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Epm demonstration projerct online and project server 2013
This document outlines an EPM demonstration by Pcubed. It introduces Pcubed and their long-term Microsoft partnership. It then discusses the key functional areas of Project Server and Project Online like portfolio selection, resource management, scheduling, collaboration, and reporting. The document concludes with an overview of Pcubed's implementation approach and support services.
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Epm demonstration projerct online and project server 2013
- 1.
- 2. 2 Agenda 1.Introduction To Pcubed 2. Pcubed’s Microsoft Partnership 3. Introducing Project Server and Project Online 4. EPM and DeliveryHub - Value 5. EPM Functional Areas 6. Options? 7. Implementation Approach 8. Key Takeaways
- 3. Pcubed Overview -Who we are 3 Detroit Chicago London Cologne Paris New York Washington, DC Seattle San Francisco Denver Sydney Toronto Hong Kong Singapore Hands-on practitioners with industry insight who focus on successfully executing business transformation initiatives and complex projects. 350 professionals worldwide, comprised of industry executives and project management professionals plus a pool of more than 500 specialists and selected strategic partners More than 5000 successful engagements delivered to time, scope and budget with total value of $40 billion for well known clients – including 100 of the Fortune 500 Focus on 5 key areas of business transformation execution and thought leadership in project and programme management across 5 industries
- 4. Pcubed industry experiencewith references Financial Services Manufacturing/ Automotive Telco & Hi-Tech Energy Public Sector Strategy Execution Cost & Complexity Reduction Innovation & Product Development Separation & Integration Change Enabled by Technology 4
- 5. Pcubed’s Microsoft Partnership 5 • Long Term (11 years+) strategic Partnership with MS • Implementation partner • Process engineering, Configuration, technical build, training, • Strategic Advisor (Product Advisory Group) • Application Developer – Enhancements – DeliveryHub (reporting tool) resource management enhancements Gold Partner for 11 plus years 3 x finalist in innovation In the past 5 years More than 1000 implementations Ten’s of thousands of users Largest implementation 7,000 plus users Multi sector covering all of our industry sectors Our Role Our Track Record
- 6. 6 Introducing ProjectServer and Project Online PPM Functional Areas
- 7. 7 Unified Projectand Portfolio Management Executives Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience Managers Project Managers Team Members Key benefits of Project Online / Project Server 2013 and Delivery Hub Single server with end to end PPM capabilities Flexible project capture and initiation Enhance governance through workflow Enhanced resource analysis Powerful portfolio selection analytics Common streamlined user interface
- 8. 8 EPM andDeliveryHub - Value EPM and DeliveryHub - Features EPM and DeliveryHub – Inputs Regular, Automate d Highlight Drill Down Pcubed DeliveryHub Aggregate Exception Gateway Support “Best Practice” “What-if” Analysis Reporting from Consolidated Data Process Complianc e and Gateway Trends and Forecasts Project and Program Lifecycle Process Management Support SharePoin t Pcubed DeliveryHub Project Server 2010 Microsoft Excel Financials e.g. Oracle, HR e.g. SAP PeopleSof t Microsoft EPM Applications Project Server 213 Project Online Other e.g. DOORS Line of Business Applications
- 9. 9 Demand Management Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience
- 10. 10 Portfolio Selectionand Analytics- Select the right Projects Portfolio Prioritisation and Optimisation
- 11. 11 Maximize resourceutilisation through capacity planning New Capacity Planning Module
- 12. 12 Resource Management • Central enterprise resource pool • View real time demand and capacity of resource across all projects • View all work assigned to a resource(s) Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience Collaborate with facts, not feelings
- 13. 13 Schedule Management Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience Project Planning – Core Functionality • Breakdown current programme plan into separate key work streams • Enhanced planning interface • Project and Task level KPIs • Timeline view • Format text of different task types • Highlight impact of change • Manage cross-project dependencies • All plans held centrally in Project Server. • Planning • Templates • Tasks • Milestones • Dependencies • Resource assignment (generic & names) • Delegation • Financial Reporting • Timesheeting • Management • Interface • Approval • Delegation
- 14. 14 Financial Management Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience
- 15. 15 Time andTask Management Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience • Allow for Timephased (per-day) collection of actual work values • Non-work or “Administrative” time capture • Approvals process separate from project status • Close tasks for updates Control over default views
- 16. 16 Team Collaboration– Project Sites • Collaborative area for project teams to view and share project information • Embedded Lifecycle and Gateway management • Gateway compliance checklist • Manage other project information such as RAID, status updates and documentation • Review cross-project dependencies. Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience Workspace Collaboration – Core Functionality • Project Site • Libraries and Lists • Project Documents, Status Comments, Gateway Reviews, Governance, Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Decisions, Actions, etc.. • Site Columns • Content Types • Permissions • Interface • Integration with the schedule
- 17. 17 Programme Management • Online high level view of all projects • Drill into project details • Access via browser, MS Project is not required to view project information online. • Control what people can see and do through security model • Notifications of tasks due/overdue • Provide online updates on your assigned tasks • Project Managers can review and accept/reject updates Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience
- 18. Pcubed Mobile application SP List Data Dashboards 18 DeliveryHub Project Data Reports Trends Portfolio data Security 3rd Party data Connected Work stream Management Pcubed’s Microsoft Partnership – Product Architecture
