Wrong confirmation ID

Email
Favorite
Favorited ×
Download
Embed
Private Content
Copy and paste this code into your blog or website Copy Customize… Close
We have emailed the verification/download link to "".
Login to your email and click the link to download the file directly.

To request the link at a different email address, update it here. Close
Validation messages. Success message. Fail message.

Check your bulk/spam folders if you can't find our mail.

Loading…

Flash Player 9 (or above) is needed to view presentations.
We have detected that you do not have it on your computer. To install it, go here.

+ Follow

Deploying MS Project 2007 and MS Project Server 2007

by John Lawlor on Jun 22, 2010

1,838 views

Presentation on Trinity College's experience of implementing Microsoft Project 2007 and Microsoft Project Server 2007

More…

Presentation on Trinity College's experience of implementing Microsoft Project 2007 and Microsoft Project Server 2007

Less

2 Embeds 40

http://johnlawlor.ie	39
http://feeds.feedburner.com	1

Statistics

Favorites: 1
Downloads: 0
Comments: 0
Embed Views: 40
Views on SlideShare: 1,798
Total Views: 1,838

John, I haven’t done anything on this as I am assuming you probably have something on the above already? If not let me know and I’ll do tomorrow
John, Let me know if you want more on this. From the research I’ve done there are other items and I’ve listed some of these below – please take your pick! Unrealistic deadlines Communication deficit Customers and end users not engaged during the project Resource competition Insufficient team skills Lack of commitment/teamworking Lack of project management skills Project not linked to organisational goals Project doesn’t include all stakeholder needs Lack of accountability Unclear responsibilities across the project Poor supplier integration/management Project governance Project sponsor unaware of their role in ensuring project success Geographic dispersal of project team
A review of project management was carried out in IS Services and completed in May 2009 - one statistic from the review is that less than 1/3 of projects were on schedule. Some of the issues raised by project managers in relation to projects: Resource competition Resources assigned to both support and project tasks Difficult to see who was available for project work Difficult to know who was responsible for project tasks and issues Risk management One statistic to come out of the review was that over 1/3 of project managers didn’t see risk management as relevant to their project. Change management There was confusion as to what was meant by change management. Other issues include: TCD culture Academic requirements which necessitate flexible approaches in solutions (corporate solution often not suitable) Many independent departments with their own budgets Initiation of projects No standard method of project initiation – request could come from anywhere with or without any information on request Sometimes a lot of initial work done by ISS on projects that didn’t go ahead Project reporting different ways of reporting across different groups some duplication of information/re-entry for reporting purposes
The statistic of less than one in three projects on schedule had to be addressed and gave impetus to finding a solution to this and some of the other related and contributory issues. John initiated the project – i.e. Enabling Project Management (EPM) with a small team. Purpose to produce methodology that would work for ISS and implement a PM tool.
The framework addressed a number of the issues raised and gave us a standard means of managing projects. John – do you want more detail on phases/sub-phases here? However in order to address items such as the visibility of projects, availability of resources for projects (as resources work on support and maintenance as well as projects), duplication of information, project reporting, and ownership and accountability for tasks and issues, a Project Management tool was needed to enable implementation of the framework.
Issues to be resolved by PM tool As referred to previously - visibility of projects, availability of resources for projects, duplication of information, project reporting, and ownership and accountability for tasks and issues in addition to standard requirements such as scheduling, assigning resources to tasks, etc. Why MS Project Gathered requirements from a small group of experienced ISS staff and a decision was taken to run a ‘proof of concept’ exercise using MS Project Enterprise as it offered a central store for projects and resources. Vast majority of the department use PCs, Windows, IE. Many of the project managers in the department already used MS Project or had some familiarity with it. We already had a SharePoint farm installed and were using Exchange and MS Outlook and hoped to benefit from this. Liked the collaboration possibilities offered by the project workspace. Product is mature and well supported and it is clear Microsoft are committed to its future development
Issues to be resolved by PM tool As referred to previously - visibility of projects, availability of resources for projects, duplication of information, project reporting, and ownership and accountability for tasks and issues in addition to standard requirements such as scheduling, assigning resources to tasks, etc. Why MS Project Gathered requirements from a small group of experienced ISS staff and a decision was taken to run a ‘proof of concept’ exercise using MS Project Enterprise as it offered a central store for projects and resources. Vast majority of the department use PCs, Windows, IE. Many of the project managers in the department already used MS Project or had some familiarity with it. We already had a SharePoint farm installed and were using Exchange and MS Outlook and hoped to benefit from this. Liked the collaboration possibilities offered by the project workspace. Product is mature and well supported and it is clear Microsoft are committed to its future development
