A Recipe For Success
OUR APPROACH
Project Management
Success starts and finishes with quality project management. At Tri-Core, we work to exemplify this concept at all levels of our organization. With any project, we start by creating a high-level plan, then dive into the details— a top-down approach that has worked for many years with excellent results.
Communication is a cornerstone of any successful project. So we have developed numerous internal processes and tools to ensure effective communication within our team and with our clients. Some of our specialized products are:
SYNCHRONIZATION MATRIX
A long-term planning tool sent to all stakeholders on a weekly basis to keep everyone informed of the status and due dates of every major project. Also lists projects for research and future evaluation.
WEEKLY SPRINTS
Our development team discusses what they plan to accomplish for the week and publishes the goals for stakeholder visibility. This keeps our team focused and allows them to receive constant feedback from the client.
WEEKLY FOCUS REVIEW
We review the efforts in the previous week to make sure we have met our objectives. We reflect on what went well and what did not, and plan for the week ahead.
WEEKLY QUICK SHOT UPDATE
A single-page summary of a current project’s status broken down into four quadrants. Normally produced at the end of each week, out is primarily a tool to keep key stakeholders informed of progress.
Planning For Success
The key to a successful project is adherence to a clear and thorough plan. Because we believe that delivering a high quality product on-time and within budget is our only option, Tri-Core Technologies, LLC. (Tri-Core) constructs our project management plans with the following elements: clear, easily-understood project goals, outlined processes, well-defined guidelines, and a thorough schedule with distinct development phases and periodic breaks for project review.
Excellence is our goal, thus we adhere to the practices recommended by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The PMI’s guiding theory is that there are four variables that work together to ensure the success of any project. A project must:
- Meet the requirements and goals of our client
- Be within the budget
- Be on time
- Add value to our client
Common Constraints:
- Resources: people, equipment, hardware/software.
- Time: task durations, schedule management, critical path.
- Money: costs, contingencies.
- Scope: project size, goals, requirements.
- Risk: project, client, developers
- Quality: project objectives
Project constraints are always at the center of our planning to ensure projects start with the best possible foundation for success.
Cloud Smart
With the advent of the Cloud, we are offered virtually unlimited compute and storage resources and an infinite number of solutions to technical problems. Many Cloud projects successfully meet both user needs and project goals, but we have also seen projects fail in the rush to implement the Cloud—by costing users more in recurring costs than originally expected, yielding less flexibility than originally promised or envisioned, failing to deliver the required functionality, using cloud tools ineffectively, or using the incorrect tools all together.
With these experiences in mind, we approach problems with a ‘Cloud Smart’ position, rather than a ‘Cloud First’ position. We work with our clients to determine what is best for them, considering their unique needs in order to methodically implement the most optimal solution, rather than forcing everything to fit the Cloud. Some of the many factors we consider are:
How does the Cloud give more value to the client?
Which Cloud model works best for a particular situation?
What are the recurring costs, and how will they increase?
What regulatory factors impact this project and system data?
What are the data sovereignty and data residency requirements?
User Experience
The success or failure of a system is often determined by the overall user experience and how the system performs from the user’s perspective. Even systems that have few technical errors and still meet the project goals can be a perceived failure if the system does not operate as expected.
To ensure that the systems we develop are a success, we engage stakeholders and key users very early in the development process and have them work side-by-side with our interface designers and senior developers to create a user interface which meets the needs of the users, accomplishes the overall intent of the task at hand, and fits within the capacity of the development tools.
Risk Management Strategy
Integrate our analysis team with stakeholders and key users to ensure all requirements and needs are captured.
Maintain a set Project Manager, throughout the project, whose sole priority is keep the project on track.
Use development and staging environments which mimic the production environment as closely as possible.
Work closely with clients to identify problems as early as possible.
Perform periodic system tests and audits to ensure correct system process operation and maintenance objectives.
Work with clients to develop multiple options to alleviate potential problems.
Test each of the possible solutions and work with users to choose the most appropriate fix.
Implement agreed-upon measures to mitigate risk in a timely fashion.
Quality Control
To provide the best possible experience for our clients during the development process, we tailor our process for every project. It all begins with the needs and priorities of our clients. We work with both users and managers to identify the baseline for their requirements and gauge their expectations for system function. Then we create a plan to test, measure, and document the results to affirm that the system is producing the expected quality. Some examples of Quality Control mechanisms we employ are:
Unit And Integration Testing For System Updates And Changes
User Reviews Of System Changes
Extensive User Training
Internal Developer Code Reviews
Stringent Coding Standards For A Project
Peer Reviews Of Code Produced
