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Track Record | Istria Management Team | Partners

Overview

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Istria was formed in 1985 with a goal to add rigour to project management in IT projects. This was borne out of an awareness that most projects failed, in some manner, to achieve the objectives defined in the early stages of project planning.

Istria has consistently supported the use of structured methods in projects, for example Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM), Yourdon and DSDM, for the definition of the requirement and PROMPT, PRINCE and PRINCE2 for project management. It was no surprise therefore that the management of risks in projects became a focus of Istria's attention, such that they developed a structured approach to risk management. This approach has become widely accepted and successfully implemented across a range of operations and projects in the utilities, the construction industry, the transport industry, the Ministry of Defence and central and local government.

Istria has developed the IRIS (Istria Risk and Issue Support) risk management software tool that empowers project managers to accurately and effectively manage risks to their operational activities, projects and strategic objectives. The method and software tool have been specifically designed and developed to be generic and equally applicable to organisations across all industry sectors.

Istria has also developed risk based security management and business continuity planning methods for which it also provides consultancy and training.

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Track Record

• Provided organisation-wide guidance, for a major rail operator, on risk management and introduced the IRIS (Istria Risk and Issue Support) software tool to manage project risks. Also successful in the development of Monte Carlo statistical analysis methods within the organisation to evaluate strategic and project risk exposure.
  
  
• Provided risk management consultancy to a five-nation consortium responsible for the acquisition of armaments for the participating countries' armed forces. Provided both strategic and project level risk management processes, developed risk management procedures and integrated these into the local project management procedures for a range of programmes.
  
  
• Provided consultancy to a military aircraft's management programme; successfully introduced the Istria risk management method and IRIS software into the Project Team. Provided risk management expertise to the project managers across a range of projects and programmes from radar and computer upgrades to mid-life fatigue programme and missile developments, and to members of the Management Board.
  
  
• Produced an approach for risk management based contingency planning and business continuity for a Government organisation, which was accepted as their corporate contingency planning method.
  
  
• Conducted a risk analysis on the testing viability for the mainframe systems’ interfaces that enabled the management team to correct shortfalls in the existing strategy.
  
  
• Developed project management techniques for the phases of an organisation's project, introducing pragmatic PRINCE, product based project management and MS Project to ensure effective delivery of products.
  
  
• Completed a risk analysis for the development and rollout phases of the project for a major transport organisation's Data Centre and audited their disaster recovery plans.
  
  
• Developed a Risk Management strategy for a Government organisation’s Y2K programme, which was successfully implemented across all the development and testing projects; this was accepted as the corporate method. Provided risk facilitation consultancy to the programme to ensure compliance with the standard and to assist project managers understand and develop their risk reduction plans.
  
  
• Developed and successfully presented a risk management training course to support an organisation's risk management method.
  
  
• Used IRIS, the risk management analysis tool, to calculate statistical values for risk exposure based on differing testing approaches enabling the Programme Director to support proposals for software testing. The programme also enabled the successful migration from DOS based legacy systems to an NT4 platform and MS Office applications.
  
  
• Provided consultancy to a major parcel carrier on their Data Centre rationalisation program migrating 16 countries from their local NT environment to a centralised UNIX environment. Successfully integrated the Istria risk and issue management method into the Quality System.

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Istria Management Team

Colin Wheeler, Chief Executive
Colin was a founding member of Istria in 1985, following 28 years in the Army. He has over 30 years of project management experience including 15 years at the forefront of all aspects of Risk Management including project, operational, business and strategic risk, and has driven forward the development of IRIS and the Istria risk management method.

Ian Wheeler, Operations Director
Ian joined Istria in April 2001 following 12 years of commissioned service in the Royal Air Force. He has experience consulting for high profile transport organisations, the military, the defence industry and the construction industry. Ian has also developed risk based security management and business continuity planning methods for which Istria provides consultancy and training.

David Allen, Development and Quality Manager
David joined Istria in 2002. He is an experienced and professional Quality Assurance consultant with a proven track record gained in both commercial and defence environments. He has extensive skills in the development and use of quality and risk management tools and techniques, and wide-ranging experience with all of the leading project management methodologies.

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Partners

Founded in 1984, Palisade Corporation has been the leader in the decision analysis software industry. Since the introduction of PRISM, the first Monte Carlo simulation package for the PC, Palisade has refined and expanded the software tools available to executives and academics in the area of risk and decision analysis.

Palisade's decision analysis software includes:

• DecisionTools® Suite: @RISK
• TopRank®
• PrecisionTree®
• BestFit®
• RISKview™
• The @RISK Developers Kit
• @RISKAccelerator
• @RISK for Project
• Evolver™
• RISKOptimizer®

These programs analyse risk, run Monte Carlo simulations, perform sensitivity analyses, create decision trees and influence diagrams, fit data to distributions, and solve optimisation problems. Palisade's ingenuity in software development is one of the driving forces behind the company's position at the forefront of the industry.
 

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