Success Stories

Client Overview:

A company of educators, this education technology provider knows teachers and administrators work tirelessly to meet the needs of their students. So, they’ve made it their mission to provide schools with the tools and resources they need to leverage technology in ways that improve student outcomes. Their flexible products and solutions give educators more ways to manage and customize their program, and students the personalization and engagement they need to succeed. They also work closely with school and district partners to ensure they have the support needed to achieve their goals.

Business Issue: Not Enough Project Leadership, No Visibility into Resource Utilization

The Director of the Project Management Office found herself in an extremely challenging situation. Not only was she leading and mentoring a team of project managers, she was juggling frequent priority shifts, overseeing production issues and functioning as a PM on projects to help ease her team’s workload.

At the same time, the company was experiencing rapid growth. With the acquisition of another learning solutions provider, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the project demand and to provide accurate portfolio and resource utilization reporting—without spending an enormous amount of time and manual effort.

Solution: Project Management Expertise, PPM Software Research & Selection

To help ease the challenges faced by a fast-growing company with resource constraints, Maven Project Management was asked to lead two new priority initiatives that required extensive coordination and cross-functional team leadership. 

On Day 1, the Maven PM gathered the information required to begin scheduling kickoff meetings and developing project plans with teams. Because of Maven’s breadth of project management experience, the PM was able to introduce best practices, such as a project charter template, kickoff meeting formats and team status reporting.

During the engagement, the Director of the Project Management Office asked Maven to provide guidance on other document templates and processes. She also needed an easy way to visualize “who’s working on what” to effectively manage resource utilization and priorities. To help this education technology provider, Maven was asked to initiate and manage the research, analysis, trial and selection of a new portfolio management solution.

Result: Successful, On-Time Project Delivery, Results-Oriented Process & Tools

• All projects were delivered within the timeline provided by the client.
• Improved internal communication and involvement across teams, business process improvements and technology enhancements during their peak “Back to School” contract renewal period. This provided a more efficient and predictable process for the education technology provider and its customers. 

Maven took on an additional 5 projects during the client engagement:

• Production Site Stabilization (IT infrastructure) – Reduced the amount of product support issues by providing more reliable data for its customers.
• Help Desk Software Implementation – Reduced the number of disparate systems and manual effort by centralizing Product Support software onto one platform to improve management, efficiencies, resource allocation/routing, cross-training, and metrics/reporting of its various mechanisms.
• Project Portfolio Management Software Implementation, New Templates and Best-Practices – Streamlined project management process, allowing them to produce accurate and reliable reports and enable the PMs to better manage projects—saving the client approximately 7.5 percentage of time each week. The new tool and process helps provide consistent and predictable results to the business to ensure project success.
• New Sales Quoting Tool – Provided an improved, more efficient and easier-to-use tool that provides the data that Sales and the rest of company needs to on-board and reconcile customers. 
• Building Move –  Completed the integration of the two IT infrastructures and moved the teams into a new facility with minimal downtime, allowing the existing company and the acquired company to “start fresh” in a new building that better supports their growth.

Testimonial:

“The Maven PM confidently engaged internal customers and team members from day one. This enabled her to add value to a variety of key projects immediately. The Maven PM has impressed every one of the many Project Sponsors she has worked with because she was consistently able to understand their needs and drive the results they were after. My team of Project Managers not only enjoyed working with her but learnt a lot too. We are better off as a team and as an organization because of her investment in us and our projects. Personally, I would highly recommend Veronica Thraen and Maven Project Management for any project work, no matter industry, complexity and importance.”

- Director of the Project Management Office (PMO)