Vici Consulting - delivering what we promise

Vici consultants deliver business initiatives, focusing on reducing costs or increasing revenues, to achieve bottom-line business benefits.

We have a proven reputation for producing value across process and technology projects (see Case Studies). We bring an approach to our work which is practical, straight talking, and focused on individual responsibility.

Our methodology has been formed from our delivery experience and combines process improvement as well as technical implementation. With hands-on expertise across all areas of project delivery, we can add value from any point in the project lifecycle. We can also deliver technology or process projects independently of each other.

Please hover over an area on the diagram to view list of key activities and deliverables for each stage in the methodology.

Our approach is depicted in the above diagram. The key principles underpinning our approach are:

The necessity to accommodate some redesign through the project lifecycle.
Although they can be delivered separately, the interplay between business process and technology is key to the realisation of business benefits, even if one or other is outside of project scope.
Reducing project risk and ensuring a smooth handover following delivery by keeping users and business experts engaged throughout the project lifecycle.

We deliver projects in three key phases, Setup, Delivery & Monitoring and Termination.

During the Project Setup Phase we gain a clear understanding of the business drivers and opportunities which enable us to set clear objectives for the project, concentrating on business benefits. We gather requirements, provide estimates for the work, decide on team structures, assemble the delivery team, and produce a detailed project plan. The Project Steering Committee and reporting standards are also established during this phase.

Project Delivery and Monitoring includes the hands-on production of the deliverables produced during detailed design, process prototyping & proving and the software development deliverables within functional design, technical design, development and system testing. For a list of the deliverables and key activities hover over the relevant step in the above diagram, or view the table below.

From a project management perspective Project Monitoring includes chairing operational review meetings with the delivery team(s), reporting progress against plans, attending Steering Committee meetings and ensuring action is taken against project risks and issues.

Project Termination is a key aspect of any project and includes the formal handover to the client's business of the processes and/or technology. We also measure the success of the project from a business perspective and document the successes against objectives set during the Project Setup phase.

The key activities and deliverables for each step are available by clicking on that step in the diagram.

Stage	Key activities	Deliverables
Business Concept	Workshops with key stakeholders, interviews with business experts, brainstorming sessions, research into specific opportunities, production of existing baseline metrics.	Brief document articulating the business drivers and opportunity to be pursued, agreement on baseline metrics and targets.
High Level Design	Detailed research into the opportunity, estimates of revenue and costs to realise the opportunity. Analysis into existing infrastructure, technology and processes. Interviews with key business experts into available existing technology.	Feasibility Study or Cost Benefit Analysis. The logical and physical representations of technical and business architecture.
Detailed Design (combining Process and Functional Design)	A series of workshops with project stakeholders, business users and business area experts.	A set of detailed process maps. These identify the macro objective of each key process and the constituent micro responsibilities required to deliver that objective. A functional specification and a set of storyboards incorporating wireframes of the application elements depicting the process and technology interplay.
Process Prototyping	Modifying standard software packages (e.g. Excel) to simulate new tools which will support the process.	Simple, mocked up technical tool for use in proving step.
Process Proving	Simulation of new process using prototyping tools through transaction lifecylce scenarios (e.g. the end-to-end sales to activation process)	Document stating any required redesign changes to either the process maps, or functional specification.
Technical Design	A series of meetings between the technical designer, technical architect and functional designer using the deliverables from the detailed design as inputs.	Technical Specification Document: A further breakdown of the functional documentation into an entity relationship model and component level documentation.
Development	Team of programmers producing program code using the technical and functional specifications as their input.	Actual program code delivered to the system team. Associated unit and integration test scripts.
System Test	The system test team planning the testing using the functional specification as input. On delivery of the code into the system test environment, actual execution of the test scripts, recording results and reporting issues and bugs to the development team.	System test scripts, bug logs and assessments on the state of the software against required functionality.
User Acceptance Testing	A representative set of business users taking a comprehensive set of business scenarios through the new process design using the tested technology. The functional analysts and process designers are closely engaged during this step.	A document specifying issues requiring action, which depending on their nature, may require some process or technology redesign. An assessment of readiness to launch and ultimately a signoff from the client to proceed to Rollout.
Rollout	Once the system and processes are certified by the users as 'fit for busines', rollout can commence. Rollout includes preparation of training documentation, procedures manuals (if required), scheduling and conducting actual training sessions. From a technical perspective it includes verifying the production environment is ready and promoting the final set of code to that environment.	Training documentation and a documented post-production support approach.
Realisation	For a period after rollout, once the new process and technology has bedded in, the success of the project against business objectives from the project setup phase can be measured. This step is usually conducted through gathering metrics (e.g. cycle time, cost of sale) for comparison against the baseline, gaining feedback from users and customers and collating the total costs of the project.	A document highlighting the costs and benefits realised through the project.

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