PMO Implementation

Key Points

• Business case study to verify the need for a project management office
• Development of desired qualifications for team members and team size calculation
• Document templates development, adaption and validation
• IT requirements definition to support the PMO
• Onsite support
• Pilot implementation
• Process model design

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Nowadays many organizations are adopting and implementing Project Management Offices. This office, also called PMO, is a central place to conduct, plan, organize, control and finish project activities.

The PMO is also a place where you can get a global vision of the project. Macrosolutions | Ricardo Vargas is specialized in coaching for the project management office implementation, including support in the work definition, process flow and development / validation of document templates, aiming to make sure that the PMO is adherent to the organizational and strategic processes.

Macrosolutions/Ricardo Vargas is able to provide project offices for specific projects, for company departments and for strategic approach (Portfolio Management), with more than 25 PMOs implemented.

Contact us and know our services available internationally.

Methodology Development

Benefits

• Reduction of project delivery time
• Cost reduction
• Less scope changes, risks and problems
• Quality assurance of products and processes
• Monitor and control during the execution phases of the project
• Optimized supplier management
• Improvement of the team’s professional and personal abilities
• Substantial increase of the project’s likelihood of success.

Services

• Diagnostic of the current Project Management Maturity
• Mapping of the Project Management Processes
• Definition of the Project Management Model
• Definition of the Project Performance Indicators
• Development of the Project Management Methodology
• In-house Supported Operation
• Evaluation of the Delivered Results

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A much known fact is the high percentage of project failures when it comes to delivering their products and fulfilling their objectives. There are a number of causes to those failures like lack of executive sponsorship, badly defined requirements and communication problems between the project stakeholders.

But one of the main causes is not having a proper project management methodology. Without such a pre-requisite, the project teams produce and deliver the products without properly knowing the project’s scope and final objectives. Also unknown are the responsibilities of everyone and how the communication channels should be planned and taken care of. Furthermore, there are no measurable and explicit quality expectations, the customers do not know the current development status of their projects and the changes along the way are carried out in a chaotic and unstructured way.

A project management methodology has to be based upon a set of best practices and it must provide structured processes to be used from the beginning of the project to its conclusion, defining the objectives in a way that their completion can be measured, planning how these objectives will be delivered and providing monitoring mechanisms for all of the project’s activities.

Macrosolutions Consulting Services has the necessary expertise to create a project management methodology that is fully adequate to your corporation and flexible enough to provide for the specificities of each project, delivering the following benefits:

• Reduction of project delivery time
• Cost reduction
• Less scope changes, risks and problems
• Quality assurance of products and processes
• Monitor and control during the execution phases of the project
• Optimized supplier management
• Improvement of the team’s professional and personal abilities
• Substantial increase of the project’s likelihood of success.

Project Management

Key Points

• Budget control
• Project Management implementation in suppliers and contractors
• Quality standards and requisites implementation
• Risk Management
• Schedule consolidation
• Scope change control systems process
• Scope Management Templates Implementation

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In the last 30 years, the world has suffering an incredible movement inside and outside companies. The companies are now recognized by their flexibility and ability to supply the client needs.

Project management is a set of management and human skills that allow the company to develop competencies to deal with non repetitive events, unique and complex, inside a tight timeframe, limited resources and costs.

Having managed more than 100 projects in different sizes and complexitities, Macrosolutions/Ricardo Vargas is able to provide your company with the most advanced consulting services in project management. Contact us and know our services available internationally.

Risk Management

Key Points

• Consulting services on risk identification tools like Delphi Analysis, Crawford Slip, NGT and analogy
• Games Theory and risk management
• Implementation of risk identification process
• Monte Carlo simulation to quantitative risk analysis
• Risk Breakdown Structure setup to categorize risks
• Risk Data books
• Risk Knowledge Management
• Risk threshold
• Risk triggers process implementation
• Risk/Benefit Analysis to insurance calculation

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Risk management is today one of the most important areas inside project management. It allows better knowledge about the complexities of risks, involving the team members in the right process to identify and respond to potential opportunities and threats in a project environment.

The consulting services of Macrosolutions/Ricardo Vargas apply the most modern tools and techniques available in the market, associating the use of complex simulating software with the most suitable risk management process to your company. Contact us and know our worldwide services to introduce risk management to all your companies’ processes and projects.