- 19. 19 Business Intelligenceand Reporting • Single source of the truth • Real time reports at the click of a button • High level programme dashboards • Work stream/project status reports. Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience
- 20. Business Intelligence andReporting
- 21. 21 Implementation Approach Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience
- 22. 22 Pcubed EPMsupport Provides PPM Helpdesk for clients (09:00 – 17:30, normal working days) with client able to raise tickets raised by email or phone Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience Covers Microsoft PPM, Pcubed software and any Pcubed bespoke applications Tickets raised tracked through central solution (used globally in all 3 regions) and then tracked with automated emails to client Pre-purchased “Pcubed Hours” are used to pay for support. The hours can be used for any work resolving any ticket, regardless of skills e.g. developer, PPM functional expert, report builder, architect. Hours decreased as work continues and tracked against purchase. Hours can be increased by the client at any time Controls can be added e.g. Pcubed can use 2 days of effort on any ticket, with further authorisation required for additional work Some clients use these hours to deliver small enhancements – flexible, reduces effort in Purchase Order Management
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- 24. About Me 24 Managing Consultant at Pcubed – 4 years of Project and Project Server experience Microsoft Specialist: Managing Project and Portfolios with Project Server Microsoft Specialist: Managing Projects with Microsoft Project 2013 Microsoft Sales and Technical Specialist: Collaboration and Content Management Information junkie, Tech fanboy, eReader addict, Podcast fanatic, father and impartial Idealist. Occasional blogger at http://strategicsolutionscorner.blogspot.co.uk/
Editor's Notes
- #4 We have 22 offices globally throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia Recently merged with MI-GSO, the leading European project management consultancy, Team: Over 15 EPM experts based in the UK with access to a further 30 Globally
- #5 Global Blue Chip client base ~ 50% of the Fortune 500 Delivered some of the largest and highest profile EPM implementations in the UK(500+): BP, Nationwide, Harman International, Messier South East Trust, Transport for London
- #6 Microsoft Gold Partner– EPM partner for 12 years delivering some of the largest EPM solutions globally. Gold in Portfolio and Projects and Silver in Collaboration. Delivered c. 1000 EPM solutions~ across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
- #7 Microsoft uses the term Project Portfolio Management (PPM) to refer to a group of components that includes Microsoft Project Professional, Project Server and Project Web App. It is also used for Project Online combined with Project Pro which is its Office 365 cloud offering . Both of these offerings are integrated into SharePoint Server 2013, delivering a common collaboration and information platform available to everyone involved in a project. This combination provides a proven, centralized solution for successful, enterprise-wide project and portfolio management. It offers a flexible, end-to-end PPM platform, used by organizations across a broad variety of industries to automate primary PPM processes as can be seen on the slide, most of which we will be touching on today time permitting. Intuitively capture all requests within a central repository and manage them using governance workflow – Demand Management Objectively prioritize, optimize, and select project portfolios that best align with your organization’s business strategy – Portfolio Selection and Analytics Proactively and reactively manage resources throughout the project lifecycle – Resource Management Easily create and communicate simple and complex project schedules – Schedule Management Control and measure project and portfolio financial performance – Financial Management Simplify the collection of time and task status updates from team members–Time and Task Management Better connect disparate teams to share information and drive collaboration– Team Collaboration Identify, mitigate, and communicate issues and risks that could adversely affect project success –Issues and Risk Management Effectively measure project performance and gain visibility and control across all portfolios –Business Intelligence and Reporting Initiate, plan, and deliver strategic programs –Program Management
- #8 The project and portfolio management functions in the solution help companies align vision and effort to prioritize initiatives, select optimal project portfolios, and ultimately deliver on their business strategy. It can be used for all phases of a project, from gathering project ideas and requirements, to project planning to execution and management. The PPM Solution is made up of the following products from both the Project family and Pcubed: Microsoft Project Server: which is the flexible, on-premises solution for (PPM) and everyday work. It allows team members, project participants, and business decision makers to collaborate on and prioritize project portfolio investments from virtually anywhere. It also helps organizations align resources and investments with business priorities as well as gain control across all types of work, and visualize performance using powerful dashboards. Project Online: is the flexible online solution counterpart to Project Server. It offers a unified experience with other Microsoft cloud services such as SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online while minimising infrastructure costs. Microsoft Project Professional: Project Professional delivers powerful, visually enhanced ways to simplify planning, collaboration, and resource management so managers can successfully tackle all types of projects. Connecting Project Professional with Project Server ensures that organizations can realize the added business benefits of unified PPM. Delivered as a subscription through Office 365, Project Pro is the Cloud delivered version of Project Professional. Pcubed DeliveryHub which supports both Project Server and Project Online and integrates all of the vital information about your projects and programs from multiple sources into a single database and provides reporting from that consolidated data. Resource Management Module - It uses a simple but powerful workflow steps to guide and record the dialogue between the Project Manager & the Resource Manager.
