Rhodes Consulting Services, Inc. (Rhodes Consulting) provides project management and information technology architecture services primarily for large projects. Our services have been provided for multiple customers in ten states and have included projects in areas of information technology, engineering development, implementation of non-technical state government programs, and organizational restructuring.

Our focus is primarily on providing services for

• project planning and scheduling
• project management
• business process development
• I/T architecture consultation
• user acceptance testing
• organization restructuring facilitation including downsizing and expansion planning

Rhodes Consulting has significant project management and planning experience with the software development lifecycle as well as in the maintenance and enhancement of large applications. We also have extensive experience planning, managing and implementing large and small non-technical projects in the public sector environment.

Project Planning Services 

Our priority is to, first and foremost, protect our customers because your success is our success.

It is our belief, based on years of experience watching other projects fail, that a successfully executed project of any size or complexity requires extensive, detailed planning based on real-world experience, expert knowledge, and sound project management principles.

Rhodes Consulting has developed a unique and proven methodology to clearly define and describe a project's scope, schedule and resource requirements which will assist the project teams through all phases of the project from inception to implementation. Our services typically encompass the entire development lifecycle of a project and we use Critical Path Methodology (CPM) as well as resource management processes to enhance our project planning activities.

The project management tool most commonly for project planning is Microsoft Project. Our plans typically have 2500 - 8500 tasks spread across 10 - 15 project teams and it is not unheard of for us to have as many as 55 teams and associated tasks included in the integrated master plan.

To accomplish this level of detailed planning for large projects Rhodes Consulting has customized MS Project extensively to facilitate developing the integrated project plan efficiently.  This customization enables us to provide comprehensive and summary reports of project status for all levels from team members to executive sponsors.

A few of the benefits you should expect when using Rhodes Consulting for your project planning needs are:

• Project scope is more accurately defined leading to better estimates for time and resource allocation.
• Because the plan is a actively used on a daily or weekly basis, there is a higher probability that problems will be found early and corrective actions can be developed before the project is negatively impacted.
• Team members benefit from our mentoring and communication that results from actively working the plan.
• Project Managers are better equipped to make fact-based decisions as a result of working closely with Rhodes Consulting project planners.
• Executive sponsors can have confidence that the project is well defined, planned and communicated as a result of our detailed project planning activities.

Project Management Services

Rhodes Consulting also provides project management services which includes the project planning activities as described above, as well as developing and managing the project's communication plan to ensure all parties are informed with the right information at the right time; developing a risk management and corrective action plan to catch potential problems before they become real; developing and managing an issue management process to track, assign and communicate issues that must be addressed in order for the project to be completed successfully; and developing and managing an implementation plan that will lead the project to it's targeted completion.

Our services can be consultative in which we work with an existing project manager to assist and mentor sound project management principles, or we can be directly responsible for project management activities if there is no existing project manager.

In either case, we work hard to mentor the project team to develop and use good project management principles.  This ultimately will enhance and strengthen the project staff's ability to bring the project to a successful completion and will give them tools to manage future projects successfully.

Our project management services have been used by public and private sector organizations and include a high-profile project to assist a state agency massively and rapidly overhaul their social services system to prepare for Welfare Reform and meet the state's social service objectives required by a federal court . 

Process Development Services

Because our consultants work so closely with the project teams, they gain valuable knowledge of the projects's tasks and activities.  As the project progresses, tasks are updated and tracked and, as a result, our consultants have a first-hand view of how well teams are achieving their tasks. This allows us to detect, define, and implement project management processes that can help the project teams become more successful and meet the task deadlines more consistently.

The principles we use to help define these processes are described in the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and from the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) that was developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).  These principles are industry standard and widely accepted as sound project management and software engineering principles.  

I/T Architecture Services

A well defined system architecture is imperative on large projects and Rhodes Consulting has successfully provided this service by providing oversight to projects involving multiple vendors and being our client's advocate to ensure the application and system architecture meet requirements.  Our consultants are also experienced in defining system architecture requirements to prepare for system development and/or migration.

We have provided this service on many types of projects such as development and rollout of mainframe and client server applications, ERP systems, web enabled systems, and data centers relocation. Several of these projects were state government and involved very large systems. Our engineering projects include mechanical, electrical, and manufacturing of computer equipment.