Solutions come and go, and there is no shortage of contenders trying to offer them.

There are many factors that contribute to the success of a project. The Business Case is the central driving force. The Vision is the well-defined approach, set of captured requirements and shared understanding between the customer, the user and the supplier. The management of risks that may threaten timely delivery is critical to the development process, and so is the continual focus on measurable quality.

Nevertheless, one key performance indicator (KPI) that measures project success more than any other is Return on Investment (ROI).

Our extensive experience has taught us that organisations expect to receive back more than they invested. This is the basis for growth and counts as money well-spent. Delivering on this expectation effectively and consistently requires more than just choosing Drupal as the website Content Management platform.

A unified and mature process capability is needed. In other words, effective Project Management.

When a project begins, enthusiasm among stakeholders is usually high. At this point, many suppliers are tempted to ride the initial burst of enthusiasm by point their skis down-slope and setting off. The designers start designing and the coders start coding. Coherence between team members quickly evaporates and the initial good intentions of ‘delivery focus’ and strenuous effort turns into badly estimated schedules, missed deadlines and loss of quality when resources budget and resources are over-spent. The impact is felt by everyone, including the disillusioned customer.

On the other hand, we can’t stress hard enough how detrimental it can be to follow the other extreme. A supplier who has learned the valuable lessons from an unstructured project delivery too easily over-corrects the situation by instituting a heavy set of project management processes. Inflexibility harms the scalability of the project and the cost of delivery becomes uncompetitive.

Effective Project Management is critical to providing customers with the significant Return on Investment they can expect from Drupal. The following list can easily be mistaken for just another set of tips on delivering effective solutions, but it is far more than just someone’s opinion. These points are proven fundaments of effective delivery:

1. Adaptation of the process – being able to scale the level of project control according to the specific needs of the business, the product delivery team and those who will maintain the live system. This sounds deceptively simple, but is actually the most advanced concept in implementing a Project Management discpline – Scalability.
2. Balance the priorities of stakeholders – a stakeholder is simply anyone who will benefit, or is effected by the outcome of the project. These ones come from different areas of the customer’s business. While they hold varying levels of technical understanding and will often have competing priorities, they hold valuable organisational knowledge. An effective, quality Drupal implementation must fit the needs of the organisation and the stakeholders.
3. Collaborate across teams – a quality supplier will demonstrate a thorough understanding of all the disciplines and skills that result in quality Drupal delivery. From the analysis of the customer’s existing internet and intranet sites, the capturing of customer requirements, the analysis, design, right through to implementation, testing and deployment. It is necessary to unify these tasks with excellent communication and customer involvement.
4. Demonstrate value early – Return on Investment should be delivered back to the customer EARLY in the project rather than later. This concept appears to be beyond the capability of most. Nonetheless it is the most important principle. The very highest priority functionality that the customer needs should be delivered soonest, followed then by the next highest priority, and so forth. This iterative-incremental approach to software delivery is one of the biggest measurements of supplier quality and professionalism. Delivery according to this principle mitigates the highest risks at the earliest opportunity and allows for the most critical functionality to receive the most testing by the end of the project. It is not uncommon for our customers, for instance, to have some functionality ready for release into the organisation even before the project is complete. This translates into early Return on Investment.
5. Elevate the level of abstraction – communicate concepts to the customer in a non-technical way to improve their understanding. Never hide behind technology, however tempting. Customer understanding is crucial to maintaining high credibility and has a direct impact on a supplier’s ability to gain customer acceptance of the final result. Common understanding is critical.
6. Focus continually on quality – the iterative-incremental approach (Agile) to software development results in stronger Drupal implementations that contain more mature functionality that more closely matches the requirements of the customer.

Now unify the points mentioned. Take the first letter of each point. No wonder this is called the ABCDEF of good software development.

All our Project Managers are certified Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Prince2 Practitioners. All our software development processes utilise a specially adapted IBM Rational Unified Process implementation that ensure the highest quality Drupal specialisation and unmatched delivery capability.