Crisis Management and Troubled Projects

Key Points

• 6 Critical indicators to evaluate the severity of the situation
• Action and recovery plan implementation
• Communication strategy in an early finish implementation
• Complex systems arrangement
• Early finish strategies evaluation (addition, absorption, inanition or extinction)
• Evaluation of recovery alternatives
• Identification of the problem roots
• Press and media communication
• Ricardo Vargas article about the subject
• War room
• Workaround implementation

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A problem project can be defined as a project where the difference between what is expected and what has been accomplished exceeds the acceptable tolerance limits, pushing into a course that will inevitably lead to failure.

A special approach for these “Troubled Projects” are a reality in the business worldwide scenario and, most of the times, dealing with a troubled project is a particularly challenging task for the project manager and his or her team.

Currently, Ricardo Vargas is considered one of the most important specialists in crisis management and troubled projects, with many studies and technical articles published in the subject worldwide.

Macrosolutions / Ricardo Vargas is able to provide the state of art in crisis management and troubled projects consulting. Using game theory and decision analysis, our consulting services can evaluate the recovery capability, as also the early finish strategies to be implemented to reduce risks and potential damages.

Contact us and know our troubled project consulting services.

Project Audit and Quality Assurance

Our services:

• Diagnostic of current Project Management Maturity
• Auditing of Project Management Processes
• GAP Analysis Reports and Benchmarking
• Best Practices in Requirements Elicitation and Stakeholder Prioritization
• Definition of Quality Goals for Project Management
• Definition of Project Management Performance Indicators
• Recommendations for Improvements on Project Management Processes

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Project management quality is directly associated with the scope that has to be produced and delivered by the project. But project quality goes beyond that, it must take into consideration not only the products to be delivered by the project, but also the management products, the methodology, processes, interrelationships with the stakeholders, etc, everything that ends up measuring the efficacy of the project manager and his/her team. We can say that the corporation that manages its projects adequately, verifies the delivered products and measures its own project management effectiveness is on the way to project management excellence.

Macrosolutions Consulting Services is capable of diagnosing and auditing your corporation’s projects, as well as providing recommendations so that your management team remains aligned with the corporate strategic objectives and is ready to define the goals and metrics that will assure an increase in perceived quality on your projects.

Project Kick-off Meeting and Lectures

Key Points

• Kick off meeting presentations and lectures
• Motivation and awareness of the stakeholders
• PMDome Workshop
• Senior executive workshop

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Starting a project is almost always a challenge for the organization. During the project kick-off meeting, motivational awareness and commitment should be addressed, providing a positive environment to the whole project.

The workshops and speeches provided by Ricardo Vargas are the best tools to a great project startup.

Using unique resources and award winning group activities, Ricardo Vargas is able to support the right beginning to our project.

Contact us and know our services available internationally.

Project Management Coaching and Mentoring

Key Points

• Coaching in an specific technical task in the project
• Cross Cultural professional development
• Mentoring and professional development for future project managers and senior project managers
• Onsite support
• Soft skills development

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Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

Many times the organization needs to qualify quickly its project management resources in the most modern and updated tools and techniques, as also the required soft skills to be a better team member or a superior project manager.

The coaching and mentoring services of Macrosolutions/Ricardo Vargas are customized to each organization. With recurrent meetings, discussion forums and onsite support, the results will be reached in a record timeframe, with reduced risks if compared with the traditional change management processes.

Contact us and know our worldwide coaching and mentoring services.

Portfolio Management

Key Points

• All services are compatible with the PMI« Standard for Portfolio Management
• Balanced Scorecard approach for portfolio management
• Consulting in mathematic models and simulations to compose and align the projects inside the portfolio
• Evaluation of the key organizational indicators
• Implementation of IT tools for portfolio management
• Portfolio management process implementation

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Portfolio management enables the association between strategic initiatives and the project deliveries in a specific organization. Portfolio management is considered today one of the most important tendencies in the field, allowing the company to select the right project for an intended strategic plan.

The portfolio management approach allows identifying the most suitable projects inside the organization, enabling a rational use of the organizational resources to reach its objectives.

Macrosolutions / Ricardo Vargas is a pioneer in portfolio management consulting, with several global clients in this field.

Contact us and know our portfolio management consulting services available internationally.

Balanced Scorecard Applied to Projects

Key Points

• Implementation of a new Balanced Scorecard program, aligned with the Project Management Initiatives
• Implementation of Project Management Offices based on the Balanced Scorecard concepts
• Definition of the Performance Indicators for Projects
• Development of the project, program and portfolio management methodologies aligned with corporate strategy

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The Balanced Scorecard concept was developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in 1992 and it is part of a performance management framework used to implement the corporate strategy and it has been used by big corporations all over the world. In a nutshell, BSC (Balanced Scorecard) is an analysis technique which has the objective of translating the corporation’s mission and business strategies into well-defined and measurable objectives, allowing the overall performance to be monitored as to the fulfillment of these strategies. The methodology is developed so as to examine the corporate performance in 4 perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal, and Learning and Growth. By using a structured approach, BSC decomposes the corporate high level objectives successively into vision, strategies, tactical activities and metrics. Balanced Scorecard and Project Management are naturally strong allies, but their interdependent relationship depends upon a heavily structured implementation. While Balanced Scorecard provides a strategic vision, Project Management provides the tactical view of the corporation’s operations, in a combined way that assures that the projects are strategically aligned.

