Consulting Overview

Why pay for consulting services? Consultants are an important part of good corporate governance of any organization because they can provide an objective point of view and offer expertise that is difficult to retain in-house. QSM consultants have specialized expertise in project, program and portfolio management of software intensive systems. This expertise is valuable not only to the CIO organization but to the entire enterprise, as many difficult management problems are at least in part caused by IT projects that do not meet the needs of stakeholders and/or were delivered late and over budget.

Why hire QSM? QSM has unique differentiators that will enable us to help you solve your problem faster, better and cheaper than in-house staff or competing consulting firms.

• World’s Largest Benchmark Database. The QSM historical database is a cornerstone asset that we utilize in all our consulting service engagements. It is the largest, most complete and validated set of historically completed software projects in the world. QSM has invested over 100 man years of effort collecting, validating and analyzing this data. We started in 1978 and currently have assembled over 10,000 validated projects and are adding hundreds of projects every year.
• 33 Years Experience. QSM has 30 years of experience working with numerous clients on hundreds of consulting engagements. Our experience spans many application domains (e.g. IT, engineering, real-time), industry sectors (finance, telecom, medical, aerospace, defense, etc.), technologies and methods (object-oriented, COTS/ERP, RAD, iterative, agile etc.) and geographic locations across the globe.
• Seasoned Professionals. QSM consultants are published authors, conference speakers and/or hold certifications such as certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Six Sigma Black Belt (SSBB), Certified Software Measurement Specialist (CSMS) and Certified Function Point Specialist (CFPS). Our decades of experience allow us to understand your business challenges quickly and identify an effective solution.
• Industry Leading Tools. QSM consultants begin each engagement equipped with the SLIM^® tool suite - proven project estimation, project tracking, and performance benchmarking tools and methods. QSM has invested over 108 man years of research and development in these tools which enable us to deliver your solutions quickly and cost effectively.

To read more about our services, you can visit any of our primary service offerings, listed below.

• Acquisition and Program Management - We have Project Management Institute (PMI) certified Project Management Professionals (PMP) who can assist you with every step of the project management process to include initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing.  We use SLIM-Estimate^® for initiating and planning, SLIM-Control^® for monitoring and controlling and SLIM-Metrics^® for closing.  We can also help manage multiple projects at the program and portfolio level using SLIM-MasterPlan^®.
• High Performance Benchmark Service - We use our SLIM-Metrics^® tool to compare your projects with similar projects in our benchmark database.  We also provide process improvement recommendations to help you improve productivity and other core metrics.
• Independent Bid Assessment / Alternatives Analysis - We use our SLIM-Estimate^® tool to perform an independent estimate and compare various solution alternatives based on your business and technical requirements.
• Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) - An extension of our project health check service, we perform a detailed, independent review of the project throughout the lifecycle.  This includes inspections of planning, requirements and design documents, source code inspections, and independent testing and reliability modeling.
• Project Health Check and Forecasting - We use our SLIM-Control^® tool to compare planned vs. actual metrics and run a forecast to complete.  We can often provide an early warning that a project is at risk of meeting its cost, schedule and/or quality goals and provide recommended corrective action.
• SLIM API Programming - Our SLIM^® tool license includes some basic API support, but we are occasionally asked by clients to assist in building more complex interfaces to other systems such as requirements, defect tracking and timekeeping systems.