Project Management

The Foundation for Success

Project Management – part art, part science – is the cornerstone required to successfully drive every aspect of a business initiative.

The Challenge

Every business initiative – large or small – requires experienced project leadership and a solid, comprehensive plan that will drive a project to a successful conclusion, while staying within time, resource, and budget constraints. Sounds simple, but consider the following:

• Did your most recent date-driven project launch on time and appear effortless?
• Did your most recent projects stay within budget?
• Were Herculean efforts required by you and your team to launch a project?
• Did your busy resources stay fresh and productive during the course of your most recent projects?
• Was the right project structure applied to your last business initiative?
• Were any key tasks over or under-estimated?
• Have unidentified upstream and downstream dependencies ever derailed one of your projects?

The Apex Solution

The best project managers have the right mix of credentials (e.g. PMP certification), industry experience and domain knowledge to lead a project.  While our project managers are all fully versed in project management fundamentals and standards, the real value and benefit is in their breadth of industry-specific knowledge, be it in health care, energy, IT, finance or other fields.  In our experience, the most successful projects are led by industry-savvy project managers, thereby reducing ramp-up time and adding immediate value.

Assuming a business case has been developed and agreed across all stakeholders, the next task is to assure that the basic tools are in place to support a given project.  Apex can quickly tailor its PMO toolkit to your project’s needs.  We have proven templates and methodologies for project success, and can work within existing management structures.

The task that makes or breaks most projects is creating a plan that works, and then working the plan.  Above all else, an effective project manager must be a great listener and ask the right probing questions.  The time that your subject matter experts have to devote to a given project is likely to be limited, so the project manager must make the most of it and develop a plan that is thorough, organized appropriately for the circumstance, to the correct level of detail, and above all else estimated correctly with all dependencies accounted for. Ultimately, a properly created and executed project plan enables high return on project investment and attainment of your business objectives.

Apex Services

• Project Management Office (PMO) Services: Whether you require a PMO built from scratch, or you want to leverage Apex’s existing and proven PMO services, personnel and templates for your next project, we can help.
• Project Management Services: Apex’s team of industry-diverse and PMI-certified project managers can lead your next business initiative, or fill strategic roles within an existing project team.
• Customized Project Management Templates: If you require a branded set of proven project management templates, let Apex create a customized PMO toolbox you can own and re-use.
• Project Management Infrastructure: If you need to implement a project management support infrastructure such as SharePoint or Microsoft Project Server, Apex has that expertise.  We are also familiar with several leading Web-based project management support systems such as Basecamp®.