Macrosolutions Consulting Services on Project Management and Balanced Scorecard allow the elaboration of a model that creates a bridge between the corporate strategy and the resulting execution of the deriving initiatives. The projects are implemented together with one of the world biggest specialists in BSC, our partner Symnetics, who also represent Palladium and the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative.

Maturity Model in Projects

Key Points

• Diagnostic of the current situation by using Macrosolutions’ structured method or PMI’s OPM3
• Diagnostic of your Project Management Office (PMO) maturity
• Mapping of the professional competencies necessary to the execution of projects, programs and portfolios
• Implementation Plan for a Project Management Methodology
• Implementation Plan for a Program Management Methodology
• Implementation Plan for a Portfolio Management Methodology
• Implementation of a Project Management Office (PMO)

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The Project, Program and Portfolio Maturity Models constitute structured evaluation guides to best practices, thus allowing these disciplines to be decomposed into gradual knowledge stages, as well as evolving the corporation into a learning organization.

A maturity model is a structured collection of elements that describe the characteristics of the efficacy of its own processes, providing:

• A starting point
• The benefits of the community’s experience
• A shared vision and a common language
• A structure to prioritize actions
• A way to define what optimization represents to the corporation

The corporation’s maturity evaluation of its project, program and portfolio competencies is developed by following a hierarchical and structured model which allows getting to know and understand its current situation, benchmarking it with the market and plan for an improvement approach which is more adequate to the strategic objectives of the corporation.

Experience shows that the success of the implementation of a project management methodology goes way beyond training the project managers. For a corporation to be successful in these initiatives, it’s necessary to have mature processes, technology, policies and standards on project, program and portfolio management, which in turn have to be aligned with other managerial systems so that all can operate in synergy.

Macrosolutions has the necessary expertise in the disciplines of project, program and portfolio management, and we can help your corporation to diagnose your current practices in project management and plan for the creation and development of the necessary abilities to better execute your portfolio of projects.

Project Governance and Sarbanes Oxley

Key Points

• The information is being produced at the necessary level of accuracy
• The conformity to SOX pre-requisites are being achieved
• The risks of bad management of the financial data are being adequately mitigated
• The costs of conformity can be reduced
• The corporation keeps its focus on its core business

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Law was created after several problems that were faced by some big American corporations and it has the objective of assuring that the corporations that are on the American stock market have mechanisms and internal controls to guarantee the integrity of their financial information. These pre-requisites and internal controls brought along a heavy burden to the executive managers because they became directly responsible for the published information. The management of these pre-requisites can become very complex and expensive and it requires a great deal of investment in processes, technology and projects. But, even more complicated and expensive are the risks of not being in conformity with the Law.

Macrosolutions is capable of auditing your corporation to make sure that:

• The information is being produced at the necessary level of accuracy
• The conformity to SOX pre-requisites are being achieved
• The risks of bad management of the financial data are being adequately mitigated
• The costs of conformity can be reduced
• The corporation keeps its focus on its core business

Methodology Development

Benefits

• Reduction of project delivery time
• Cost reduction
• Less scope changes, risks and problems
• Quality assurance of products and processes
• Monitor and control during the execution phases of the project
• Optimized supplier management
• Improvement of the team’s professional and personal abilities
• Substantial increase of the project’s likelihood of success.

Services

• Diagnostic of the current Project Management Maturity
• Mapping of the Project Management Processes
• Definition of the Project Management Model
• Definition of the Project Performance Indicators
• Development of the Project Management Methodology
• In-house Supported Operation
• Evaluation of the Delivered Results

Get information

Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

A much known fact is the high percentage of project failures when it comes to delivering their products and fulfilling their objectives. There are a number of causes to those failures like lack of executive sponsorship, badly defined requirements and communication problems between the project stakeholders.

But one of the main causes is not having a proper project management methodology. Without such a pre-requisite, the project teams produce and deliver the products without properly knowing the project’s scope and final objectives. Also unknown are the responsibilities of everyone and how the communication channels should be planned and taken care of. Furthermore, there are no measurable and explicit quality expectations, the customers do not know the current development status of their projects and the changes along the way are carried out in a chaotic and unstructured way.

