For years, IT departments have struggled to deliver projects on time and within budget. But with today's emphasis on getting more bang for the buck, IT has to rein in projects more closely than ever. This challenge has led many of our clients to turn to GDS' project management offices (PMO) as a way to boost IT efficiency, cut costs and improve on project delivery in terms of time and budget. GDS' PMOs can help clients by providing the structure needed to both standardize project management practices and facilitate project portfolio management, as well as determine methodologies for repeatable processes.

From planning, scheduling and controlling IS/IT projects...to managing critical interfaces with users and vendors...to balancing development needs with system maintenance...clients find their IT project management solutions at GDS.

 Benefits of GDS Project Management Professionals:

• Reduce time spent completing project deliverables
• Decrease cost by saving time and effort to build deliverables
• Minimize change, risks and issues by defining project properly before start
• Assure quality of deliverables, increasing liklihood of meeting client's requirements
• Monitor & control the project more efficiently, especially during the Execution phase
• Improve performance by clarifying roles, responsibilities & delivery expectations
• Increase the likelihood of achieving overall project success.

Global Data Systems will appoint a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) to ensure that the project aligns with the client's business initiatives, requirements, and objectives. Each GDS PMP possesses the qualifications, experience and professionalism, along with the proper authority and overall responsibility, to make sure the project is a success.

n order to maximize project success, GDS’ PMPs remove the complexities of deploying converged IT systems by performing the following functions:

 

Project Initiation: Project Initiation is the first phase in the Project Life Cycle and essentially involves starting up the project. GDS initiates a project by defining its purpose and scope, the justification for initiating it and the solution to be implemented. GDS will also a suitably skilled project team, set up a GDS PMP and perform an end of Phase Review.

Project Planning: After defining the project and appointing the project team, you're ready to enter the detailed Project Planning phase. This involves creating a suite of planning documents to help guide the team throughout the project delivery.

Project Execution: With a clear definition of the project and a suite of detailed project plans, you are now ready to enter the Execution phase of the project.  This is the phase in which the deliverables are physically built and presented to the customer for acceptance.  While each deliverable is being constructed, a suite of management processes are undertaken to monitor and control the deliverables being output by the project.  These processes include managing time, cost, quality, change, risks, issues, suppliers, customers and communication.  Once all the deliverables have been produced and the client has accepted the final solution, the project is ready for closure.

Project Closure: Project Closure involves releasing the final deliverables to the client, handing over project documentation to the business, terminating supplier contracts, releasing project resources and communicating project closure to all stakeholders. The last remaining step is to undertake a Post Implementation Review to identify the level of project success and note any lessons learned for future projects.