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Enterprise Project Management
Is it Right for Your Business? |
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Well that depends on a number of factors. First and foremost you must decide how badly you want the benefits that an Enterprise Project Management (EPM) tool delivers. Offset that desire against your willingness to adopt a major cultural shift in how your organization manages projects, and you are on the path to knowing if EPM is right for your organization.
First let's explore what an EPM tool can do for your business:
The number one issue our clients are typically grappling with which leads them to consider an EPM solution is how to better manage the utilization of project resources. Key benefits of EPM in this area include:
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Visibility in to what projects and tasks your people are working on.
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Visibility to the percentage of resource time allocated to "keeping the lights on" vs. projects of strategic importance.
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Ability to optimize resource allocation across assignments from a central resource pool.
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Ability for managers to optimize their team's utilization.
Another benefit of EPM's resource management function is tracking actual time against specific tasks and projects (Time Sheets). A project plan is an estimate whereas capturing actuals can result in:
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Improved future planning,
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Ability to allocate or recover cost more accurately
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Better understanding of resource efficiency and activity across projects
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More accurately determine hiring needs
EPM allows your business to view and manage multiple projects as a collective portfolio to ensure an appropriate amount of effort is spent on activities of strategic importance vs. maintaining current systems. Conversely you have the ability to go to one place to see what projects are underway and their status.
Web based access to project information and status means managers no longer have to chase down individuals or rely on after the fact monthly reports to understand the status of their important business initiatives. This visibility provides quick identification of at-risk and under performing projects using executive-level dashboard and scorecard reports to graphically display key business metrics.
Streamlining project management performance and strengthening team collaboration is another significant benefit; however achieving this benefit often requires a level of standardization that requires a major cultural shift. To use an enterprise system effectively you must adopt standards across all your projects. This will impact both project managers and project team members. When implemented successfully the business achieves improved efficiencies in project delivery by capturing and deploying best practices to continually improve processes.
Project managers create and manage projects by using common templates and processes. This standardization speeds the production of the project plan and leads to opportunities to automate reporting to deliver valuable data back to the business.
Because everyone is using a common platform project managers can be shared across the organization and even inserted in to a project already underway with minimal interruption. New project managers coming on board can be quickly brought up to speed.
The Business will benefit from EPM as project plans reflect increasingly more realistic schedules, resource requirements and budgets. Depending on your business, these standards may also aid compliance with government and regulatory requirements.
Project resources benefit through improved efficiency by having a consistent set of standards and expectations in the project tasks they undertake. For your good performers it is also their opportunity to show what they can and are doing.
The increase in prominence of virtual and shared teams has made communications through technology critical to success. EPM connects project managers, resource managers and team members by providing infrastructure that strengthens collaboration and accountability.
When a project plan is published, tasks are automatically distributed to project team members both via the web and via their e-mail accounts if desired. Gone are the days of project managers manually cutting and pasting tasks and e-mailing them to individuals one by one. Team members accept tasks, report progress on tasks and report their time against the tasks all via their web accounts, providing a very efficient distribution and feedback mechanism.
So what could possibly be wrong with this?
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THE TWELVE (ALMOST) SURE-FIRE SECRETS TO ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS |
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This article is reprinted with authorization from it's original author
Frederick J. Beste III, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds,
Venture capitalists are not known for their humility, so take note of the following confession:
Venture capitalists are chickens. Compared to entrepreneurs they're spectators in the great game of small business hardball. They would no sooner personally guarantee a corporate bank loan than they would jump off the cliffs of Acapulco. Contrary to popular opinion, however, they are not totally worthless - they work long hours, sift through more garbage than a trash collector, and have to get used to disappointing 99 entrepreneurs for every one they please. They are veteran roller coaster riders, but never get used to those big drops. They are, above all else, risk reducers - they prospect in the land of the commercially unfinanceable, and try to differentiate the superstars from the merely enthusiastic. Most of them are pretty good at it, a result of lessons learned, mistakes made, and successes observed.