A project management methodology has to be based upon a set of best practices and it must provide structured processes to be used from the beginning of the project to its conclusion, defining the objectives in a way that their completion can be measured, planning how these objectives will be delivered and providing monitoring mechanisms for all of the project’s activities.

Macrosolutions Consulting Services has the necessary expertise to create a project management methodology that is fully adequate to your corporation and flexible enough to provide for the specificities of each project, delivering the following benefits:

• Reduction of project delivery time
• Cost reduction
• Less scope changes, risks and problems
• Quality assurance of products and processes
• Monitor and control during the execution phases of the project
• Optimized supplier management
• Improvement of the team’s professional and personal abilities
• Substantial increase of the project’s likelihood of success.

Project Audit and Quality Assurance

Our services:

• Diagnostic of current Project Management Maturity
• Auditing of Project Management Processes
• GAP Analysis Reports and Benchmarking
• Best Practices in Requirements Elicitation and Stakeholder Prioritization
• Definition of Quality Goals for Project Management
• Definition of Project Management Performance Indicators
• Recommendations for Improvements on Project Management Processes

Get information

Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

Project management quality is directly associated with the scope that has to be produced and delivered by the project. But project quality goes beyond that, it must take into consideration not only the products to be delivered by the project, but also the management products, the methodology, processes, interrelationships with the stakeholders, etc, everything that ends up measuring the efficacy of the project manager and his/her team. We can say that the corporation that manages its projects adequately, verifies the delivered products and measures its own project management effectiveness is on the way to project management excellence.

Macrosolutions Consulting Services is capable of diagnosing and auditing your corporation’s projects, as well as providing recommendations so that your management team remains aligned with the corporate strategic objectives and is ready to define the goals and metrics that will assure an increase in perceived quality on your projects.

Project Management Coaching and Mentoring

Key Points

• Coaching in an specific technical task in the project
• Cross Cultural professional development
• Mentoring and professional development for future project managers and senior project managers
• Onsite support
• Soft skills development

Get information

Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

Many times the organization needs to qualify quickly its project management resources in the most modern and updated tools and techniques, as also the required soft skills to be a better team member or a superior project manager.

The coaching and mentoring services of Macrosolutions/Ricardo Vargas are customized to each organization. With recurrent meetings, discussion forums and onsite support, the results will be reached in a record timeframe, with reduced risks if compared with the traditional change management processes.

Contact us and know our worldwide coaching and mentoring services.

Risk Management

Key Points

• Consulting services on risk identification tools like Delphi Analysis, Crawford Slip, NGT and analogy
• Games Theory and risk management
• Implementation of risk identification process
• Monte Carlo simulation to quantitative risk analysis
• Risk Breakdown Structure setup to categorize risks
• Risk Data books
• Risk Knowledge Management
• Risk threshold
• Risk triggers process implementation
• Risk/Benefit Analysis to insurance calculation

Get information

Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

Risk management is today one of the most important areas inside project management. It allows better knowledge about the complexities of risks, involving the team members in the right process to identify and respond to potential opportunities and threats in a project environment.

The consulting services of Macrosolutions/Ricardo Vargas apply the most modern tools and techniques available in the market, associating the use of complex simulating software with the most suitable risk management process to your company. Contact us and know our worldwide services to introduce risk management to all your companies’ processes and projects.

Quantitative Risk Analysis and Simulations

Key Points

• Risk Simulation Techniques
• Project Risk Analysis
• Monte Carlo Simulation
• Monte Carlo Analysis
• Event Chain Methodology
• Decision Tree
• Sensitivity Analisys
• @Risk
• Crystal Ball
• Uncertainty

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In modern times, the administration of business undertakings and project management are synonymous to uncertainty and volatility. In order to increase the likelihood of success of these initiatives, it’s imperative that the organizations be capable of improving their ability to proactively manage these uncertainties, or better yet, be capable of managing their risks. One of the main obstacles to an effective risk management lies in the difficulty to quantify risk estimates, which is extremely important to enable the development of adequate risk responses to the different scenarios that may have been identified. As a means to significantly improve the quality of these estimates, the use of tools and simulation techniques is of vital importance.

Macrosolutions is specialized in the best practices related to risk simulation techniques like Monte Carlo Analysis, Decision Tree, Sensitivity Analysis and Event Chain Methodology, and we have the necessary expertise in the use of software tools like @Risk? and Crystal Ball?. Together with you, we can develop a standardized project analysis and decision process for your organization.

