Contracting

NTVI places great importance on the quality it delivers to each and every client. Only experienced project managers are assigned to lead each project regardless of the size of the team. PMs implement issue/change request processes to solve potential issues early, monitor trends and ensure NTVI teams are responsive to any and all potential quality concerns. Program reviews are conducted with NTVI Presidents and General Managers on a regular basis to ensure overall project health and identify any areas in need of assistance. NTVI Presidents and General Managers also meet with clients periodically (at least annually) to ensure clients are completely satisfied with performance and quality standards. And NTVI periodically engages resources from similar but distinct projects to review efforts and product quality.

Guaranteed Responsiveness

NTVI makes customer responsiveness a top priority of our project teams and all NTVI management. NTVI Presidents and General Managers regularly meet with clients to establish an open communication channel early in the life cycle of a project and continue that communication throughout its duration. This ensures the client understands they have a direct channel to top NTVI management and greatly reduces the chance that a client will allow a problem to grow before reaching out. The Presidents and General Managers seek to ensure all levels of project performance are exceptional and are not just engaged when problems arise. If any issue or need arises, NTVI management will provide guidance to PMs as well as other resources or support. If necessary, NTVI will reallocate personnel to help the clients achieve success in all phases of the project.

Problem Resolution

NTVI has been successful in avoiding problems by effectively communicating with its clients. All PMs are trained to communicate openly with client managers and to identify potential problems early and take corrective action immediately. PMs understand that it is NTVI’s responsibility to take early corrective action for problems in a manner that won’t interfere with or slow client projects. If additional resources or new training can help resolve an issue identified by either NTVI PMs or client PMs, those resources are provided at the earliest point. NTVI management is also very sensitive to customer problems and makes resolution a priority over all their other tasks. NTVI VPs will personally assist in reconciling problems if they can’t be quickly solved by other NTVI resources. If there are problems the client manager feels cannot be resolved with given personnel, NTVI management will act to transition any appropriate personnel to resolve the problem.

Meticulous Documentation

All effective projects have consistent documentation practices in place. NTVI relies on standard detailed documentation practices to ensure high quality work products are delivered to the customer and changes are processed in an approved and effective manner. One specific area of focus for NTVI that highlights our strategy involves special care in the implementation of new COTS software architectures, since these installations can expose unexpected software bugs (unintended consequences) or configuration issues that can significantly delay project milestones. NTVI strives to keep rework on these installations minimized and when absolutely necessary, efficiently perform that rework.

Minimizing Rework (installations, software service requests)

When IT projects first begin or when they transition to a new software technology, the installation of COTS software is one of the first major milestones to occur. While basic COTS installations may be clearly documented by the vendor, COTS software implementations that use a new architecture or advanced options often reveal unknown or unexpected configuration issues that may even require new patches from the vendor. It is sometimes best to complete a clean re-installation of the software once the issue has been resolved rather than leaving the original patched software in place for continued use. The patched software can harbor unknown side effects from the initial configuration issue or from the corrective patches that might not show up until a later date when the software is being used in a production environment. Pressure often exists to meet strict project milestones and if the technical team doesn’t feel confident it can quickly return to the existing software state via re-installation, some teams may decide to live with a less than ideal installation.

If the technical lead maintains meticulous documentation and makes backups at intermediate points during the initial installation process, project risk can be significantly reduced. Significant time will be saved during a clean re-installation and the project can be assured that all of the problems encountered in the original implementation will be fixed. Therefore, the project can often still meet all of its milestones while having a pristine COTS environment going forward. Our technical leads are very careful to document every installation step based on the customer’s unique requirements, replete with all required parameters used and often including screenshots. This allows our leads to replicate the new process exactly during a rapid re-installation. Our technical leads also regularly generate software backups at intermediate steps in the installation process. This ensures that if a configuration issue is encountered, we can revert back to one of the intermediate software states instead of repeating the entire installation process. These documentation steps may appear to be very straightforward, but it has been our experience that many projects do not follow such detailed installation practices, particularly during the first installations of a new COTS application. And once COTS software is being used in both development and production environments, it becomes extremely difficult to resolve residual configuration issues that occurred due to an initial misconfiguration or patch.

Allow Other Skilled Technical Employees to Recreate/Perform Tasks Developed by Lead Personnel

One additional benefit from keeping meticulous notes during initial installations is that it allows less experienced personnel to confidently perform those same installations. This leads to several advantages. First, if a COTS installation needs to be rebuilt, the technical lead can continue to develop/test installation procedures for additional required COTS software packages while an alternate independently rebuilds a clean environment. Second, it greatly assists with training new or less experienced personnel. A less experienced employee can be provided with a sandbox environment and allowed to practice installing, configuring or patching the sandbox environment. By developing expertise in alternate personnel, NTVI lowers the personnel risk for the team and the project. It also allows the technical lead to maintain primary focus on project tasks as opposed to spending a majority of their time training the less experienced personnel. These practices translate into significant project savings since they allow lower labor categories to accomplish tasks normally associated with much higher positions. They also facilitate NTVI’s practice of occasionally sharing technical leads among projects. And these practices allow NTVI to staff projects in subsequent years with lower labor categories while ensuring the customer will still receive high quality support.