- #9 It allows you to produce tailored reports that give appropriate detail to various levels of management and staff, all drawn from a single source so that there's no disputing which data is correct. With DeliveryHub, you can develop trends and forecasts, monitor compliance, and oversee project mileposts. Drill down into data groups and exceptions to see what's behind the numbers, and set the system to automatically highlight the most important project trends. DeliveryHub can be configured for all levels of users, with built-in best practice templates that can be applied as-is or quickly adapted to your organisation
- #10 Demand management offers a unified view of all work in a central location, helping you quickly gain visibility into projects and operational activities, standardize and streamline data collection, enhance decision-making, and subject initiatives to the appropriate governance controls throughout their life cycles. Project Centre View The Solution offers flexible, project initiation capabilities to provide visibility across all portfolios by capturing and managing in-flight projects in a central repository called Project Center view. It is your one-stop source for information about projects. You can see summary information about multiple projects and review detailed information about specific projects. Demo The main capabilities that comprise the project initiation platform are project sites, project plans; Project Detail Pages (PDPs), governance workflows and Enterprise Project Types (EPTs). To appreciate the flexibility of the platform, it is important to understand how these capabilities work together: PDPs are configurable online forms used to collect or display project information such as descriptive data, cost estimates, strategic impact assessments, and so on. PDPs are made up of Enterprise Custom Fields (ECF), which help establish consistency across projects by ensuring that fields and associated lookup tables are utilized in the same manner for all projects, tasks, resources, and assignments. ECFs consist of system-mandatory and customer-defined fields, offering maximum flexibility in data acquisition and management. Demo Governance Workflows subject each project template to the appropriate controls throughout its life cycle and determine which PDP you see displayed at each stage in the life cycle. Project governance capabilities help PMOs quickly define and automate multiple workflows to manage different types of projects throughout project lifecycles. A Project workflow consists primarily of a set of sequential stages that represent the main steps within a project’s life cycle. Demo Project Sites: SharePoint team sites that provide teams with a collaborative workspace that contain project-related artifacts and helps teams communicate, share information, better manage the project pipeline. Demo Project Plan: PMOs can use project plan templates to package best practices and reduce the time it takes to build complex project schedules. Demo EPTs are project templates that represent various types of projects and non-project work within the portfolio. Demo
- #11 Best-practice portfolio selection techniques provide a handshake between value optimization—that is, alignment with business priorities and maximizing ROI—and resource utilization, meaning the understanding of resource capabilities and availability. Together, these techniques help PMOs recommend not only which projects to undertake, but to forecast their delivery. The Solution supports a logical rather than subjective approach to portfolio selection and provides a structured process for measuring the alignment of spending with strategy, by maximizing resource utilization. Business driver definition and prioritization Using the Driver Library in Project, PMOs can capture and communicate business drivers defined by the executive team. With the Business Driver form PMOs can easily publish drivers. The form captures the following metadata: Driver name and description: By capturing a name and description for each business driver, your analysts can better communicate the intent of each driver and reduce ambiguity. Departments: Because the solution is flexible, your organization can have a single set of business drivers to implement throughout the organization but you also have the the freedom to associate specific sets of drivers with multiple departments. Project impact statements: Ultimately, organizations use business drivers to assess the strategic contribution of each competing initiative by deriving a strategic value score. You can use the values Extreme, Strong, Moderate, Low, or None to indicate the impact that competing requests have on one or more business drivers. PMOs can use project impact statements to ensure the objectivity of this assessment and to communicate clearly the threshold of each impact rating. Project includes a pair wise comparison technique for comparing the importance of and prioritizing the business drivers. Using the input from the pair wise comparison assessment, Project derives a relative priority score for business drivers. The next steps are to prioritize competing requests and to select the optimal portfolio of projects under varying cost and resource constraints. Using the Portfolio Analysis wizard, analysts simply move through the analysis steps by clicking the Next button or by selecting a sequential step on the Ribbon interface. After defining New Portfolio Analysis properties, you need to prioritize projects based on their impact on business drivers. On the Ribbon, click the Prioritize Projects button to display the Project Strategic Impact matrix This heat map shows how competing projects (in rows) support business drivers (in columns) defined by the executive team. The matrix comes pre populated with the values—for example, Extreme, Strong, Moderate, Low, or None—captured in the Strategic Impact Assessment form. The primary purpose of the matrix is to derive a priority score for competing requests. When you click the Review Priorities button, Project automatically derives a normalized priority score for competing projects). The score measures the strategic value that each project will deliver based on its contribution to prioritized business drivers. The strategic value score provides a common currency for comparing different types of projects. Another important way to interpret this score is that completing all projects in the portfolio would deliver 100 percent of the strategic value of the portfolio. The importance of this perspective will become evident in the following section. Portfolio Optimization and Cost Constraint Analysis We now move forward in the portfolio selection wizard to the Cost Constraint Analysis view. When configuring a new portfolio analysis, the analyst must specify a primary cost constraint for the scenario. The Cost Constraint Analysis view displays competing project requests in priority order (based on their strategic value), and indicates the total cost estimate to complete all projects in the portfolio. Project automatically creates a baseline scenario that shows the organization can gain 100 percent of the portfolio value if it funds every project in the wish list. Plotted on the Efficient Frontier chart this baseline scenario becomes the benchmark to compare all subsequent scenarios The Efficient Frontier chart helps analysts identify the project portfolio that will deliver the maximum value under various constraint thresholds. The Efficient Frontier chart includes value criteria on the y-axis—for example, strategic value—and cost on the x-axis. Each point on the Efficient Frontier line represents a different bundle of projects from the proposed portfolio. The Efficient Frontier line represents the highest ROI. Organizations can use the Efficient Frontier chart in one of two ways: 1. Identify the point of diminishing return: Find the point where the curve begins to flatten, which indicates that you are paying more to achieve a disproportionately lower amount of strategic value. 