Many of us have seen the television commercial with the little boy watching his mom stirring soup on the stove. In the commercial, the boy asks in expectation, “Is it soup, yet?”

The mom, smiling, reassures him, “Not yet, but soon.”

Unfortunately, in IT, that same mom may have answered more along these lines, “Nope, Danny. We ran into a few things we hadn’t anticipated. Looks like it may take a month longer than we expected. Have a seat.”

How many times have we been in a situation where the stakeholders of our IT projects look to us and ask, “Is it soup, yet?”

And many times, the answer just isn’t clear...

Getting the soup to the table
As IT professionals, stakeholders trust us to identify and follow the best path to accomplish critical business objectives. Unfortunately, there is often no comprehensive approach to ensure that these outcomes are met. At SkilGroup, we have developed BestPath™ as a collaboration framework to help us partner with clients to successfully address the challenges of project delivery.

Realizing Success
In today’s market, many project methodologies exist and each offers a unique approach to “ensure project success”. Many of these are developed in response to changes in technology and address a specific technology niche.

However, many of these methodologies lack the internal steps focused on providing project assurance. This shortcoming is evident in the number of projects that experience scope creep, reduced functionality or fail altogether. In these methodologies, the typical recommendation is to use external teams of additional resources to perform “after the fact” Quality Reviews in order to ensure success.

But that can be a bit like closing the door once the horse has left the barn.

BestPath addresses Project Assurance by incorporating policies, procedures and processes directly into the specific methodologies our clients use. Checkpoints and corresponding milestones and deliverables are defined and incorporated throughout the project. SkilGroup will use the most appropriate methodology for the context of each project.

BestPath™
As a result of our ongoing commitment to identify market trends and bring our clients innovative new services, SkilGroup has developed the BestPath Methodology.

BestPath is a structured, dynamic collaboration between our client and SkilGroup that ensures critical business outcomes are met. It is a flexible Project Management Framework (PMF) based on industry standard Project Management techniques and disciplines.

But BestPath is different.

BestPath leverages the key aspects of a standard lifecycle methodology, while also supplementing it with a series of activities focused on Project Assurance. These Project Assurance activities are focused on establishing project scope, clear identification of Business Requirements, and identification of activities needed to link the identified Business Requirements to the technology solution.

BestPath is used by the combined client and SkilGroup team to:

• Identify and define the scope of the project
• Establish the project environment that will facilitate effective communication paths, including status reporting
• Allow the team to actively identify, document and manage project events that influence project outcomes
• Provide the project team a proven and effective way to translate events into issues, issues into changes of scope, and the incorporation of changes of scope into agreed upon project outcomes

BestPath provides the combined client and SkilGroup team the ability to seamlessly integrate the client’s approach and methodology for designing, developing, and deploying technology projects with a “metamethodology” that drives toward completion to expectations.

BestPath can successfully integrate the client’s approach, whether the approach is a tried-and-true, home-grown process or an industry standard, such as Rational Unified Process (RUP) or Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF).

In short, BestPath takes a holistic approach to projects and incorporates the combined experience of SkilGroup and client leaders to provide a project framework focused on success.