Project 2007 Project 2007 available when we started the project so we went with this rather than waiting for 2010, with the intention to upgrade to 2010 sooner rather than later. It met most of our basic project scheduling requirements i.e. task dependencies, auto-scheduling, assignment of resources, etc. Project Server 2007 We needed Project Server 2007 as we had a requirement for central storage of projects and staff and also to enable collaboration among the project team. Most of our projects involve staff from across the various groups within IS Services - in order to see staff availability staff needed to be stored centrally with a means of recording their unavailability. We wanted the project team to be able to easily collaborate on the project – the workspace offers this. Team members can see their tasks, project issues, enter leave, etc. There was already some experience of using SharePoint within College and this was of benefit in creating workspace templates. We have also used the workflow feature to automate part of the project proposal process. Choosing a technology partner John, I’m assuming this refers to PM Centrix as obvious it’s Microsoft technology. They were involved with us with SharePoint – good experience – went with them for MS Project Server 2007 as this is based on SharePoint. They were also a MS partner. We needed independent external validation of our approach.
We asked the question How to use Project 2007? Project team attended training in MS Project 2007 and had the opportunity to discuss what would work best in IS Services, some of the decisions we made are, for example: - the decision to show the work column as standard with days rather than hours of work as the default. We’ve set up a standard project template with all tasks to be fixed work rather than fixed duration (apart from meetings, training, etc.) as we decided this gave us the best representation of how we work in ISS. We set up a workflow for project proposal from receipt of proposal to notification of decision whether project is to go ahead. We have set up a number of different types of user based on our departmental structure and an individual’s role – the 2 main user types are project managers and team members. Our team members are using PWA only to view tasks assigned, project issues, etc. Reporting We had a requirement to be able to group projects together under common attributes, e.g. department, strategic theme, etc. to report at a programme level. Also a requirement for a specific report on a project’s status to be run at fortnightly intervals by project managers. The ‘out-of-the-box’ reporting was inadequate to meet out requirements. We installed the Project Server reporting pack on Reporting Services – and customised it to meet our reporting needs. Technical Our live and test environments are set up on virtual servers. Our live environment consists of 3 virtual machines – all 64 bit. One virtual database server – SQL Server 2008 64bit RDBMS 2 nd virtual machine has 2 virtual servers web front end application server We will be monitoring performance on this – particularly if number of users or projects increases significantly; however based on current numbers we think we have quite a bit of capacity for growth 3rd virtual machine is set up with 2 reporting instances - SQL 2008 Reporting Services test live There was a not insignificant learning curve involved as we had to ramp up our technical knowledge and skill-sets to use Server 2008 R2 64bit, SQL Server 2008 64bit RDBMS and SQL 2008 Reporting Services. We have gone with 64 bit infrastructure for the 2007 product as we believe this will give us more options when it comes to upgrading to 2010. It seems a lot easier than going with 32 bit for 2007 and then moving to 64 bit for 2010. As far as we can tell at this point it means we shouldn’t lose the customisations we have made in case we need them…our fingers are crossed. ( We are glad we started small with 2007 and don’t have the complication of upgrading Portfolio Server 2007 – John , unsure how we should refer to this – as don’t know how troublesome it is and whether MS and/or PM Centrix want it highlighted.)
We asked the question How to use Project 2007? Project team attended training in MS Project 2007 and had the opportunity to discuss what would work best in IS Services, some of the decisions we made are, for example: - the decision to show the work column as standard with days rather than hours of work as the default. We’ve set up a standard project template with all tasks to be fixed work rather than fixed duration (apart from meetings, training, etc.) as we decided this gave us the best representation of how we work in ISS. We set up a workflow for project proposal from receipt of proposal to notification of decision whether project is to go ahead. We have set up a number of different types of user based on our departmental structure and an individual’s role – the 2 main user types are project managers and team members. Our team members are using PWA only to view tasks assigned, project issues, etc. Reporting We had a requirement to be able to group projects together under common attributes, e.g. department, strategic theme, etc. to report at a programme level. Also a requirement for a specific report on a project’s status to be run at fortnightly intervals by project managers. The ‘out-of-the-box’ reporting was inadequate to meet out requirements. We installed the Project Server reporting pack on Reporting Services – and customised it to meet our reporting needs. Technical Our live and test environments are set up on virtual servers. Our live environment consists of 3 virtual machines – all 64 bit. One virtual database server – SQL Server 2008 64bit RDBMS 2 nd virtual machine has 2 virtual servers web front end application server We will be monitoring performance on this – particularly if number of users or projects increases significantly; however based on current numbers we think we have quite a bit of capacity for growth 3rd virtual machine is set up with 2 reporting instances - SQL 2008 Reporting Services test live There was a not insignificant learning curve involved as we had to ramp up our technical knowledge and skill-sets to use Server 2008 R2 64bit, SQL Server 2008 64bit RDBMS and SQL 2008 Reporting Services. We have gone with 64 bit infrastructure for the 2007 product as we believe this will give us more options when it comes to upgrading to 2010. It seems a lot easier than going with 32 bit for 2007 and then moving to 64 bit for 2010. As far as we can tell at this point it means we shouldn’t lose the customisations we have made in case we need them…our fingers are crossed. ( We are glad we started small with 2007 and don’t have the complication of upgrading Portfolio Server 2007 – John , unsure how we should refer to this – as don’t know how troublesome it is and whether MS and/or PM Centrix want it highlighted.)