Please feel free to contact us and know about our risk simulation consulting services.

Critical Chain in Project Management

Key Points

• Concurrent use of critical chain and critical path
• Critical chain process implementation
• Critical chain training
• Project Buffer calculation
• Using critical chain to setup your schedule/cost baseline

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Critical chain is one of the most polemic and innovator process in the project management field. Proposed by the Israeli physicist Eliyahu Goldratt, the critical chain is the direct use of the Theory of Constraints (TOC). A system’s constraint can be considered as anything that obstructs the system to reach a superior performance.

He declares that a project buffer will protect the whole project with less effort and more quality if compared with inserting individual buffers in each project task or resource. Once the project objective is to be finished on time, regardless if one task finished behind schedule and another ahead schedule.

Project Audit and Quality Assurance

Our services:

• Diagnostic of current Project Management Maturity
• Auditing of Project Management Processes
• GAP Analysis Reports and Benchmarking
• Best Practices in Requirements Elicitation and Stakeholder Prioritization
• Definition of Quality Goals for Project Management
• Definition of Project Management Performance Indicators
• Recommendations for Improvements on Project Management Processes

Get information

Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

Project management quality is directly associated with the scope that has to be produced and delivered by the project. But project quality goes beyond that, it must take into consideration not only the products to be delivered by the project, but also the management products, the methodology, processes, interrelationships with the stakeholders, etc, everything that ends up measuring the efficacy of the project manager and his/her team. We can say that the corporation that manages its projects adequately, verifies the delivered products and measures its own project management effectiveness is on the way to project management excellence.

Macrosolutions Consulting Services is capable of diagnosing and auditing your corporation’s projects, as well as providing recommendations so that your management team remains aligned with the corporate strategic objectives and is ready to define the goals and metrics that will assure an increase in perceived quality on your projects.

Microsoft EPM (Enterprise Project Management) Implementation

Key Points

• Database sizing
• Knowledge base development using Microsoft Sharepoint
• Onsite implementation
• Onsite support
• Security policies implementation
• Setup of wan/lan environment
• Views customization
• Web parts development

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With books published for all versions of Microsoft Office Project since 1998, Ricardo Vargas is considered one of the most important specialists worldwide in Microsoft Platform to project management. He was also the first professional worldwide to be a Microsoft Certified Office User Specialist in MS Project, being project member of MS Project 98, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 and P14 projects.

Macrosolutions | Ricardo Vargas associate it’s experience in project management with the suitable IT tool, working together with Microsoft since the first versions of Microsoft Project, with several published cases.

Contact us and know our Microsoft EPM consulting services available worldwide.

Mind Maps

Key Points

• Gather requirements in projects
• Create alternatives which can be later grouped by different execution approaches
• Identify Project Risks
• Collect and document Lessons Learned
• Improve your Time Management abilities
• Develop new products and ideas
• Facilitate and conduct productive meetings
• Better plan the activities and products of a project

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Mind mapping is a powerful and visual technique created by Tony Buzan to help people to learn and better organize their ideas using a more intuitive and productive way, and it has been widely used by corporations, universities, schools, several types of consulting services and especially in project management. The organization of ideas using the mind map concept greatly amplifies our creativity potential and can be used to:

• Gather requirements in projects
• Create alternatives which can be later grouped by different execution approaches
• Identify Project Risks
• Collect and document Lessons Learned
• Improve your Time Management abilities
• Develop new products and ideas
• Facilitate and conduct productive meetings
• Better plan the activities and products of a project

Macrosolutions Consulting Services is capable of training your professionals and deliver workshops and coaching in the mind mapping techniques so as to improve your organization’s creativity and learning style, thus making teambuilding a marvelous experience.

Microsoft EPM (Enterprise Project Management) Implementation

Key Points

• Database sizing
• Knowledge base development using Microsoft Sharepoint
• Onsite implementation
• Onsite support
• Security policies implementation
• Setup of wan/lan environment
• Views customization
• Web parts development

Get information

Wish to get more information on this consulting service? Contact us.

With books published for all versions of Microsoft Office Project since 1998, Ricardo Vargas is considered one of the most important specialists worldwide in Microsoft Platform to project management. He was also the first professional worldwide to be a Microsoft Certified Office User Specialist in MS Project, being project member of MS Project 98, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 and P14 projects.

Macrosolutions | Ricardo Vargas associate it’s experience in project management with the suitable IT tool, working together with Microsoft since the first versions of Microsoft Project, with several published cases.

Contact us and know our Microsoft EPM consulting services available worldwide.