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Program and Project Management

Program and Project Management

Our approach to Program and Project Management promotes seamless collaboration with team members, informative stakeholder engagements, and a high degree of transparency with the client.  We bring management techniques, experience, and risk mitigations that drive  successful engagements. Download our program and project management capabilities document.

Portfolio and Program Management

Portfolio Management

LATCH uses a SAFe Portfolio Management approach, guided by the technical and management Plays within our SAFe DevSecOps Playbook to provide flexible, adaptable contract and program management. By using the SAFe concept of Lean Portfolio Management, we implement strategies that align with our customer’s vision. Our team implements these strategies through successful execution patterns, standard program measures, and reporting across the portfolio. Our team also analyzes trends and metrics to look for issues that may be affecting projects. LATCH’s Portfolio Management approach includes defined roles and responsibilities and is designed to support projects within the portfolio through staffing, training, and technical mentorship.

Program Management

Based on Lean, SAFe, and PMBOK best practices, LATCH’s mature program management processes enable accurate planning, estimating, scheduling, monitoring, and execution of work to achieve feature, schedule, and quality objectives. Our Managers use an Agile Kanban approach to plan, estimate, and schedule work. We use Agile-based tools to populate and update schedules, calculate dates and dependencies, and determine critical paths for planned epics and associated features. Throughout execution, we monitor programs by providing objective evaluations of all deliverables and processes. Program Managers implement work in progress limits to keep the task order team focused on the highest priority work. We maintain burndown and control charts for delivery cadence predictions and status. We produce weekly or ad-hoc status reports through dashboard exports and perform critical path and root cause analysis for continuous improvement.

Solutions

SAFe DevSecOps Playbook

Risk Management

Large, complex IT programs engender numerous risks and challenges across the organization. LATCH provides proactive risk management, grounded in PMI and ISO 90001 best practices to identify and analyze risk, plan risk responses, manage risk, and monitor and report risks to closure. We assign experienced Risk Managers to oversee our risk management strategies, which include:

Risk Identification

The risk identification process begins by identifying potential risks that could affect schedule, cost, or performance. We use a variety of sources to gather risks, including stakeholder input; risk registers and lessons learned from similar projects; technology capability and trends; project plans to include scope, work breakdown structure, and IMS; cost performance reports; documentation reviews; architecture modeling and compliance; and change management. Risk identification is not a one-time event; we proactively identify risks throughout the program lifecycle. We establish our risk register and outline our risk taxonomy, which enables common vocabulary among all stakeholders.

Risk Analysis

We consider two elements of risk: probability of occurrence and negative impact (severity) of occurrence. Upon identification, we assign risks to a Risk Owner and enter risks into the Risk Register. We classify our risks by type which include but are not limited to customer satisfaction, scope, resources, performance, technical, cost, security, schedule, programmatic, and management.

Risk Management

Our Program Managers and Risk Managers coordinate with all assigned Risk Owners to establish standards and criteria for actions to manage risks to closure. We document risk response strategies for each risk within the risk register and provide updates to customer stakeholders.

Transition Management

Program and project transitions can be risky. Customers should be able to transition to a new vendor with confidence that they can provide a seamless transition experience. LATCH has decades of experience facilitating collaborative, seamless, and transparent transitions for technical PMO, infrastructure, and software development programs.

We use a strategic, customized, four-phase transition in process to plan, assess, transfer, and assume operations efficiently and often achieve transition goals before the required timeframe. We assign experienced and trusted Transition Management resources to enable program resources to focus on knowledge transfer and assuming operations. We implement rapid onboarding by promoting educated personnel through training and shadowing opportunities, holding ongoing meetings to verify that we are meeting contract expectations, and establishing collaborative communication with the outgoing vendor team and the Government.

Stakeholder Engagement and Alignment

Stakeholder engagement is a critical success factor to successful implementation of a project. It is important to address concerns early so that resistance doesn’t develop. As part of our “Be Engaged” Play from our SAFe DevSecOps Playbook, LATCH uses Stakeholder Engagement and Alignment (SEA) to encourage strong, trusted relationships that emphasize transparency, accountability, and reliability. Our SEA model allows us to define our communications protocols, measure effectiveness, and redefine how Business Stakeholders and Agile teams engage. Our workflows leverage Agile tools such as Jira and Rally for better organization of work and visibility. Using SEA, LATCH captures customer requirements systematically and enables quantitative assessments of changing customer needs and technological innovations.

Raise the Bar

With mature program and project management practices, clients see quantitative and qualitative returns on their IT investments. Learn more about our management approach and solutions by contacting us directly.