We asked the question How to use Project 2007? Project team attended training in MS Project 2007 and had the opportunity to discuss what would work best in IS Services, some of the decisions we made are, for example: - the decision to show the work column as standard with days rather than hours of work as the default. We’ve set up a standard project template with all tasks to be fixed work rather than fixed duration (apart from meetings, training, etc.) as we decided this gave us the best representation of how we work in ISS. We set up a workflow for project proposal from receipt of proposal to notification of decision whether project is to go ahead. We have set up a number of different types of user based on our departmental structure and an individual’s role – the 2 main user types are project managers and team members. Our team members are using PWA only to view tasks assigned, project issues, etc. Reporting We had a requirement to be able to group projects together under common attributes, e.g. department, strategic theme, etc. to report at a programme level. Also a requirement for a specific report on a project’s status to be run at fortnightly intervals by project managers. The ‘out-of-the-box’ reporting was inadequate to meet out requirements. We installed the Project Server reporting pack on Reporting Services – and customised it to meet our reporting needs. Technical Our live and test environments are set up on virtual servers. Our live environment consists of 3 virtual machines – all 64 bit. One virtual database server – SQL Server 2008 64bit RDBMS 2 nd virtual machine has 2 virtual servers web front end application server We will be monitoring performance on this – particularly if number of users or projects increases significantly; however based on current numbers we think we have quite a bit of capacity for growth 3rd virtual machine is set up with 2 reporting instances - SQL 2008 Reporting Services test live There was a not insignificant learning curve involved as we had to ramp up our technical knowledge and skill-sets to use Server 2008 R2 64bit, SQL Server 2008 64bit RDBMS and SQL 2008 Reporting Services. We have gone with 64 bit infrastructure for the 2007 product as we believe this will give us more options when it comes to upgrading to 2010. It seems a lot easier than going with 32 bit for 2007 and then moving to 64 bit for 2010. As far as we can tell at this point it means we shouldn’t lose the customisations we have made in case we need them…our fingers are crossed. ( We are glad we started small with 2007 and don’t have the complication of upgrading Portfolio Server 2007 – John , unsure how we should refer to this – as don’t know how troublesome it is and whether MS and/or PM Centrix want it highlighted.)
Information sessions As part of implementation it was decided that in addition to publishing the PM framework on SharePoint, four information sessions would be held to outline the framework to all ISS staff and offer the opportunity to ask questions and raise any issues in relation to the framework. An overview of PWA was also given at these sessions. MS Project training Three one-day sessions of MS Project training were held for project managers (approx. 40) in ISS. The training was based on the standard project template created by the project team and covered all the tasks necessary for initial implementation. Benefit of training and information sessions Gave staff the opportunity to ask questions and raise any issues in relation to the framework. The training had the additional benefit of giving the team the opportunity to fine tune the project schedule template based on feedback from the sessions. It also gave us feedback on some suggested Project Server processes which we then changed, e.g. auto approval of leave User Guides A number of guides were produced by the team e.g. project manager guide, PWA user, guide to handling project requests, guide to change management process, etc.
What we like about the product is: PWA interface is neat and easy Familiar desktop Using the desktop product with some extra features meant there was less of a learning curve for project managers already familiar with MS Project Central storage of resources Easy to see resource availability Easy to build a team One place for all projects Easy to see what projects are underway Easier to report on projects Easier to report on projects at program level Project team collaboration Defined location for project documents Access to project issues and risks And Level of access control offered by departmental structure, categories and templates Customisation was not difficult in most areas Integration with AD Import from AD saved having to manually create resources Auto windows authentication What we didn’t like – on the next slide
Reporting Looking forward to seeing what we can do with reporting in 2010 version, particularly re programme reporting based on different project attributes e.g. department, sponsor, strategic theme, etc. What if scenarios As we become more familiar with the product we hope to start using this 2010 feature to help us improve our short to medium term planning. We also hope to use this to see the impact of unforeseen high priority ‘must do’ projects on our programme of projects. Upgrade to 2010 Technically we think we have prepared for this by deploying on live 2007 on 64 bit architecture. In terms of configuration we have limited the amount of customisation carried out on 2007 to simplify the upgrade to 2010. We didn’t include Portfolio Server in our implementation as our understanding was that many of the features it offered would be included in Project Server 2010. To date we have set up a trial 2010 environment – early days yet so we can’t really give much feedback but so far so good.

