Major Government Supplier Improves Project Management Processes on Strategic DOD Program
Project Assistants’ Case Studies
Situation Situation
HP is a stockholder-owned corporation founded in 1939 that is a technology company that operates in more than 170 countries worldwide. The company’s mission is straight-forward – to develop technologies and services that can help people and companies address their problems and challenges, and realize their possibilities, aspirations and dreams. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, HP has approximately 172,000 employees.

Team HP’s goal was to centralize the DLA infrastructure into dual Enterprise Data Centers (EDC ) by migrating appropriate applications and servers in four phases over 2 years. During each phase at the DLA sites, Team HP will establish clear lines of communication with DLA, verify the application and server baseline, finalize the migration plan and exceptions, send the application images to the EDC, and identify and ship selected GFE for EDC incorporation.

Team HP/DLA was looking for a project management control officer who would allow them to accomplish the following:

  • Develop, update and track an integrated master schedule of all projects in the EDC Program
  • Quickly and accurately determine the status of projects related to the EDC program.
  • Analyze and identify trends and problem areas within projects and among projects
  • Better understand the effects of staffing and scheduling changes, and provide answers to questions relating to resource utilization and skills assessment
  • Perform in-depth reporting and analysis against completed projects, in-progress projects, and resource availability
  • Implement best practices in project management
Solution Solution
Project Assistants provided a Program Control Manager to deliver project management consulting services that included (but are not limited to), the following activities:

  • Mentoring, Coaching and training EDC Program Project Managers
  • Developing an integrated Project Master Schedule
  • Project monitoring and reporting for the Project and Programs Executive Team
  • Provide a consolidated Program and Project Management status report and assist with program communication management
  • Provide Project variance analysis from baseline and root cause identification
  • Assist with identification of Project-related issue and risk management activities
  • Provide Project resource forecasting

The Program Management Control consultant performed services related to the following tasks:

  • Project planning and scheduling: Assisted HP personnel with the development of project plans that included: project work-breakdown structures, task and project inter-dependencies, labor estimate, key milestones, schedule dates, project charter definition, schedule baselining, scope management plans, communications plans, and staffing plans.
  • Project monitoring and reporting: Assisted HP personnel with the definition of reporting standards and updating of project schedules to enable effective measurement of progress against project baselines.
  • Provided project status reports that summarize project progress.
  • Provided Project variance analysis from baseline and root cause identification: Assisted HP personnel with measuring project progress against commitments to project baselines and identify unfavorable variances to baseline in order to provide the data required to perform root cause analysis for these variances.
  • Provided Project communication management: Assisted HP personnel with project communications management, such as project status meetings, steering committee meetings, and the regular distribution of project status reports.
  • Provided Project-related issue and risk management: Assisted HP personnel with identification, tracking, management, communication, and resolution of project-related issues and risks.
  • Provided Project resource forecasting: Assisted HP personnel with development of resource forecasts to meet project staffing requirements.
Benefits Benefits
Because of the thoroughness of the Project Assistants’ Program Control Manager, understanding the EDC program requirements and implementing project management best practices, the HP/DLA team was able to meet the programs originally stated objectives. As a result of the implementation of Project Assistants’ project management best practice, the EDC Program has achieved the following:

  • Aligning the project’s work breakdown structure with the EDC server consolidation migration methodology
  • The development of a more mature EDC Program Project Managers
  • The development of a consolidated program and project management status report
  • Better utilization of program resources
  • More efficiently run projects based on the development and review of project management best practices
  • Completing projects within the program on time and within budget