2. Benchmark the selected portfolio against the Efficient Frontier: Compare the position of the selected portfolio in relation to the line that represents the Efficient Frontier. Next, the analyst enters a cost constraint and clicks the Recalculate button. Project recommends the optimal project portfolio. The sophisticated Project optimization algorithm maximizes the value gained from the portfolio under the indicated cost constraint, and considers inter-project dependencies. The recommended portfolio of projects is viewable in the Selected Projects group while excluded initiatives are viewable in the Unselected Projects groups . The analyst can immediately see how much value the selected portfolio will deliver and visually assess the scenario against the Efficient Frontier. Using Project ‘what-if’ analysis capabilities, analysts can easily model different scenarios by further refining cost constraints or by forcing projects in or out of the portfolio. The Force In and Force Out options help ensure that analysts can override the algorithm and specify projects that should be automatically included in or excluded from the portfolio. Project requests are often “forced into” a portfolio if they represent compliance initiatives or are projects sponsored by a specific executive who wants to see them completed (“pet” projects). Force In and Force Out options have been enhanced in Project so that analysts can select a descriptive value to more effectively communicate why a project is being included in or excluded from the project portfolio. Analysts can save cost constraint analyses to provide an auditable record of all portfolio scenarios. When needed, they can access the saved scenarios in the Compare Portfolio Selection Scenarios view. This intuitive view displays all saved scenarios side by side, so it easy to compare and contrast, to see which projects were included or excluded, and to review key metrics—for example, the number of projects selected, the overall portfolio value, and the cost constraint applied. Analysts can save cost constraint analyses to provide an auditable record of all portfolio scenarios. When needed, they can access the saved scenarios in the Compare Portfolio Selection Scenarios view. This intuitive view displays all saved scenarios side by side, so it easy to compare and contrast, to see which projects were included or excluded, and to review key metrics—for example, the number of projects selected, the overall portfolio value, and the cost constraint applied.
- #12 Maximize Resource Utilization with Capacity Planning Project includes a capacity-planning feature for conducting resource constraint analysis that works in conjunction with cost constraint analysis to connect value optimization with resource utilization. The powerful resource-centric analysis helps PMOs identify the organization’s surplus and deficits at the skill level. This helps the organization schedule projects to better utilize available resources and to model headcount scenarios to ensure the organization can effectively staff, execute, and realize value from the selected portfolio. The analyst moves forward in the portfolio selection wizard by clicking the Analyze Resources button. The projects selected in the Cost Constraint Analysis automatically carry forward to the next step in the portfolio selection analysis. The intuitive view displays the projects in priority order and uses a Gantt chart to show a visual depiction of their proposed start dates. Based on available resources, the system dynamically determines which projects can be fully staffed, displaying them in a grouping of selected projects. Projects that cannot be fully staffed (because of a resource shortfall) move to a Not selected section of the project list. To avoid front-loading the schedule in the first half of the year, analysts can use the Requirement Details view to compare supply and demand data and better visualize the resource contours across the planning horizon . The Requirements Details view is broken into two sections: the top section shows generic resource availability by skill for the selected planning horizon; the bottom section displays resource requirements (at the skill level) for each project included in the analysis. The view automatically includes the resource requirements entered during the business-case development phase. The projects then fall into two viewable categories, selected and not selected to denote whether they can be fully staffed based on resource availability and estimated cost. Analysts can simply compare the resource requirements for the projects not selected with the overall resource availability to see why initiatives cannot be fully staffed. If you select the Highlight Deficit check box in the right corner of the Resource Availability pane, the view shows time periods for which there are not enough resources to complete all of the proposed projects. This feature helps analysts assess resource availability over the entire planning period to identify quickly resource overutilization and underutilization. By understanding the resource availability contours, analysts can easily move projects around on the planning horizon. First, specify a new start date in the Gantt Chart view for unselected projects (see Figure 33) and then click the Recalculate button on the Analysis tab. Project automatically moves the projects and then determines if they can be fully staffed based on their new start dates. If they can, the projects will appear in the group of selected projects. The system maintains scheduling and business dependencies. Moving projects within the schedule helps analysts maximize resource utilization across the organization. As in the cost constraint analysis, analysts can override the algorithm and force projects in and out of the analysis. This is especially useful to ensure that you can resource lower-value compliance projects ahead of higher-value discretionary projects. After identifying an optimal release schedule for the project portfolio based on resource availability, analysts can run head count scenarios to staff the remaining unselected projects. Simply enter a full-time equivalent (FTE) value or a monetary value—for example, two people or $200,000—in the Metrics pane and then click the Recalculate button to run the scenario.
