About us

About us

We Appreciate the “High-Tech Challenge”

Enterprises that develop complex, high-tech products face substantial challenges:

  • The market is moving quickly
  • Competition is always growing
  • Incorporating new technologies involves high risk
  • The development route of new products can be uncertain

Therefore, as well as a high degree of technical competence, the project team also needs advanced project management skills. Besides the technical challenge, many project management disciplines have to be mastered. Classical project areas that require mastering include scope management, requirements management, logistics and scheduling, quality, risks, communication and coordination.

Any new product development has many stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, subcontractors, production teams, senior management and investors. The interfaces to all these interested parties need effective management.

Moreover, most organisations have the additional challenge of managing a portfolio of projects. Will the portfolio be too large? How will managers resolve resource conflicts between projects?

The solution to these challenges can be distilled into two fundamental requirements. We need:

  • Highly competent project managers
  • A project environment that supports the successful completion of projects within a larger portfolio of projects. This project environment would include an optimised project lifecycle model.

These needs are fundamental, but meeting them in a way that suits your business can be difficult. Often high-technology companies look for outside help, but unfortunately the help tends to come in a pure project management form and tends to be very expensive. Applying project management theory to high-tech product development can seem difficult, daunting, and not entirely suited to the demands of the high-tech markets. The learning curve companies can be years and more often than not companies end up with a sub-optimal solution.

Enterprises often look to standard methodologies, such as PMI and PRINCE2; but which methodology is most appropriate and most effective? Do we need to train our engineers and scientists in such methodologies? Should we have a project management system or project lifecycle? What is the best project environment and set of processes to meet our needs? What is involved in developing a truly effective project lifecycle?

Our Approach

Having worked with cutting edge technology companies for over 35 years, developing some of the world’s leading products, we are fully conversant with the challenges experienced by high-tech businesses. We understand the intense demands and timescale pressures that high-technology companies are under, the risk that such developments carry, and the challenges of coordinating teams of technical experts. Over time we have developed practical solutions to such problems and used them to help numerous organisations achieve highly successful projects.

We provide numerous services, one of which is incisive and effective education with an applied and pragmatic emphasis. This blog-based website is intended to be a key part of that solution. Since 1995 we have been engaged in a relentless pursuit of finding new and better ways of developing superior high-tech products with reliable predictability.

Our Mission

In essence our mission is:

To help high-tech project managers and companies acquire the vital skills necessary to develop superior products in a reduced timescale and at a lower cost.