How We Work

When delivering business-critical applications like CRM, at Excitation we believe that the way we work with our clients should be as important as our qualifications and previous experience.

Our engagement style: we've thought hard to produce an open, collaborative and flexible way of working with our clients, which respects our clients experience and skills.

Our methodologies and procedures, when delivering a project we focus on the following areas:

• Project justification
• Roles
• Project Scope
• Project risk analysis
• Project Management approach
• Change management
• Documentation

Methodology

Excitation's methodology derives from our wide experience of consulting success. To ensure that our principles are applied equally to all engagements we have a framework of procedures which has evolved over the years, both here at Excitation and in our staff's previous roles. Our commitment to detail is your reassurance that you have partnered with the right company.

Procedures, of themselves, make dull reading. So, rather than expose you to that, we list a clear set of keypoints we apply in each project we manage:

Clearly defined roles

Every project is assigned a project manager and a technical lead, with clearly delineated roles, who follow the project from start to finish. You'll know who to talk to about project matters and there will be no doubt who's responsible for what.

Project justification

However important our skills, any IT solution is about more than just the technology. It must also make business sense. This is why all documents will include the business perspective for any decisions to be made, and why getting agreement and formal sign-offs from you, the customer, is so important.

Project scope

A project's success can be accurately measured only by reference to agreed goals. Every project begins with a scoping document which identifies the aims, requirements and constraints of the project. All parties must be bound by this document or there's little point continuing. If the contents are undesirable, unrealistic or unattainable, the project should not commence. Put another way, we want you to know what we are doing and to have bought into it.

Risk & impact assessment

Rare is the project which can run in glorious isolation. Most projects affect, and are affected by, other projects, systems and people. The earlier these issues are identified, the easier they are to handle.

Solid sub-contractor & sub-project management approach

Larger projects often need the support of additional companies and suppliers. Sometimes these 'virtual' team members are engaged in multiple projects simultaneously. Excitation project managers set clearly-defined milestones and deliverables, monitoring these projects and ensuring they deliver to time and within budgetary constraints.

Managing changes

Much as we would like every project to map perfectly to the plan laid agreed at the outset, we know this just can't happen. However, a change management structure minimises the impact of unforeseen/unavoidable issues by enabling us to respond quickly, assess the impact of proposed changes, agree changes with you, and execute them.

Documentation...

You'll want to know what we're doing, and what we've done, because we want to tell you. The project plan will describe what documents to expect and when. As to the documents' contents: we find that the more specific and comprehensive the documents we produce, the more useful you find them. Apart from making sense to both parties, you are, after all, paying the piper...

The future

We won't just walk away and leave you with an unsupported new system. We aim always to leave you with all the information required to administer what's new and will provide the skills to make you self-sufficient in this regard. We have the experience and knowledge in IT training to ensure that training needs, and the means to achieve them, are met, whether through participation in the project, as custom training, or recommendations of public training courses. And we offer support contracts too, for those whose IT requirements don't justify extra full-time resources.