- #13 The Solution provides a powerful set of capabilities to help analysts and project managers maximize resource utilization and manage capacity across a project’s life cycle. The Resource Center view consolidates all resources in a central repository called the Enterprise Resource Pool which helps PMOs and resource managers standardize the collection of supporting metadata that they can use to analyse the resource pool. Creating an inventory of resources, clearly defining and separating working hours from non-working hours, such as holidays and sick leave, helps analysts determine the organization’s overall capacity. Using the Resource Assignment and Resource Availability views, they can locate available resources to work on their projects. The PPM Solution provides a variety of tools—for example, resource plans and project plans—to help organizations capture resource requirements early in the project life cycle. The project plan, as in the Gantt chart, defines the low level task and their resource assignments, the Resource Plan is managed at the project level and leverages the Enterprise Resource Pool. The Pcubed Resource Management Module extends this capability and is, of course, fully integrated with both Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft SharePoint. It uses a simple but powerful workflow steps to guide and record the dialogue between the Project Manager & the Resource Manager. Its security features enable you to control who requests and who provides resources. It can be configured to automatically add agreed resources to the Microsoft Project plan, to add data to the Resource Plan, and to include customer specific data to the Project Manager / Resource Manager request, e.g., location, ability to travel, or foreign languages spoken. It can be customised to align with an organisations business process by adding additional layers of Request approval & allows you to enforce Request FTE’s in hourly, daily or monthly denominations. Demo In this next step I will demonstrate how a project manager creates a resource request. I have determined that a resource is required to work on my initiative & I am confident the initiative already exists in the system, I now wish to raise a request against a project. I log into PWA I click on the initiative I wish to request a resource for. If I am not already on the Resource Request page I can select the Resource Requests link on the left hand navigation pane. I then select new New I select the Generic Resource Role I want to assign to my project & insert any comments I deem relevant in the Comments field. In this instance I also have the ability to choose and Deliverables I feel are required for the request at hand. This is an optionally configured field & can be set up with any values and title that align to the business need. In this screen I can now request a resource with a granularity set in days/weeks/months allowing a choice over how precise the PM wishes to be with the units between the request date range. The effort for my request can be directly inputted into the boxes that reflect the selected days/weeks/month units, or by using the ‘FTE’ (Full time equivalent) controls which allow the quick addition of hours relating to any calendars you have set up in Project Server. I then select the relevant date rage and clicks Apply . The PM then clicks Submit to commit the selected effort. If this has been successful, the screen will refresh and show the request form in ‘locked’ form. The locked page should now show the request with a status of ‘proposed’, as well as showing a version number, specified generic resource role and the automatically generated request ID. From this screen you can either click Exit to be returned to the main request list home page, or alternatively a new option, Modify can be selected to make changes to this request. The System records the anticipated resource days and resource role required against the initiative & presents the requester with a summary of all Requests made against that initiative. The User selects Close to exit the Initiative. Resource Allocation In this next step I will demonstrate how a Resource Manager allocated a resource to a booking. Once a PM has submitted a request it will be available for a Resource Manager to match and allocate resources against it. To do this I need to perform the following steps: I log into PWA selects RM Resource Requests. In this instance the Resource Manager accesses the RMM web part from a non-project context specific page. In this screen I am presented with an overview of all proposed, confirmed or rejected Resource Requests within my Area of responsibility I select the Req ID hyperlink of the request I wish to allocate a resource to. I am then presented with the Request form screen. As you can see the request is shown with the requested effort displayed in a series of time phased entry boxes for the request date range. At the top of the page I am presented with several customisable fields that the business can configure as required to capture additional information about the request and dialogue between the Project Manager & Resource Manager. The area I am interested in is the Time Phased Work. From this screen I have a number of options, which can be accessed by clicking one of the buttons from the toolbar at the top of the request form. Matching Resources – Will find all named resources (real people) that match the generic role selected for this request. Search Resources – Will search for any resource for the given search, this does not restrict results by role. I then use the system to check availability of resources within team by selecting Matching Resources. Project Server is queried to find all the named resources matching this role and the result is returned, which is displayed under the original request time-phased hours. In the event no resources match this role I can assign a TBA or Search for a specific Resource by selecting Search Resources. Matched resources are displayed with their capacity across the request date range. This reflects their total available time, minus any commitments they have across other requests in this system. A positive value reflects available capacity for that period. A negative value reflects over allocation of time for that period. The following actions are available for each resource (see key below) Allocate/Un-Allocate resource Resources are allocated to, or removed from a request by using this button. Allocating a resource will move them from the ‘Available Resources’ section of resource search/matched results, to the allocation area (above). Resource information toggle Clicking this icon will display extended information about the selected resource, clicking the icon a second time will hide the extended information. View other allocations Toggles any other allocations this resource may have against other requests. Other requests are shown directly below, showing time phased hours across this request range, in addition to the assignment status of that resource (see below). Assignment status Allows a PM and RM the ability to communicate the purpose of an allocated resource once it has been allocated to a request. Once a resource has been assigned to a request by a PM and allocated back to a PM (through being changed to ‘fulfilled’), the PM can then optionally reject allocated individual resources, before the request is then committed or rejected. This allows an RM to quickly re-allocate resources to an (optionally) rejected request, with a clear indication of any