1 Favorite

Kevin Chen 1 year ago

Deploying MS Project 2007 and MS Project Server 2007 — Presentation Transcript

Deploying Microsoft Project and Microsoft Project Server in Trinity College Dublin John Lawlor Trinity College Dublin Information Systems Services http://people.tcd.ie/lawlorjo http://johnlawlor.tel/ @johnjlawlor Tricia Patterson Enda Rooney Andrew Duffin
Topics For Today’s Discussion
- Introduction
- Project methodology
- Technology used
- Project implementation
- Product experience
- Next steps
- Summary
About TCD IS Services
- Central services provider of computing facilities and support to students and staff on the main campus and in 18 off-campus locations
- About 70 staff
- Support about 25,000 users
- Over 10,000 fixed network connections
- Extensive wireless network with over 650 wireless access points
- About 200 servers in main on-campus data centre
- Over 70% virtualised
IS Services Programme
- About 30 projects in progress
- Pipeline of at least 50 projects
- Pressure to do more with less
Project Methodology
- Traditional project challenges
Project Methodology
- TCD ISS project challenges
EPM Project
- Two aspects to the project
- Approach taken based on ISS structure/culture
- Workshops with cross-group representation
- An agreed project management framework from project proposal to project closure
Project Management Framework
Programme Management Office
Project Management Technology Issues to be resolved by PM tool - Visibility of projects - Prioritisation and scheduling the programme - Managing project timelines and delivery - Resource management and availability - Resource assignment - Duplication of information - Ownership and accountability for tasks, issues, etc - Project reporting
Project Management Technology
- Why MS Project?
Project Management Technology
- Project 2007
- Project Server 2007
Choosing a Technology Partner
- Building on relationship with Microsoft and its partners
- Microsoft Certified Partner
- Worked with PM Centrix on previous SharePoint project
- Standard of work and deliverables were good
- One of the few companies we knew who had experience of implementing MS Project Enterprise
- Took time to understand what we were trying to do and brought experience of project management as well as of the technology
- Independent external advice, support and validation on our approach and implementation
Project Implementation
- Project team attended Project 2007 training
- Standard project templates
- Different project types/classification
- Clarified how the software would be implemented (what features to use, what not to use)
- SharePoint workflow for project proposal from receipt to decision notification
Project Implementation
- Reporting
Technical Implementation
- Live and test on virtual servers
- Steep learning curve to come to grips with the SQL Server technologies
- Chose 64-bit implementation in the hope that this will make the upgrade to 2010 easier
- Hope we will retain our customisations on upgrade!
Project Implementation Approach
- Information sessions to outline the process and framework and give an overview of PWA
- MS Project training
- User guides
Product Experience
- We liked
- We didn’t like
Next Steps
- Reporting
- What if scenarios
- Upgrade to 2010
Summary
- Overall a positive, but challenging experience
- Strong buy-in from staff and very positive contributions to workshops, training, information sessions
- Standard project templates, documents, standards, processes will be very beneficial and help us to improve
- Only starting to use the tools now, so our early experience will be very important
- Hope to see standard reporting continue to develop and to become more automated
- Effects on programme delivery and resource utilisation will be key to success
- Eventually roll out College-wide if demand is there

Deploying MS Project 2007 and MS Project Server 2007

by John Lawlor on Jun 22, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

2 Embeds 40

Statistics

Deploying MS Project 2007 and MS Project Server 2007 — Presentation Transcript