Support & Program Management
Organisational Consulting. We manage the environment of projects, acting as the Client’s Advocate throughout the whole process.
Grasping the human and political sides making a web project complex, Early Stage provides Support and Program Management services, turning the Client’s life lean and easy: request for proposals, supplier selection, steering committees, consistency and quality control, documentation, project promotion and internal lobby.
Our Support & Program Management Services are organised under 3 main axes:
- Support to Market Attribution
- Change Management
- Project Controlling
- Audit & Evaluation
Support to Market Attribution
Choosing the right partner for your digital project is not always simple. We can help you on different levels so that you will get the best partner available on the market.
Project Charters | Early Stage can help you setup the project charter that defines the scope, the objectives and the participants in a project. We will provide you with a preliminary delineation of roles and responsibilities. We will outline the project objectives, identify the main stakeholders, and define the authority of the project manager so that it can serve as a reference of authority for the future of the project.
Request for proposals | A good RFP is good for both you and your future supplier. It happens to often that vague RFP’s with ill-defined deliverables lead to poor vendor selection and guaranteed poor project execution. Early Stage can help you to set up a clear and practically usable RFP for your digital projects.
Short lists and proposal assessment |We can help you to make a shortlist of suited candidates for your specific project. Our deceade long experience in the world of the web has led to a vast network of suppliers of whom we know strengths and weaknesses. After the RFP’s are sent out the next step is off course the assessment of the different received offers.
Change Management
Often forgotten or at least not well prepared but change management remains a very important part of your project. The implementation of a digital project requires the involvement of people and business processes that are often not well prepared to handle the extra tasks. The tools we offer to tackle this problem are listed below.
Organisational SWOT | During an organisational SWOT we gather the different stakeholders around the table and we define the different SWOT-criteria. This is often the basis for a better comprehension of the organisation’s capabilities to handle the new project.
Change Management Plan | The change management plan groups all the measures that need to be taken internally and externally to guarantee a successful implementation of the project.
Risk & Stakeholders Analysis | This analysis groups and describes the real risks and all the involved stakeholders. In general it will reveal a lot of unknown factors of whom nobody was aware that they were actually influencing or influenced by the project.
Process Efficiency Reports | Business processes are not always running at top efficiency. Especially when it concerns processes that influence digital projects, Early stage is well placed to analyse them and see how they can be improved
Trainings | Early Stage can deliver trainings on demand concerning multiple topics such as Web writing, web project management, project controlling and many other topics.
Project Controlling
Controlling all aspects of a project is an unmistakably important part of the complete project management cycle. It is important to know that Early Stage does not focus on Project management but rather on project controlling. We keep a high level view on the total process cycle and we prevent or correct wherever necessary.
Program Management | Early Stage can do the centralized, coordinated management of a group of projects to achieve the program’s strategic objectives and benefits. In other words, we will keep a helicopter view on the total program in order to secure the global objectives.
Steering Committees | Whenever important decisions need to be taken that surpass the authority of the project manager, the steering committee kicks in and ensures that the project sponsors can take the necessary actions. Steering committees are also needed to keep a global view on any digital project. Early Stage often organises these steering committees on a recurring basis or on a “when it’s needed” base.
Project Quality Plan | The Project Quality Plan can be defined as a set of activities planned at the beginning of the project that helps achieve Quality in the Project being executed. Early Stage can help you to setup up a PQP so that for all stakeholders it is clear how the Quality of execution will be ensured and controlled.
Audit & Evaluation
The following paragraphs describe the different deliverables that Early Stage offers in the field of audit and evaluation.
Performance audit | If you are wondering if your project is achieving economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the employment of available resources then you could use our help. Early stage can help you measure in which way your resources are used in the most optimal way. This can go about the project team or the economical resources utilised for a digital project.
KPI & Measurement | How can one know if a project is going well or reaching it’s objectives when no KPI’s are identified and even when KPI’s are defined do you know how to measure them? Early stage can help you to define measurable and realistic KPI’s that really matter for your digital project. We make distinction between those that you probably like to hear and those that really matter.
Satisfaction surveys | Do you want to know if your digital project is living up to its promises towards its users? Surveys can help to find out how the users are thinking about your project. Early Stage can set up direct interviews but also online surveys but always with the so needed business intelligence to truly understand their answers.
Supplier evaluation | The relation between client and supplier is a very important one and therefore it can be interesting to see if your supplier is living up to its promises. This can be on a methodological level or on deliverable level but in the end you will get a clear view on your suppliers performance.
Optimisation Plan | Even when a project has been successfully finished, there is always room for improvement. An optimization plan can be used for either projects that have gone bad or projects that have lived up to their promises but in both cases an optimisation will plan deliver a vitamin cure that will improve the overall performance of your digital project.