Over the past 33 years as a venture capitalist, I've screened thousands of entrepreneurs who were certain of their future success. Most were literally kidding themselves. I've backed about 100 of them. I've sat on several dozen boards of directors, and been part of public offerings, mergers, bailouts and liquidations. My learning curve is still steep, but I do know what I'm looking for, and it's not magic and it's not luck. What it is is people with an extraordinarily rare set of characteristics, views and practices.
While there is a popular image of a successful entrepreneur as a supremely optimistic person who is inclined to high risk, little could be further from the truth. In the world of small business, optimism is truly cheap and high-risk takers die early deaths. What characteristics do then set the exceptional apart from the masses? In my opinion there are about a dozen of them.
Here, in no particular order, are the dozen entrepreneurial characteristics I seek.
1. They have a sound knowledge of their marketplace. The literal majority of entrepreneurs do no (or next to no) market research. Instead they try one of the following two approaches:
- "The market is there!" I guess that means "take our word for it." We won't.
- "We're part of the $220 billion electronics industry. If we get just 1/100% of it, we'll be a $22 million company." While the arithmetic is sound, this is so intellectually offensive that it leads to the immediate conclusion that the team's whole fabric is shallow and rhetorical. Scientific market research is almost never easy, but almost always possible. When I meet a team which has segmented the overall market to isolate their specific opportunity, when their claims are anchored to solid, third party observations, when I can taste the particular flavor of their objective, I know that they have a dead aim on their target.
Click here to discover the other 11 secrets of entrepreneurial success |
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ATTENTION !!!PROJECT SERVER
2003 USERS |
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This may be your last chance to participate in a valuable information exchange for your Project Server 2003 installation.
The focus will soon be shifting to 2007
Burnaby based KLR Consulting will deliver an encore performance of a very informative live Project Server 2003 ddemonstration. Our last event drew 29 leaders in the Technology and Project Management fields and received high acclaim.
In this presentation, KLR a Microsoft Partner for the Enterprise Project Management Solution and full service Project Management solutions provider, will demonstrate how Microsoft's EPM solution can transform your project management environment. We will discuss best practices, provide implementation tips, discuss common pitfalls to avoid. and field questions on configuration, custom views and other topics raised by the audience:
Thursday November 30, 2006
8:30 to 10:30
KLR's office 2129 - 4710 Kingsway Metrotower 1
Metrotown, Burnaby B.C. |
KLR at
ProjectWorld / Business Analyst World
Nov 7 - 10, 2006 : Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre
Mark your calendars!
Last year this event drew almost 500 participants, and we expect the same or better this year. This event is packed with informative sessions and an opportunity to share ideas with your peers and industry experts. KLR Consulting is a proud sponsor of this event. We hope to see you there
KLR Sessions:
2 hour symposium tracks
Project Management 911
Ken Robertson President KLR with Sharon Hartung Exec PM IBM, Canada. Tues Nov 7 11:30 to 12:30
I'm a a Project Manager - now what's next
Keith Gibson, KLR Senior Consultant Tuesday Nov 7, 3:15 to 4:30
Putting the Art into the Science of Project Management
Bob Franks, KLR Senior Consultant, Wednesday Nov 8, 11:30 to 12:30
Panel Discussion:
Project Portfolio Management - What is it? Is it a reality?
Moderator :
Ken Robertson, President KLR
Panel Members:
Sandy Stepian, Manager Corp Projects, ICBC
Eileen Kenkel, Director, Information Technology, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers
Trekker Armstrong, Director, Architecture & Planning, IS
TransCanada
Full day workshop tracks:
So You Think You Know Microsoft Project
Thursday Nov 9
and
Overcoming the Top 10 Challenges in Defining User Requirements
Friday Nov 10
Brian Mullen, KLR Senior Training and EPM Consultant |
KLR NEWSLETTER NOV 2006