Projects, consultancy and project management
A technology project is a set of dependencies with a date attached. Most of them fail on the dependencies, not on the technology.
Logic Networks runs defined pieces of work for organisations across London and the rest of the UK: office moves, migrations, system replacements, reviews and second opinions.
These are separate from any ongoing arrangement. You can use us for one project and nothing else, and many organisations do.
What you get is somebody holding the whole thing: the schedule, the suppliers, the order of the work and a weekly note to whoever is accountable.
The internet line is always the long lead item.
For any office move, it is ordered first and everything else is planned around it. Projects that treat it as a detail are the ones that open in a new building with no connection.
- One scope, one date, one person accountable
- Long lead items identified in the first week
- Suppliers chased by us, not by your team
- A written handover at the end, not a verbal one
What is included
Six kinds of project, and the first two are the most requested.
Each is quoted as a defined piece of work with a scope and a date rather than as an open ended arrangement.
Office moves and relocations
Open on Monday, working.
Everything technical about a move: the internet lines ordered early, the cabling and equipment in the new building, the systems moved and the cutover scheduled for a weekend.
We keep the old site available for a short overlap rather than surrendering it on the day. That costs a little and it is what turns a move into a non event.
Migrations
Moved, tested, and reversible until it is not needed.
Mail, files, servers and applications moved from where they are to where they should be, with a small group testing first and a written way back.
The plan is built backwards from the cutover hour, because that is the only part of a migration with a fixed time.
System selection and replacement
Choosing without being sold to.
Writing down what the organisation actually needs, comparing options against that rather than against a sales presentation, and then moving the data when a choice is made.
We have no reseller arrangement that would make one choice pay us more than another, and we will say plainly where a cheaper option would do.
Reviews and second opinions
An answer you can take to a board.
An independent look at a proposal, a contract, a design or a supplier’s recommendation, written for the person who has to approve it.
Organisations often use us for this while continuing with their existing provider. That is a legitimate use of us and we treat it as such.
Project management
Somebody chasing, so your team does not have to.
Where the work is being done by several suppliers, or by your own team alongside their day jobs, we run the schedule and the reporting.
Most of this job is noticing that something has not happened yet. It is unglamorous and it is the difference between a project that lands and one that drifts.
Getting a stalled project moving
Finishing what somebody else started.
Where a project has stopped, we establish what has actually been delivered, what remains and whether the original plan is still the right one.
Sometimes the honest answer is to finish a smaller version of it. We would rather say that than continue billing towards a scope nobody believes in.
How it works
Three arrangements, priced three different ways.
Which one applies depends on how well defined the work is. Where the scope is clear we quote a fixed price. Where it is not, we scope it first as a small piece of work.
Tell us what has to happen and by when, and we will say which applies and what the first step costs.
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A scoping exercise
A few days to establish what the project actually involves, with a plan and a price at the end. Deducted from the project if you proceed with us.
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A fixed price project
Defined scope, defined date, defined cost, with any change agreed in writing before it is done.
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Time based support
For work that cannot be scoped in advance, such as recovering a stalled project. Charged by the day, with a weekly note of what was used.
Who it is for
Project work is for organisations facing something with a date that their own team cannot absorb alongside the day job, which is most one off technology work.
It is also for anybody who needs an opinion that is not coming from the supplier who would be paid to deliver it.
- Businesses moving office or taking on another site
- Charities and non profits replacing a database or a case management system
- Education organisations with work that has to happen in the holidays
- Organisations merging, or separating from a parent
- Teams who have been given a proposal and want it checked
- Anybody whose project has stopped and needs an honest assessment
What we need from you
Three things, and the second one is usually the constraint.
Projects are rarely limited by our capacity. They are limited by access, by decisions and by your team’s available hours.
One person who can decide
Available for half an hour a week, able to settle a question between two departments. A project waiting on a committee moves at the speed of the committee.
The real date, and why it is the date
A lease, a term, a contract end or an audit. A date with a reason behind it is planned to. An arbitrary one gets padded by every supplier involved.
Access, and building access
Administrator access to the systems, and who lets us into the risers and cupboards. Installation dates are usually set by building access rather than by the work.
What we usually find when we scope a project
These are the items that change a plan, and finding them in the first week rather than the last is the whole value of scoping.
