- Review and Incorporate Organizational Factors and Processes
- Authorize the Project
- Develop a Project Plan
- Lessons Learned
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Develop a Project Plan
After your project has been authorized, you can move forward with a detailed plan. Although it is impossible to determine all the requirements of an EPM solution in the initial phases, the team will nevertheless try to gather as much information as possible from all stakeholders and develop a requirements document that constitutes the starting point for developing the EPM solution in terms of data, functionality, and access. A staged rollout of the solution in terms of system capabilities and numbers of departments or people involved is highly recommended. Successful deployments often start with a proof-of-concept and pilot phase so that process and configuration decisions can be made in a test environment without a time impact on the majority of the organization. Following are some of the topics that have to be considered when developing your full EPM implementation plan.
Training
Training is often underestimated in an EPM deployment. There is a considerable difference in working on project schedules on a local file system versus Project Server 2007. Even the most experienced users of Microsoft Project must be trained on operating in an enterprise environment.
Training has to include the organization’s specific project management processes—from the fundamental question of what constitutes a project to specific workflow and timing of required actions. Furthermore, organizations must plan on recurring training and training to support new users of the system.
Training should be customized for each user role in the system. This is important to focus the user group on its requirements and role in creating a successful EPM implementation.
Architecture
Performance and availability of the system influence acceptance by the end users. A poorly architected infrastructure can have irreversible consequences. This does not mean that you have to purchase the most expensive equipment but rather build your infrastructure to support the user base. The highly scalable EPM solution provides flexibility in initial design and post-implementation options to expand scale.
Business requirements should drive the architecture designed to support the operational use. Build in a scalable infrastructure; set up the Project Server 2007 front-end web server in a network load balanced configuration. This allows you to easily expand the server farm if and when doing so is required. Dispersing the Project Server 2007 services also provides greater scale and performance.
An organization with a geographically dispersed resource base should consider a distributed application server. This can dramatically improve performance of Project Professional 2007 connections to the server. Maintainability and support of the application are also efficient.
Establish Standards
Establishing enterprise standards is typically an objective for all organizations. This is usually easier to talk about than to implement. Standards can be created for scheduling, reporting, training, custom fields, and views. The standards created in an EPM configuration should support the overall goals of the organization. Consider the effort to collect and maintain custom fields created as part of the enterprise data standards. The benefits should justify the collection and maintenance effort required. Each required data element should support an objective.
Standards are not isolated to the Project Server 2007 configuration, but must also be created for project scheduling processes. Project schedule templates, task modeling, resource assignments, local resources, tracking procedures, and other interactions with the system should be fully documented.
Incremental Deployment
Understanding the Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 features, processes, and techniques to achieve the organizational goals is critical to a successful project. Organizations differ in their project management methodologies, available project management skill sets, types of projects executed, and EPM solution implementation objectives. Project Server 2007 is designed to be flexible enough to support the project management needs of virtually any organization. The key to deploying an EPM solution is a thorough understanding of the goals and the solution components required to achieve the goals.
Meeting specific objectives should be staged in the deployment schedule. Project management maturity should be achieved at one level before proceeding to the next maturity level. A roadmap with incremental achievements should be developed to move the organization from its current project management maturity to the desired maturity. This will not happen overnight, and expectations should be measured.
Moving from a standalone project management methodology to an enterprise environment can take months. Listing and prioritizing the objectives you are trying to achieve will assist in building a realistic implementation schedule.
Conduct a Pilot Deployment
Conducting a pilot deployment is essential to validate the Project Server configuration, performance, and internal processes, and to get the end users involved. The pilot should contain a representative sample of actual project activities. The team should be small enough to manage and exercise the system to collect feedback on processes and configuration.
The configuration and processes should be baselined prior to commencing the pilot. A post-pilot review should be conducted to review issues and take action as necessary. Expect changes to the configuration and project management processes used and implement these changes prior to a production rollout.
Integrate with Business Systems
The EPM solution can easily integrate with currently used business systems. This can be a critical area to explore. To achieve the efficiencies expected from the EPM solution, duplicated processes must be removed or integrated into a single contiguous process. Data sharing is an essential efficiency you can achieve by keying in data only once. This applies to adding users to the corporate network and automatically synchronizing Project Server users through the Active Directory integration built in to the EPM solution. Time recording is another area that should be investigated for integration. Project Server is not a payroll system; however, common elements could be shared to present the user with one timesheet interface and pass data to the appropriate system. Project accounting systems, human resources systems, document management systems, and other line of business applications can be integrated with significant operational efficiencies.
Integrate with Business Processes
Project Server 2007 has enormous flexibility in its configuration, which can help tailor the system to your business environment. Although there are boundaries in the functionality of Project Server 2007, the tool should not drive the processes. Some areas might require business process changes, but the tool is very flexible. So, typically, the efficiency of current project management business processes can be improved with the EPM solution. Be conscious of the amount of change you are introducing and phase in the changes.
Communicating the Implementation Strategy
Communication plays a major role in the life of any organization. When an organization decides to deploy an EPM solution, it is important that the project implementation team develop a responsibility assignment matrix and a communication plan that will be reviewed periodically for accuracy. Communication is of the utmost importance in every stage of an EPM implementation. Employees and stakeholders interpret the mere acts of communicating and listening as a form of respect, and those actions alone cause a great deal of value through a shift toward more positive attitudes. The project implementation team must understand that deployment of an EPM solution also involves a strong cultural shift toward a more disciplined organization.
After the EPM implementation project is approved, it is important to establish the project management team and to assign the roles and responsibilities for each team member. Together with the project plan, these roles must be communicated to all stakeholders. Project management team members are responsible for ensuring proper communication with the other team members and the rest of the organization, within the appropriate limits dictated by the project implementation communication plan. The following list is an example of roles and responsibilities when communicating the implementation strategy:
- The project sponsor has the ultimate responsibility for the success of the project and fulfills the role of primary liaison with the leadership of the organization.
- The project manager has the responsibility for daily management of the project, ensuring that all interested parties stay informed at all times, and that appropriate actions are being taken as planned or in response to an unplanned event.
- The project team members are responsible for checking regularly with project managers to ensure that all tasks and issues are resolved in time.
- A communication specialist advises the project team on methods and ways of communicating within the project team and with the rest of the organization. Usually, a member of the Human Resources department fulfills this role.
Communication of the EPM implementation progress must be done regularly in a structured manner. It is important to understand that only one individual must communicate the progress to the organization. This ensures that everybody receives the same coherent and coordinated message. Having two or more people communicate the progress of the project or its strategy might lead to confusion and ultimately can significantly delay the implementation schedule. A good communication strategy is part of ensuring a successful EPM implementation and must not be overlooked when planning the deployment.