Part of the BCE family, New Brunswick Telephone provided telephony services to households and businesses in New Brunswick.

Nortel Networks is a leader in delivering communications capabilities with next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications.  Nortel's technologies are designed to eliminate barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it.   Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world.

Project Summary

Defined and established the PM/SI Office for this regional telephone company and major supplier of high technology, in a project to develop high speed, high function internet access and data transmission over existing twisted-pair networks.

Developed and implemented the tools and systems for tracking, managing and reporting progress, budgets and issues.

Background

NB Tel and Nortel had signed an agreement for the development and deployment of a new fibre/coax technology to bring high speed internet and data to households.  As part of the agreement, NBTel would pay Nortel to provide Systems Integration services so that the planning of testing, piloting, implementation and deployment of the new technology in NB Tel would be integrated into the development schedule followed by Nortel.

18 months into the project, NB Tel had been investing in content development which would provide sales and traffic on the new network, but was concerned there was no integration taking place between the project plans of the two organizations. Several project managers had been put forward by Nortel and NB Tel had found them lacking the skills required for the role.

Requirement

NB Tel approached DMR to provide someone who could help define the requirements for a function that would integrate the plans of the two organizations.  The result was to be  an overall plan and schedule that both organizations would track and report against together.

Project After Discovery

A workshop among key project contributors from NB Tel agreed a PMO located in NB Tel, paid for and staffed by Nortel, would satisfy the concern.

Approach

• Develop Project Management processes and procedures (planning, scheduling, tracking, reporting, etc.), Issue Management, Change Management, Document Management (archiving and version control, etc.).
• Interview Project Manager candidates submitted by Nortel, to select the team to staff the PMO at NB Tel.
• Development of the “SI Dashboard” a visual representation of project-at-a-glance fashioned after an airplane dashboard with gauges and alarms.
• Lead the PMO operation to implement the PMO tools and provide training and coaching to the PMO team until ready to assume responsibility.