specifically rejected resources. Once I identify a suitable Resource, as a Resource Provider I can allocate a resource (or multiple resources) to this request by using the Allocate request button (icon with green ‘+’). Once a resource is allocated to a request, their allocation to this request across the request time range can then be adjusted. For convenience, a resource’s hours will be automatically allocated according to the original demand in the request, but I can modify this myself I can Adjust the user(s) hours by making changes to the time phased entry boxes. Over allocating a resource’s available hours will result in the text of that particular period turning red. The current allocation status shows as a numeric value under the original request demand. A negative number reflects an under allocation in relation to the original requested demand. A zeroed number represents an item where the demand has been met by the allocation, and no more allocations need to be made. An item with a ‘+’ indicator represents an OVER allocation of resource capacity against the original demand. After making any allocations, you can continue by using one of the options from the web part toolbar. Fulfil – The request will be automatically saved, and moved to ‘Fulfilled’ status. This will pass over control of the request to the PM users, who can then pick up this request and optionally commit or reject this request. Save – Saves any allocations that have been made, or changes to the current allocations from a previously saved request. Exit – Exits this screen and returns you to the request list home page, without saving. Reject Request – Changes the status of this request to ‘Rejected’. I can use this option if I don’t believe a request is valid. This will then be visible to PM’s who then have the opportunity to access the request, change it and re-submit, by use of the ‘Modify’ menu option which will then be available to them. In this instance I will choose to ‘Fulfil’ to submit this request for approval & the system will save the request to the Server. I can now select the Exit button to exit the request . Resource Allocation Once a request has been committed, the change request process becomes available to both the PM and RM users who can modify a committed request and raise a change request. In this instance I will demonstrate it as a Resource Manager. Logged in as an RM, I access the RMM web part from the appropriate page used to manage RMM requests, RM Resource Requests. I locate a committed request, and click the title to access the request form for that request. I now have two options available to me from the main web part toolbar. Raise CR – Begins the change request process, changing the status of the request to RM Change Request. Exit – Leaves this page, and returns you to the main request list home page. I click the ‘Raise CR’ button to begin the change request process. The screen will be refreshed and the following options are now available from the main toolbar. Matching Resources – Matches resources available, in the usual manner, based on the generic resource role selection of the original request. Search Resources – Searches across all resources in the usual manner, based on the resource name matching the given search string. Fulfil – Saves the request, with any changes to allocations and field values, and passes the request back to the PM in order to commit/reject the allocations in the normal manner. Save – Saves any progress made (field values, resource allocations). Exit – Exits the request form screen, without saving changes. Cancel – Cancels this RM Change Request, and returns the status of the request back to ‘Committed’ status. I can now add new resources by either using the ‘Matching Resources’ or ‘Search Resources’ buttons. After I have added resource, I can adjust the allocated capacity of newly added resources, or to resources previously allocated. From this point on, the standard RMM process applies, with the ability to fulfil a request in the normal manner, ready to be picked up by the PM user(s) to Commit/Reject. I can now click ‘Fulfil’ to save and submit the request. The change request workflow process is now the same as the regular workflow. The Resource Management Module has an additional configuration options which allows for an extended workflow that requires a Request a Project Manager to approve or reject the Resource Managers allocation. Mixing I and PM. Think it should all be I Can also load from the data in a Microsoft Project plan Need a section on Approving the Request from the Project Manager perspective. Only needs to be short but we do need to show the cycle Resource Management Module
- #14 Microsoft Project 2013 provides project planners with all the standard options for schedule, resource and cost planning. With the consistent use of the central resource pool on the Project Server, they always have visibility into resource availability and workloads across all projects. Managers can easily generate a Timeline view that gives high-level view of the major activities in the schedule. Managers can copy this view into other Office applications such as Outlook and PowerPoint to share with stakeholders. PMOs can use project plan templates to package best practices and reduce the time it takes to build complex project schedules. Project plan templates provide a best-practice blueprint for a type of project. The templates include all summary tasks, granular-level activities, and generic resource assignments to provide a quick-start framework that the project manager can easily adapt to their specific needs. In addition to monitoring the relationships between tasks within a project, project managers need to assess the impact of inter-project dependencies that could affect their initiative. Project ensures that project managers can quickly link dependent tasks between projects or publish key deliverables. Managers can publish deliverables to the collaborative project site so that other project managers can be aware of key dates and establish a soft dependency in their own plans. If deliverable dates change, Project notifies affected project managers the next time they open their project. A new feature in these versions is that predefined and user-defined reports can be created and viewed directly in Microsoft Project. The PPM solution also allows users to create and work on projects in the browser-based Web App. This is made easier by the fact that the complete computation logic from the Client version is now available in Project Web App. While the Microsoft Project 2013 Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 client is exclusively used by people involved in detailed project planning and management processes, all other participants and decision-makers only work with the browser-based Project Web App. The advantage of solely using the Web App is that license costs are significantly lower. Project participants can use Project Web App to access an overview of all the projects they have been assigned to, view their work packages, and fill in their timesheets. Managers can access the Project Web App anytime to see current reports as well as analyses of the project portfolio. The centralized resource pool gives them a clear overview of the workload of resources that have been assigned to several different projects
