high quality of the products we produce using this methodology will be ensured by the following:

• Ongoing stakeholder involvement
• Availability of products for evaluation and feedback
• Adherence to test-driven design
• Use of strong project management tools and controls

Effective risk management is pivotal to the successful execution of any project, since risks are inherent to all projects. Recognition of this fact and development of timely and appropriate mitigation strategies can minimize the impact of known risks and moderate unexpected risk to the project. Our risk-driven approach focuses on:

• Identifying risks
• Qualifying risks
• Quantifying risks
• Developing a risk response plan
• Monitoring risks
• Communicating the project risk list and response plan to the appropriate stakeholder

The program/project manager leads the risk identification, qualification, quantification, monitoring, mitigation, and control effort using a Structured Risk Management Matrix as an integral part of its risk management process. This matrix is updated minimally on a bi-weekly basis. As part of this update task, appropriately identified risk mitigation and risk contingency activities will be incorporated into the Project Management Plan as necessary for risks that meet either the minimum Likelihood or Impact thresholds specified in the Structured Risk Management Matrix.

Effective stakeholder management is a critical component to the success of any project that we make a top priority in all of our program and project management engagements.  We iniate the engagement by drafting a communication plan and a scope document, both of which identify the stakeholders, as well as the frequency and mode of communicating with them.  We categorize the stakeholders as:

• Primary stakeholders: those ultimately affected, either positively or negatively by corporation's actions.
• Secondary stakeholders: the ‘intermediaries’, that is, persons or organizations who are indirectly affected by corporation's actions.
• Key stakeholders: (who can also belong to the first two groups) have significant influence or importance in corporation.

We work closely with key stakeholders to define the overarching vision and goals of the project, as well as the project constraints (dependencies, financial, resourcing, etc.).  We engage primary stakeholder to identify and flesh out in detail system requirements and use cases.  Finally, we share requirements and use cases with secondary stakeholders and gather feedback on their impact.