Protean Systems Integration Management
Protean's project management team provides on-site management support for custom development projects. We are comfortable using either our P-RUP methodology or your internal project management tools to provide a structure for project reporting. At the lowest level, our managers would report to the client's project manager, and provide the day-to-day management for development teams. This frees the client's management to take a broader view of the project, and to coordinate multiple teams. A higher-level management service is also available. Here, a Protean manager would typically report to the client's project executive or champion, and provide technical guidance, vision, and consolidated project management. Protean also has the capability to recruit developers or guide the selection process for an external development staff.
In functional areas where we have deep domain knowledge, Protean would also take responsibility for the conceptual leadership of the design phase of a custom application. We have an ideal combination of a strategic business process perspective and an architect's understanding of the performance, security and system integrity realities of industrial applications.
Protean's approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) has evolved from numerous successful and challenging projects. Our clients may choose from several levels of services ranging from project oversight through full project management. We offer services for all phases of an integration project, including planning, tool selection and acquisition, the learning cycle, and full implementation. Protean delivers these services using a proven project management methodology – the P-RUP.
System integration projects range from relatively simple to extremely complex, and every project requires significant attention to detail. Success is dependent on people, technology, and process, so the project plan must address the coordination of more than just the technical implementation.
Most information technology professionals ascribe to some form of integration methodology when applying their craft to change the state of the world. Formal to informal, documented to undocumented, certified to uncertified, some generally reproducible method is followed to plan and execute technology projects.
All EAI consultants claim such a methodology, usually formal and documented, occasionally certified. Most are a variation of the plan - execute taxonomy. Protean is unique and highly effective because we recognize that EAI is inherently a first time through exercise, and we have adapted our methodology to manage the first time trough technology risk. We have added a phase between planning and execution, called the "learning cycle."
The learning cycle approach recognizes and formalizes the reality that project personnel cannot possibly have the knowledge during the planning phase to accurately predict impediments that will be encountered during implementation. These might be technical flaws, tool incompatibilities, version inconsistencies, device configuration errors, and a host of other risk factors that contribute to high variability in overall project timing and cost.
Risk is defined as the standard deviation of project outcomes: duration, cost and level of success. Risk management reduces this variability. Protean concentrates activities in the planning phase on identifying risk factors and devising techniques to test them. In the learning cycle, failure prone elements of the solution are subjected to destructive testing in a small, controlled environment so that the failure mechanism can be isolated and understood. In short, we identify everything that is likely to fail. Then we make it fail, watch it fail, and learn. Then we move on to implementation with a much shorter learning curve, and a much more predictable project success.