- #15 Project Online and Project Server offer a flexible business case infrastructure that helps standardize the collection of cost and benefit data for each request. PMOs simply add custom fields to an online business case form—a Project Detail Page, or PDP to capture multi-year cost and benefit values. After capturing the data, analysts can build formulas to derive metrics—ROI, Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and so on—to better understand and communicate a project’s financial value. The Microsoft PPM Solution delivers flexible and extensible financial management capabilities throughout a project’s entire life cycle. PMOs can use custom fields to standardize the collection of cost data. Executives can use best-in-class portfolio selection analytics with decision-support tools to effectively allocate funds and optimize the portfolio to align with business strategy. In addition, Project offers a comprehensive API to help ensure that your organization can effectively integrate with financial systems, LOB applications, and industry standards such as OData for data mining, business intelligence, consolidating data, and driving project accounting reports. Organizations can also utilize partner add-in products such PcubedDeliveryHub or RMM. The PPM Solutions governance workflow controls a project throughout its lifecycle, and plays a key role in supporting budget review and approval cycles. It helps organizations manage and effectively track financial data using the following: Budget Resources helps project managers record the approved project budget at the project-summary level, providing a baseline for comparing and proactively managing actual costs against expenses. Cost Resources help managers capture non-work costs associated with a project (i.e. equipment, materials, travel, training, contractor costs, and so on). Multiple billing rates can apply to each resource. Companies can use this technique to calculate the cost of the resource based on the amount of work. In addition, resources can be tied to cost centers.
- #16 With Project Online and Project Server, intuitive Timesheet and Tasks views help ensure that team members provide task status information on project, non-project, and nonworking time . In addition, simplified time reporting processes help reduce training requirements. Team members can receive and view their assignments through the web-based Tasks view, through an e-mail notification, or as Outlook tasks grouped by project. Another added benefit for Project is that you can work within familiar applications such as Outlook and SharePoint without having to shuffle back and forth between Project (and the other applications). After consolidating their assignments in an effective view, team members can choose to update an assignment through the Tasks view or directly in Outlook. Single Entry Mode Enhances Time and Task Reporting The Single Entry Mode in Project Online and Project Server consolidates task progress and time reporting data, helping simplify timesheet submissions, capture and update time and information used for operations, analysis, and control, and unify task status updates. Timesheets support a fixed calendar period, organized with project tasks listed at the top, and administrative items below so users can navigate to relevant time entry lines. Organizations can establish predefined administrative working and non-working time categories for meetings, vacation, sick leave, holidays, and other administrative categories. Many organizations have different control and oversight requirements for timesheets and task status updates. To help PMOs select the level of review and control they want, Project Online and Project Server offer configurable approval workflows. A dedicated Approval Center simplifies the review of timesheet, task updates, and administrative time request approvals . Utilizing the same intuitive interface as the Timesheet and Tasks views, The Approval Center offers options to group, sort, and filter tasks, helping you streamline approval activities.
- #17 Project Online and Project Server take advantage of SharePoint team sites to provide teams with a The social capabilities of SharePoint work with your project site or “my site,” to facilitate discussions and facilitate information sharing so yocollaborative workspace—a project site—that contains project-related artifacts and helps teams communicate, share information, better manage your project pipeline and more effectively measure your team's ideas throughout the project lifecycle. With each project, you can utilize a project site template in SharePoint that includes documents, tasks and calendars specifically geared towards working on simple projects. u can get projects and everyday work done. With Project, administrators can define custom project site templates and associate them with an enterprise project type (EPT) (see the Demand Management section). An IT project might require a different project site template than a business project. With this flexibility, PMOs can standardize project site templates across the organization by embedding and reusing best-practice document templates and techniques to improve project delivery and team collaboration. Project sites are highly configurable and can include preconfigured Web parts—for example, Team Calendar, Project Schedule, or Issues and Risk—and custom Web parts to better disseminate project information. PMOs can establish enterprise standards by easily publishing best-practice document templates and artifacts to the libraries to enhance efficiency, productivity, and governance. You can link project documents to the corresponding task in the project schedule. You can also make decisions using the latest information because team members have a central location for finding the information they need, when they need it. Built-in version control helps manage the document revision process, ensuring quick access to the most recent copy of all documents, while maintaining earlier iterations for reference. Flexible document workflow capabilities help minimize the typical e-mail routing and review cycles that most project teams experience today and provide a clear history of approvals and reviews on every major deliverable.
- #18 Each project within a program has its own set of goals that when combined together with each other deliver the forecasted benefits of the overall program. The Microsoft PPM Solution provides your organization with tools to effectively initiate, plan, and manage large programs and their underlying projects to a successful conclusion. The enhanced demand management capabilities and powerful portfolio selection techniques of Project Online and Project Server help ensure that PMOs can centralize the collection of program requests, standardize metadata collected in program-level business cases, and run what-if analyses to help executives finalize funding decisions under various budgetary constraints. The enhanced collaboration capabilities of Project help teams communicate more effectively through program level workspaces, better manage documents throughout their life cycle, and easily escalate issues and risks to program stakeholders. Project Online and Project Server provide powerful scheduling, resource management, team collaboration, and reporting capabilities for planning, managing, and tracking initiatives at the project and program levels. After finalizing funding and selection decisions at the program level, managers can easily break down the program into its underlying projects. Project managers can use Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 to construct detailed schedules and identify the project team for each of the underlying initiatives within a program.