- A long lead item nobody had ordered, usually an internet line
- A licence that cannot be transferred and has to be rebought
- An application whose supplier has to be involved, and charges for it
- A dependency on one person who is on leave during the planned week
- A contract with a notice period that has already passed
- Data that has to be cleaned before it can be moved
- A building restriction on when work can be done
- Half finished work from a previous project still in place
Our steps for working together
Every project we run follows the same six stages, whether it is a week of work or three months.
- Scope it What is in, what is out, what it depends on and what the long lead items are. Written down and agreed before a price is given.
- Order the long lead items In the first week, not the last. Lines, hardware and supplier involvement all take longer than the work itself.
- Plan backwards from the date With the fixed points marked and your busy periods avoided.
- Prepare and test As much as possible done in advance, and tested with a small group where people are affected.
- Execute, with a way back Outside working hours where it affects people, with a written rollback that we have thought about rather than improvised.
- Hand over in writing What was done, what was changed, what is outstanding and what the passwords are. Plus a short period of cover afterwards.
How we set priorities
Anything with an external date comes first, because those cannot be moved. Then anything that would stop people working. Then the rest. Where two projects compete, we will tell you which one we think should wait rather than half doing both.
How we report while it is running
- A weekly note Short. What happened, what is next, what is at risk and what we need from you.
- Anything at risk is named early The week we notice it, not the week it becomes a problem.
- Changes in writing Anything outside the agreed scope is priced and approved before it is done.
- Suppliers chased by us Your team should not be spending their week on hold to somebody else’s supplier.
- One person you contact With a named deputy, so a question never waits for a single individual.
An office move, counted backwards from the date
This is the timetable we work to for a typical move. The numbers shift with the size of the organisation, but the order does not.
- Twelve weeks before Survey the new building. Order the internet lines. This is the only deadline that cannot be recovered if it is missed.
- Ten weeks before Agree the cabling plan and the cabinet position, and order any equipment with a long delivery.
- Eight weeks before Give notice on anything ending at the old building, and check the notice periods on supplier contracts.
- Six weeks before Cabling installed and tested in the new building, while it is still empty and easy to work in.
- Four weeks before Equipment configured, and the new lines tested rather than assumed to be working.
- Two weeks before Tell your staff what happens, what they carry themselves and what they will find on their desk.
- The weekend Move, cut over and test. Somebody on site on the first morning, in person.
- Two weeks after Old building kept available, then handed back once nothing has been needed from it.
The two mistakes that cost the most are ordering the line late and giving up the old building on the day of the move. Both are decisions rather than technical problems, which is why they belong in a plan somebody is holding.
What we will not do
We will not quote a fixed price for work we have not scoped, because that price is either padded or will be revised later, and both are unfair. We will not take a project whose date is not achievable without saying so first. And we will not recommend a system because there is a margin in it for us, because there is not one.
What good looks like
The date is met, or it was moved early and deliberately rather than late. Your team spent their own hours on their own jobs. Nothing was discovered in the final week that should have been found in the first. There is a written handover. And the outstanding items, if any, are on a list with owners rather than in somebody’s memory.
Related services
Projects usually deliver something that then has to be looked after. We will say at handover what that is, and you are free to have somebody else do it.
Where the project involves one of the areas below, the same team does that part.
- Networks and infrastructure for moves, cabling and lines
- Cloud and Azure for migrations off your own equipment
- Microsoft 365 for mail and file migrations
- Digital transformation where this is one stage of a larger plan
- Managed IT to run what the project leaves behind
Articles and news on projects and moves
Notes on scoping, office moves and the items that always run late, written from the projects themselves.
The first hour after a suspected email compromise
What to do, in order, when you think somebody has got into a mailbox. Written to be followed by whoever is in the office at the time.
Read the articleThe five security controls worth putting in place first
Security spending often starts at the wrong end. These five controls remove the largest share of everyday risk and cost the least.
Read the articleTurning on multi factor authentication without stopping work
The single change that prevents most account takeovers, and how to introduce it across a team of thirty people in a fortnight.
Read the articleTalk to us about your project
Tell us what has to happen and the date it has to happen by. We will scope it, tell you what the long lead items are and give you a price for a defined piece of work.
If you have a proposal from somebody else, we will review it.