The secret of success: the essential role of Project Management

How expert project delivery is crucial to achieving your technology goals.

Successful IT projects should seamlessly deliver simplified, easy to manage solutions that just work , empowering IT to focus on productivity and innovation. But navigating the complexities of today’s hyper connected, hyper integrated world to ensure a smooth transition can be a real challenge for already stretched IT teams.

Elliot Inglis, Project Manager, reflects on the value of his team’s work and tells us why they’re an essential component of the IT partnership.

Why is Project Management so important?

In short, we take ownership of the design, delivery, and implementation of the solutions that Bistech provide, acting as a conduit between Bistech, the customer and our partners to ensure a seamless experience. It sounds simple, and our objective is to do our jobs so well that our customers think it is too! But it’s more complex than it may seem.

Fundamentally, any project is a business change — so challenges are inevitable and plans often need to adapt. Being fully invested in achieving a successful outcome, our role is to engage the right people to bring solutions to the table when problems arise, always ensuring that the project is moving and completed in line with the customer’s objectives.

What are the critical factors in ensuring project success?

There are three areas that are absolutely key:

Project brief

It is essential that all parties involved fully understand the brief of the project, and this extends far beyond just meeting the Scope of Works. What is driving the project? What are the business objectives? What are the success criteria? Who are the stakeholders and what are their key wins?

Understanding the driver behind the project enables us to ensure that we go above and beyond simply delivering a Scope of Work, ensuring that it meets the success criteria and is delivered on time, on budget and with minimal disruption.

Communication

Agreeing the communication approach and setting expectations from the outset ensures any issues or concerns are flagged up as soon as possible, allowing them to be addressed before they become a problem.
Our customers have day jobs to do and are constantly having to juggle priorities. Having a dedicated Project Manager who takes responsibility for a clear communication strategy prevents unnecessary delays and ensures that momentum is maintained from all parties.

Risk management

Regardless of its size, type, or complexity — every project has risks. It is essential that these are identified and documented from the get-go. We then bring our recommendations to the table to ensure the best outcomes are achieved and objectives are met.

My team has a weekly review where we all run through every risk associated to our projects. This means that our customers not only experience proactive risk management, but they also benefit from an entire team of knowledgeable Project Managers who can bring innovative solutions to any challenges that arise.

What drives you as a Project Management team?

Our commitment to professional development and continual improvement is key. As a team of specialised PRINCE2 Project Managers, one of our guiding principles is learning from experience. We actively seek, record, and implement improvements as a result of relevant lessons learned from previous projects and throughout a project’s life.

Essentially, this means we take all the knowledge gained across our many years and hundreds of deployments and reinvest it back into our team and our processes for the benefit of our customers.

What is your favourite aspect of being a Project Manager at Bistech?

We work in a very open and collaborative environment, which gives us easy access to our team of experts, in turn giving the customer easy access.

Being that dedicated, single point of contact means that we get to build really great relationships with our customers, bringing everybody together in a cohesive way — that’s what I like the most. I love getting to know the teams within our customer base, seeing how their businesses work and seeing their projects progress through to a successful outcome.

Of course another favourite activity of mine is closing a project down — it’s incredibly satisfying seeing the positive impact your work has had on the success of a project!

Just as well-oiled cogs ensure the smooth operation of a machine, Project Managers play a crucial role in supporting our customers’ successes. Their expertise and coordination are fundamental to the delivery and implementation of the high-quality solutions that meet our customers’ needs, time after time.

To discuss your next project, contact our expert team today on 03330 11 22 55.