PM Consulting
Procept consultants have been helping organizations develop and implement project, program and portfolio management frameworks, methods and tools for almost 30 years. Deliverables are based on industry best practices and the most current developments in project management from PMI, IPMA, APMG, and ISO.
Procept is a full-service project and program management consultancy. Our team includes experts from all areas of project and program management, across many industries, servicing many different project types. Whether you just need a few hours of help reviewing an existing project or program and making recommendations for improvements, assistance implementing the improvements, or even having us take over the management of your initiative, Procept can bring resources with decades of experience and keen insight to help you achieve your goals.
Procept uses a true “Results-Based Management” approach that starts with identifying your intended potential long-term benefits and results. Procept identifies the deliverables that can best support those business needs in balance with your organization’s project management maturity, and key characteristics of your projects and business culture. Procept works closely with your team to ensure the solution fits your organization’s resource constraints and capabilities withe the goal is to provide you with an effective solution.
Procept's flexible services range from a 1-day facilitation to develop a project plan or identify key criteria for portfolio evaluation and management to long-term assignments such as developing a governance framework for projects complemented with a full suite of supporting methodologies, processes and tools.
Project Governance Frameworks
Governance of projects, programs and portfolios is a subset of corporate governance, but is unique to the project environment. Procept consultants can assist with the development of a governance frameworks specific to a project, program or to a portfolio of projects. The governance framework addresses project management responsibilities, reporting structures, communication with key stakeholders, risk management and decision-making.
IT project governance frameworks often include factors such as enterprise architecture, information security, gating, risk management, IT Ops, project funding and several other types of reviews or checkpoints.
Project Management Methodology Consulting
Over time, standard project governance and delivery processes tend to get inefficient as new elements get added to prevent the reoccurrence of past failed projects. Eventually, productivity suffers as all projects become burdened with needless bureaucracy. Let Procept help you identify the right methodologies for your projects, and then help you adapt them to match your individualized business environment, smoothing the transition to the new methods with phased adoption road maps. Procept can also change existing methodologies to improve project efficiency while still preserving necessary project oversight.
Procept has developed project delivery methodologies for many clients including the Government of Nunavut, Ontario Power Generation, Williams Gold Mine, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, the Water and Wastewater Engineering Dept. of The Regional Municipality of York, and others.
For clients looking to adopt agile project management methods, Procept now offers the Methodology-in-a-BoxTM::Disciplined Agile Edition, which provides a complete agile project management methodology that clients can license for use in their own organization. It includes process descriptions, templates, sample deliverables, and dozens of "how-to" process guidance documents to help make agile teams successful in a structured organizational environment.
Project Audits (a.k.a. Project HealthCheckTM)
When things don’t appear to be going according to plan, an outside expert assessment will identify what you’re doing well, and what could be improved. Through interviewing stakeholders, team members, the project sponsor and the project manager — in addition to reviewing key project documents — this offering assesses the health of an in-flight project. Procept consultants can conduct an independent evaluation of a process, project, program, or project portfolio. An audit can help identify reasons for a project stalling or failing, or it can document the results and processes used for a successful project that can be replicated in the future. Procept consultants can also audit a portfolio of projects to identify compliance, inconsistencies or weaknesses, or to identify next steps for improvement in project management processes.
Projects audits can be performed in the middle of the project as a regular health check to understand the current state of a project and increase the probability of project success. Or, an audit can be performed on a completed project to document and understand what went wrong (or what went right) for future projects.
Procept's process for conducting Project Management Audits involves:
- AUDIT PROGRAM PREPARATION — Identify client objectives and prepare audit plan.
- INFORMATION GATHERING — Collect data which may include review of project documents, interviews, focus groups sessions, or online questionnaires.
- DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS — Identify trends, causal relationships and correlations.
- CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS — Draft report summarizing the findings and data analysis, and provide recommendations for immediate and long term improvements.
- FINAL REPORT — Final report and presentation incorporating management’s response to the draft report.
| Projects or project organizations are often audited to identify reasons for budget and schedule overruns. A project or project process audit will identify project management weaknesses and recommend specific targets for improvement. If implemented, the recommendations typically improve the governance framework within which projects operate, which improves accountability and efficiency. |
Project Planning (a.k.a Project KickStartTM)
The foundation of a successful project is a realistic and sound project plan. This offering will help teams new to project management or those with large, complex projects where an independent review of the project approach and plans will help reduce the risk of project failure and identify additional efficiencies. Procept consultants can develop or facilitate the development of an achievable project plan, or components of the project plan, such as:
- A project schedule
- A communications management plan
- A cost management plan using earned value
- A risk management plan with a risk register documenting project risks, their analysis and responses
- Risk identification and analysis using a tool such as affinity diagramming or nominal group technique
- Schedule risk analysis using Monte Carlo analysis
- The Work Breakdown Structure
- A change management plan
- A stakeholder management plan
A fast-track kickstart to your project could be a 1 day session with two of our consultants to build a Work Breakdown Structure and first draft schedule in software such as Microsoft Project. Longer assignments can include development of a risk management process specific to a program, portfolio or large project, followed by facilitating the identifying, analyzing and developing responses to project risks.
Procept consultants are also available on an hourly basis as facilitators for your planning session, for requirements identification, scope (WBS), integrating a vendor and client’s schedule, or for risk identification and response development.
Benefits of an objective third party in the planning process are:
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Microsoft Project Consulting
Microsoft Project is a tool for developing a sound project schedule. But using it effectively requires good project scheduling expertise, which is a challenging skill to find. Procept consultants are certified schedulers and can build a realistic and achievable project schedule based on an agreed-upon Work Breakdown Structure. Project consultants can assist your team to develop an earned value baseline from the schedule for improved monitoring and control and coach your project manager or scheduler in an update routine.
For organizations with similar projects, Procept consultants can assist with the development of a template that can be used as the basis for reporting project progress.
Procept can also write handbooks and guidelines for using the scheduling tool within your organization.
Benefits of professional scheduler:
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Individual PM Competence Assessments
Tap into years of experience assessing project managers of all experience levels to measure their competence against international standards. Procept provides individualized recommendations for skills development and project management career planning — a valued reward for your star performers.
Some of Procept's associates are accredited by the International Project Management Association (IPMA) as project management competence assessors for various national PM associations, including those in Canada, the USA, and Iran. Procept has developed online tools for helping project managers perform self-assessments against international baseline standards and seeing how the individuals rank against their peer group. In addition, the tool provides skills and experience development recommendations at each level of competence.
Training Services
Procept provides a wide range of training services on topics relevant to project, program and portfolio management. Procept's award-winning trainers are among the best in the industry at explaining complex project management concepts in simple, everyday terms. It has dozens of prepared courses its trainers can teach to your staff immediately; alternately, Procept can modify these course offerings to meet your unique needs. Procept has provided in-house project management training for some of the largest organizations in the world.
Our training services are delivered via:
- In-house classroom delivery for corporate clients.
- Public courses &mdash Procept-hosted, or hosted via one of our university delivery partners.
- Online instructor-led training — On a Procept or client-owned LMS.
- Online self-paced learning — Either through a Procept-managed LMS, or licensed for use on corporate intranets.
Click on the image below to go to Procept's Training site.
PM Staffing Services
In a pinch, you may find that you do not have the right available resources to staff your next project or program. Procept has seasoned, highly-skilled managers available to help run your initiative. Procept's pool of project professionals includes those with expertise across many industries including engineering/construction, information technology, financial services, media & entertainment, and healthcare.
While Procept may not be able to fill every request, many clients turn to it first for contract project managers.
Consulting Clients
