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When Sherston
Publishing Group first came to Asta Development in 2002 they
were a small but fast growing company experiencing a number
of growth pains that they wanted to address through new project
management systems
and processes. Andy Frances, Production Director of Sherston
said “these growth pains were heightened by Sherston’s
business culture which, at the time, was an organic process
heavily focused on creativity rather than a disciplined approach
to meeting deadlines, controlling costs and resource deployment.”
The
Background: Managing Growth
Five years ago Sherston took the decision to set up development
operations in India. At that time, Sherston had four UK based
developers producing five software titles a year. Now, thanks
to significant funding being released into the education sector
solely for the purchase of electronic curriculum content,
Sherston has increased its development team to 160 producing
over 40 media rich titles per year.
Andy Frances explains
“The extra funding has enabled Sherston to develop our
publishing plans in a much more diverse way in order to target
areas of the curriculum that are currently not supported by
the use of computers in the classroom.
We’ve therefore
expanded in both Sherston’s UK and Indian offices to
satisfy these demands. This created new challenges, in particular
effective use of remote staff, tracking progress and controlling
resource costs on a project-byproject
basis.” So how did Sherston cope with the effects of
managing staff and growth across two continents?
Asta
Teamplan and the management process
Asta Teamplan has enabled Sherston to overcome the problems
created through distance by maintaining a much tighter management
process through the use of Asta Teamplan. Developers in India
Asta complete online timesheets that are approved and then
incorporated back into the centrally held project database
in the UK. Because Asta Teamplan is a real-time system, this
allows project managers back in the UK to instantly
see the current status of any title in development and take
any necessary action. This has proved to be the most valuable
element of Asta Teamplan for Sherston as the knock-on effect
of this real-time information has positive benefits throughout
the organisation. For example co-ordinating the software development
schedule with the marketing launch of each new title. If the
development of the title slips then marketing can change its
release
schedule so that the two activities are aligned and no money
is wasted.
Asta
Teamplan and the bottom line
Michael McCullen,
Managing Director, Asta Development said “Asta Teamplan
has helped a small creatively lead software house re-focus
on deadlines, cost and management. Sherston has pro-actively
managed their planned and forecast growth rather and shown
that rapid growth can be managed more effectively with a structured
approach to project and resource planning underpinned by senior
management buyin
and commitment to change.”
In short Asta Teamplan
has helped Sherston address the following issues:
1. Publication date slippage
2. Complexities of managing remote staff.
3. Controlling project
costs and avoiding wastage
Sherston can now confidently predict the future with Asta
Teamplan. The company
has short-term plans for projects that are currently taking
place, medium term project plans that predict resourcing issues
and long term scenarios.
What
Sherston has achieved is:
- A widespread improvement in its business processes.
- Management and control of software titles in development
both in terms of
cost, time and processes.
- Proactive management of its staffing resource.
For Sherston, Asta
Teamplan is not simply a project management tool but a strategic
solution for managing the key business processes. Andy Frances
explains, “The net effect of implementing Asta Teamplan
is that we can deliver higher quality new products to market
more quickly and at lower cost through more effective resource
utilisation.”
The
future of Sherston and Asta Teamplan
Sherston is not
only using Asta Teamplan to help manage growth but to integrate
with the business strategy. For example one of the plans is
to use Asta Teamplan to control project finances more effectively
but, equally importantly given the size of their development
team, they want to refine the way they allocate resources
to projects to ensure the best person is allocated to each
job.
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