Good communication provides a clear framework, so there is peace of mind in delivering!
When you agree on a project with PicoPublish, we will start by seeking to understand before advising. This means that we must acquire knowledge about your business strategy, organization, goals for the project, the tech stack and the IT architecture that the project will be part of.
This clarification phase can be adapted according to budget, complexity and maturity, but it is essential for us to obtain an indication of how the project plan should be composed to provide the greatest possible value.
Then we can break the project down into bite-sized chunks and plan the collaboration - because an IT project can rarely be run by a consultancy alone. It requires both time and mental energy on the part of the customer, and therefore it is essential that we take more than just "time and budget" into account in the project plan.
Of course, all customers are interested in knowing what they are buying and what it costs. We therefore work with estimation of the individual tasks. Unfortunately, IT development is not a science that can be bottled up in precise devices. In some cases, tasks will be manageable and easy to estimate. Other times, the context is complex, and the estimate will be associated with greater uncertainty.
It is our job to communicate the security of an estimate and communicate if the estimate slips. But our experience shows that we succeed best in projects where we have a common understanding that it is a joint project. Together, we must ensure that the assumptions under which an estimate is given hold, and that it is possible to adjust both time, scope or finances throughout the project - of course by mutual agreement.
We enable you to make the right choices
Technology and IT are not "just" something you buy and implement. Typically, IT investments - especially when focusing on data-heavy systems - are crucial for the business, and this means that there are often many critical interfaces to other core systems and departments in the company.
The closer we get to your strategy, goals and wishes for the IT architecture, the better advice we can provide. Our ability to ensure the right technology choices rests on an understanding of what you want to achieve. Is time and budget a significant factor? Then we may choose a less robust plug-and-play solution that can be replaced later. Are security and scalability part of your business strategy? Then we may prioritize a tailor-made solution that gives you full control.
The more access we get to your strategic engine room, the better recommendations we can make. And there is rarely just one right solution. You will therefore often find that we provide several proposals for solutions with clear benefits and consequences for both finances, technology, organization and scalability, so you can make an informed choice when investing in IT.
The most important parameters for us are that we advise impartially and with your best interests in mind.
"A structured way to success" - a good process ensures good deliveries
After +15 years of experience with the implementation of both large and small IT projects, we know that the good process is the key to the good project - and thus to the value-creating deliveries.
To ensure that an IT project is an investment and not a cost, it requires continuous dialogue and understanding of both technology, processes, people and organization. But first and foremost, it requires a transparent process with clear alignment of expectations as well as well-defined roles and responsibilities for both customer and supplier.
In PicoPublish, we also know that a project accumulates a huge amount of knowledge, which often lives through the team members. Therefore, it is important to us that the customer gets a permanent team with few replacements. This requires that the conditions under which we work are orderly, have clear expectations, are possible to plan and that there is trust in the project.
Our processes have therefore been developed over time and based on real experience from our many and diverse projects. So when we ask our customers to follow our recommended processes, it's not to make the collaboration difficult or time-consuming. On the contrary, it is because we know that clarifications, documentation, retention of knowledge and ongoing alignment of expectations are fundamental to a value-creating delivery.
A successful project requires dialogue, mutual compromises, and that each of us contributes with our specialist knowledge for the benefit of the business.
Documentation and one channel ensure transparency and trust
When you are in a project with PicoPublish, you have a permanent project manager and a team attached. You will typically hold weekly clarification or status meetings, write emails or talk on the phone, but all tasks, decisions or approvals must be done through JIRA.
An IT system rarely solves anything if the right processes for the use of the system are not in place. When we have chosen to use JIRA from Atlassian as our preferred project management tool, it is because JIRA makes it easy to support the processes we have in our task solving. As a bonus, JIRA also contributes with transparency in the task solution, which in our world supports the trust we have in each other in the project.
There are often many stakeholders and team members in a project. A typical process will involve a handover of a problem, a scoping/estimation effort, an approval procedure, a development phase, a test phase and finally a release of some code or a launch.
The advantage of having a customized project management tool is that all the agreements that are made when estimates are handed over, adjusted and renegotiated, can be documented, so that both parties can orient themselves in the activity that has surrounded the task solution.
Although it sometimes seems easier to just call your permanent consultant, the project tool ensures that important decisions or queries do not get stranded with a team member on vacation, but can be handled, tracked and maintained in our common tool.