Project and Programme Consulting Services

Why Lucid IT?

Lucid IT is an Accredited Consulting Organisation (ACO) with APMG with qualified, experienced consultants who can assist with various aspects of project and programme management, providing a value-for-money alternative to long term consultancy or even project or programme failure.

Maturity Assessment

Concerned about the number of incidents during your teams projects, or perhaps you’ve faced big budget blowouts? You may need to assess how capable your team is of managing projects, programmes or portfolios by utilising the Lucid IT Maturity Assessment.  Lucid IT’s Maturity Assessment Service – “LITMAS” is the right first step to implementing improvements to your project, programme or portfolio management and to gain clear understanding of your current capability. 

• This service can be tailored to assess project, program and/or portfolio management maturity in your organization.

• Optional inclusion of Organisation design, Cultural readiness, and/or Organisational functions that impact project/program delivery

• High level overview, with modular focus on specific elements of concern

• Improvement program with high level action plan included

• Depending on your situation a variety of techniques will be utilised, such as interviews, workshops, questionnaires, document analysis, reports reviews and tool functionality assessment

• Maturity can be assessed against PRINCE2® and/or MSP™, or relevant COBIT processes

• The assessment can provide a baseline against which future improvements are measured

The results of the Maturity Assessment are compiled into a thorough report containing observations and recommendations. You may like to take this report to the next level by implementing suggested changes to processes, technology, people and organisation. This stage will be tailored to suit the strengths, and weaknesses, identified in your businesses project environment.

Project and Programme Health Checks

A Health Check is an independent check on the health of a project or programme.  It is not an audit or a compliance check, but a 360° review of the project that seeks opinions and perspectives from key staff involved with and impacted by the project.

The purpose is to consider the more qualitative aspects of a project or programme including relationships, customer satisfaction, communications, organisational change activities and quality of deliverables, and to enable the organisation to learn from experiences to date and make appropriate changes to the way subsequent stages are approached or to adapt approaches for other projects or programmes currently underway or being considered.

The Health Check is designed to be used at any stage throughout a project or programme.

Benefits Realisation Review

It is not technology alone that will deliver benefits to the organisation, but the way the technology is implemented and how processes are modified as a result of that introduction that determine the benefits.

The business case ensures benefits are clearly identified and linked to strategic outcomes and that the business areas are committed to the identified benefits.  The purpose of the benefits realisation review is to determine whether or not business objectives identified in the Business Case were achieved.

The review focuses on the benefits realisation against the plan and business case, assesses the business environment for factors that may influence the realisation of future benefits or affect the improvements from realised benefits and identifies opportunities to further leverage those benefits.

Project Prioritisation

No organisation has unlimited funds, but how to prioritise a number of competing requests for resources can be problematic.  Lucid IT’s Project Prioritisation Service provides:

• An objective method to prioritise projects

• Visibility and buy in from executives across the business

• Links to corporate strategy and reporting methods

• A view of the risk elements and measures of value e.g. ROI, NPV IRR

Setting up a Project or Programme Management Office (PMO)

Our experienced consultants can help guide you through the processes of establishing or improving a PMO for your organisation. This can include facilitating visioning workshops, working with you to design appropriate procedures and processes, training your staff (PMO and project and programme  staff), coaching and/or establishing necessary governance and reporting structures. If required we can also provide interim management for your PMO until you are ready to hand it over to internal staff.

Project and Programme Management Methodology Implementation

To consistently run successful projects and programs of work it is essential to have a formalised methodology in place.  We are able to work with you to provide:

• Business case development support

• Roadmap improvements based on your current context, maturity and toolsets

• Process design and refinement

• Process implementation supporting documentation and reporting

• A toolset that matches your processes and organisational requirements

• Organisation structure alignment with clear roles and responsibilities

We also provide Project and Programme Management Master Classes that support MSP™ and PRINCE2® deployment in an organisation, using our qualified  Programme and Project management staff.

Project Management Tool Evaluation

Lucid IT is vendor independent so we are in a position to offer unbiased assistance in programme, project and portfolio management tool selection. Our PPM tool selection services provide:

• Tailored requirements specification and assessment model

• A decision analysis methodology to help you to make the right choice of vendor and tool

• Demonstration scripts and a weighted scoring method to streamline the vendor selection process

Project Management Process Improvement

You may have some processes in place, but your projects and programs are not consistently successful. What’s wrong? How can they be improved?  We will work with you, re-using what is successful for you, identifying areas of improvement and helping you to design or re-design processes.  We can also assist by leading an organisational change initiative, working with your PMO, Programme and Project Managers, Project Teams or Executive Management to implement required improvements.

Programme or Project Management – Interim Management

Lucid IT is able to provide experienced programme or project managers to fill any short term gaps you have in staffing. Our people are fully trained and qualified in MSP™ and/or PRINCE2®, but of course are also able to adapt to the frameworks or methodologies in use in your organisation. We can “hit the ground running”, saving you time and effort when you have immediate requirements and of course we will work with you to ensure a smooth transition to your permanent staff when they become available. An added bonus is that we are able to provide this service on either a full time or part time basis.

Coaching and Mentoring Services

Not all programme or project managers have the same level of experience.  Lucid IT provides a range of coaching and mentoring approaches across Programme and Project Management. These include:

• Working alongside the project or programme teams in a reviewing and coaching capacity, providing assurance to governance that the IT projects are well defined and managed, realise the intended benefits, and deliver products that are well controlled and function as intended.

• Coaching and mentoring of Project and Programme Managers on how to use the organisation’s frameworks and methodologies, including provision of “just in time” workshops at specific points throughout a project to assist in training and mentoring.

• Providing ad-hoc or regular coaching and mentoring sessions aimed at improving the overall performance and maturity of Project or Programme Managers or PMO staff.

PRINCE2® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries

MSP™ is a Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce