Project Management

Project management consulting by Three Fish is a smart way to handle the organization and execution of your key business initiatives and tech projects. Industry studies paint a stark picture, revealing that over 70% of all major information technology projects end in failure. Don't let your next project become a statistic!

Three Fish will begin by precisely identifying the business goals and rules that govern your project, interrelationships between the proposed project and other ongoing initiatives and strategic plans, and potential synergies and conflicts in your organization. Our leadership and expertise will ensure open lines of communication and make certain that all major stakeholders in the project are agreed to a course of action. Once Management has agreed upon the project plan, Three Fish will employ its proven methodologies, drawing on years of IT project management experience to execute your initiative efficiently, successfully, and on budget.

The Value of an External Perspective

One of the distinct advantages of an outside project manager is that figure's ability to provide a perspective external to the organization and to be perceived by competing -- and often antagonistic -- internal interests as a neutral party. The project management consultant is also not prejudiced by the insular assumptions of employees unaccustomed to "thinking outside of the box" or challenging internal company conventions and presuppositions. These distinctions enable the Three Fish project manager to forge agreement where previously there was only discord and gridlock and to inspire team members to true innovation.

Software Development Keys to Success

Three Fish has devised extremely effective team practices combining the best attributes of several leading software development process methodologies. With strong emphases on requirements analysis, revision control, documentation, and independent reviews, Three Fish aims to eliminate much of the friction, backtracking, and delay commonly associated with complex development projects.

As experienced coders and engineers in their own right, Three Fish project management consultants quickly become respected members of your project team and accepted even by those staff members most resistant to change and suspicious of "outsiders."

Communication is key in any business endeavor, and unfortunately, we have witnessed more than a few development projects fail or fall short of expectations due to its poor conduct. This is why we focus on clear communication with an almost religious fervor. Expect that changes to the master plan or deviations from the timeline will be communicated to project stakeholders in a timely fashion and that project team members will appear to read each other's minds. Three Fish is serious about communication and this commitment permeates everything we do.

Finally, Three Fish consultants have a wide breadth of experience with leading programming and scripting languages (C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, and others) and advanced programming techniques. Our familiarity with industry best practices and the latest technological advances ensures superior results and lengthens the functional lifetime of the resulting product.

Beyond the Current Project

Three Fish thinks beyond the current project. We believe in recycling and "not reinventing the wheel" (as the old saying goes). How do we do this?

Drawing on nearly two decades of coding experience and the lessons of the so-called "Unix philosophy," we focus on the creation, refinement, and documentation of discrete processes, code modules, and the creation of what we term "toolkits." Our objective, wherever possible, is to allow the client to reconfigure, repackage, and repurpose as much of our product as possible.

Three Fish also believes in empowering your staff to succeed independently on future projects. Our project manager will mentor and train your internal personnel during the course of the project, increasing the value of these employees and jumpstarting future initiatives.

Some Typical Projects

Three Fish consultants have successfully managed a wide variety of new software development initiatives, upgrades, refactoring, and rewriting of existing software systems, and hardware and software deployment projects. Some examples of typical projects completed in the last year are:

• Designed and installed mission-critical Storage Area Network (SAN) solution for data warehouse firm
• Designed and organized development of new shopping cart-based online payment system
• Led development of innovative AJAX-based search interface for public records data

For a list of other projects recently undertaken by Three Fish consultants, please visit the Recent Projects page.