- #19 The connection between DeliveryHub, Project Online and Project Server with SharePoint provides organizations with all the tools and services they need to automate their PPM processes. It also provides additional benefits for small teams that run lightweight projects. Occasional project managers can use SharePoint task lists to manage simple projects and tasks, without calling on the full rigor of Project. However, a SharePoint task list can easily be imported into Project at any time if the team requires additional capabilities, or the manager can continue to execute the project in SharePoint and sync status updates (with Project) to facilitate enterprise resource management and reporting. Office 365 utilizes best practices and adds unique innovations to give users the power to mix and match the right set of tools to meet business needs. Project Online brings SharePoint Online capabilities with it, and the experience only gets better when licenses are added for Lync Online communication, Exchange Online email services, and streaming Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to personal computers virtually anywhere. Visio Pro for Office 365 is also available as a subscription, enabling integration of business process modelling, zero-code workflow design for demand management, data-connected dashboards, and traditional diagramming.
- #20 One of the great challenges organizations face is how to collect, categorize, understand, and make decisions about project data. Conventional reporting offers tools and methods to collect, aggregate, display, and communicate data. Business Intelligence (BI) takes that concept to the next level by providing visibility and helping organizations with decision support for proactive work management. BI is a rapidly evolving discipline. Its effectiveness depends on an organization’s ability to pull together accurate information in real time that is standardized and tailored to the needs of the audience. By standardizing the collection of data and performance metrics in a central repository, PMOs can more easily facilitate enterprise reporting. Project Online and Project Server include a variety of online views, such as Project Center, Resource Center, and Portfolio Analysis, in addition to powerful BI and reporting services to help organizations gain insight, visibility, and control across all project portfolios. Because Project is built on SharePoint, users can take advantage of almost all of the tools included in the Microsoft BI platform, such as Excel Services, Visio Services, Power Pivot for Excel, and more. On-premises versions of Project can also take advantage of Performance Point Services (PPS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).The flexible Microsoft BI solution provides nontechnical resources with familiar tools to easily create reports and configure powerful dashboards, while providing technical resources with more sophisticated capabilities to create complex views.
- #21 The difference in Project Online vs. Project Server 2013 On-Premises? To be honest, answering this question goes a long way to answering the question of what the difference is between Project Online and Project Server, period. The main difference is business intelligence. Project Server stores everything in a set of tables within a SQL database. Hence, any reporting tool that can access SQL (which is pretty much all of them) can access and report on Project Server data. Project Online doesn’t allow direct access to SQL data, as the database instance is a shared environment, and thus, users could theoretically impact other tenants if they had direct access. For Online, the preferred reporting is OData, which is an RSS-like data feed. Open an OData compliant reporting tool (like Excel 2013), point it at the feed URL, and you have the data As many clients still prefer to report against SQL, Microsoft has recently released (via Cumulative Update) an SSIS upgrade that will allow organizations to set up timed reporting jobs to import OData feeds into an on-premises SQL database – thus allowing the use/migration of existing reports that look for SQL data.
- #22 Pcubed’s standard approach is based on best practice in solution deployment and the experience we have gained from conducting over 1,000 deployments of Microsoft Enterprise project management systems. The diagram below illustrates the high-level process usually adopted. At the end of each step Pcubed discusses with the client the progress of the solution deployment project and reviews requirements going forward. We propose this phased approach for a deployment n order to allow control of financial commitment, which will focus on working with you extensively in the first two stages.
- #23 There are 2 software elements of the solution which will require support. At the core of the solution are Microsoft products - Project Server and SharePoint. These will be formally supported by any contract the HSE have with Microsoft via their VAR / LAR re-seller. This also allows for an optional software assurance contract which allows for new versions and access to Microsoft support. Failure of Microsoft components will be supported through this standard Microsoft channel. In addition, Pcubed provide a support helpdesk for their components - DeliveryHub and Pcubed Resource Management Module and also offer optional maintenance and support contracts. The maintenance contract provides bug fixes and new versions of the Pcubed software. The support contract provides access to experienced Microsoft EPM consultants / technicians who are able to provide support for issue resolution, configuration issues / changes, process support or training.
- #24 We are not going to pretend that being successful with Project Server is primarily about gathering requirements, installing and configuring the software, and training people. It isn't the cart before the horse. You can't build an EPM system and think people will come. It isn't just about the enterprise project management software. I would even suggest that if the software basically works the way it is promised to on the box, it merely plays a minor role in a successful enterprise project management (EPM) implementation. Success with MS Project Server is more a function of how you are going to manage the performance of people using the system than it has anything to do with the software. It also depends how much you invest in change management. There are no short cuts you can take to a successful EPM or MS Project Server deployment.