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Using innovative technology and data analytics to consistently deliver successful project assurance
The Firewood Assurance Service Tool (FAST) allows you to design and implement your assurance framework and conduct assurance reviews consistently using industry best practice that is tailored to your needs
“9.9% of every dollar is wasted due to poor project performance-
that’s $99 million for every $1 billion invested”
Project Management Institute, 2018
FAST gives you insights into how your people, your teams and your organisation are performing
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How does FAST work?We maintain a library of best practice frameworks - industry best practice assurance approaches - which you can choose from and combine to create your own templates - tailored assurance approaches just for you - and include them for your personal use. For our Enterprise and Partner customers, we can also digitise your own assurance approaches and include them as frameworks in FAST. You can then use your templates to conduct reviews of projects, programmes and orher initiatives entirely online, capturing your observations and findings from document reviews and interviews. You can turn your findings into actions, assigning them to owners and tracking their status in real time. The data you capture is analysed and used to create a report entirely on-line with no more need for spreadsheets or notebooks, giving you insight into individual initiative performance and the performance of your portfolios.
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How can I access FAST?You can access FAST from any web-browser on any device. If you cannot access FAST from your work device, ask your IT department to whitelist our site: https://fast.firewoodtools.com, or contact us. We also offer single sign on (SSO) integration for our Enterprise and Partner customers.
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What's in it for me?FAST for individuals Confidence that your project or programme is following your organisation’s approach Highlighting performance issues that you or your team need to address Tracking actions put in place to help improve performance Demonstrating that your project or programme performance is improving over time Understanding how your project or programme is performing relative to those of your peers Having everything in one place in real time with no more papers to read meaning you can use your time more efficiently by focusing on what really matters FAST for teams What’s in it for individuals plus…. Tailoring project and programme reviews using recognised best practice and your organisation’s assurance approaches Understanding how the projects and programmes in your portfolio are performing right now and how performance is improving over time Showing you where I need to prioritise interventions to give you “more bangs for the buck” when projects and programmes underperform Visible corrective actions in real time to show you that you're making progress towards addressing performance issues Highlighting systemic trends in project or programme management disciplines that need to be improved and helping you decide on what to do first Being able to check what you want, when you want to and where you want to FAST for the enterprise What’s in it for teams plus…. Giving you confidence that your organisation’s projects and programmes are on track to deliver their outputs, outcomes and benefits so that you can sleep at night Understanding which of your portfolios are performing better or worse than the others, finding out why and deciding what to do about it Having data at your fingertips when you need to call a project or programme manager or answer a question from your customers Understanding how your organisation performs relative to other organisations Integration with your business information systems, PPM tools, repository and calendars Helping you target how you develop your project and programme managers Access to additional support from Firewood’s recognised subject matter experts to help you improve your project, programme and portfolio management capability
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Is FAST only for project, programme and portfolio management reviews?"No, FAST can be used to assure any initiative that is important to you. This can include a review of a new product development or an internal business process improvement initiative. FAST has built-in best practice frameworks on product development, quality assurance and many more that are relevant to many types of initiatives and business-as-usual activities.
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Can I use FAST for all types of projects and initiatives?Yes. You can use FAST for your projects, programmes, portfolios and more. Regardless of your industry, methodology, initiative size or complexity – FAST gives you insights, helps you improve performance and helps you sucessfully deliver outputs, outcomes and benefits.
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Which best practice frameworks does FAST have built-in?We have over 25 internationally recognised best practice frameworks that we have truly digitised so that you can easily select, customise and use to your liking – again and again. These include frameworks, guides and checklists related to project management, Agile development, construction, product management, lean Six-Sigma and many more. Collectively, these frameworks provide you with hundreds of measures that you can choose from to apply to your reviews. And we are always adding more frameworks – which means you always have access to the latest best practice with FAST.
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Can I use my own personal or company approach to conduct reviews?Yes, We can work with our Enterprise and Partner customers to create their own frameworks in FAST, along with custom scoring mechanisms if required. Contact us to arrange a demonstration of our Team, Enterprise or Partner solution.
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Can I use a combination of best practice frameworks to review a variety of different initiatives in my portfolio?Yes, Team, Enterprise and Partner customers can select multiple best practice frameworks and use any combination of these to create one or many review templates tailored to their specific needs.
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Does FAST have integrations with other project management tools, ERP systems and BI applications?"Yes. For Enterprise and Partner customers, as part of onboarding we will set up an appropriate configuration for your enterprise systems and tools.
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Can FAST help me identify systemic issues and common themes?Yes, FAST is inherently robust and provides analytics in real-time. Issues and themes can be traced back to multiple sources of evidence. This means you can focus on areas that are most critical to you and prioritise remedial actions to increase delivery confidence.
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Where is my data stored?All your data is securely stored in the London Region data centres provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the global cloud infrastructure we use for FAST. Data security is very important to us, and to protect your data we have taken suitable security measures to prevent your data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. For example, FAST authentication uses BCrypt algorithm for secure password storage and the communication between the server and client is secured by leading protocols (https).
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How else can Firewood help me get the most out of FAST?To help you improve your project management capability, improve governance, risk and control, and maximise your investment in FAST, we offer a range of services, some of which are outlined here. We can help you improve your project, programme and portfolio management capability through our Assess and Improve services, help you improve governance, risk and control, through our Review and Recover Services, and maximise your investment in FAST.
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