Over the last 5 years I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with Microsoft on deployments of its Project Server system. Microsoft refers to its entire solution as the Microsoft EPM (Enterprise Project Management) Solution as it encompasses much more than just Project Server. To consider the total solution we think of a “stack” of technology. There is Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to start with. Part of Windows Server that’s critical to this kind of deployment is Internet Information Services which is the Web Server for delivering all the web content. Along with Windows Server is Windows Sharepoint Services (This is included with Windows Server) which provides us with collaboration and web portal functionality. We often do authentication with Active Directory so that’s part of the solution too. There’s also SQL Server where we’ll house the database. Microsoft Office Project Professional and Project Server and the Project Web Access interface are the more commonly expected pieces of software. Finally, there are some elements of the functionality that might require Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office System, SQL Reporting Services or SQL OLAP Services.

Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

There’s no doubt that the end result is a powerful one and no doubt that the solution has been well received. Even among Microsoft’s detractors, there is widespread opinion that Microsoft is a force to be reckoned with in the EPM space. The initial targets for this new enterprise functionality was, to no one’s surprise, Microsoft’s enterprise accounts. Microsoft doesn’t publish numbers of how many such accounts exist but it is no secret that these accounts typically number in the thousands of PCs. In these kinds of companies, there are numerous resources that are applied to an EPM deployment. The IT department has network administrators and installers and technical support personnel. There are database Admins and programmers and so on. Well it’s been 5 years now and Microsoft has surely had the chance to present their solution to all of their enterprise accounts by now.

I bring up this whole topic because what Microsoft is about to confront is surely a trend to be considered by everyone who creates systems for enterprise project and portfolio management. Microsoft must, over the coming years start to look beyond just their enterprise accounts and see how they can craft a solution and a sales and deployment message that is as attractive to the mid-market as the one for the enterprise market was.

In our business we get calls almost every day from a mid-market sized firm. “How long will it take us to implement Project Server,” they ask. The question is worded in different ways but it becomes clear quite quickly that an answer that is in the denomination of months isn’t going to find any traction. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gotten a call on this subject that sounds like, “Can you get the whole job done by Friday?”

With enterprise level clients, there is almost always an understanding that the deployment of such systems must be managed as a change management project. It’s the culture change, not the technology which is the big challenge. This is no surprise in a large firm. We’re talking about managing a major aspect of the business in a different way and this may well have a ripple effect through the organization.

There are aspects of this that are true at the mid-market also but it’s a truism to say that the smaller the organization, the more maneuverable it is. So when we explain how challenging changing behaviour may be, this is often met with more resistance at the mid-market or small-market level.

If you were Microsoft, or another project management software vendor, you’d have to think about how to tackle this market. The same sales model that worked for the enterprise isn’t going to fly here. What will be required is what people always expected from Microsoft: instant results.

This leads to what I believe will be a major trend in project management tools and their manufacturers over the next 5 years: The commoditizing of epm software. Publishers must ask themselves, “How can we provide a solution that enables the correct process, is a minimal drain on management to design and configure and is priced in a way that mid-market companies can afford the total cost of ownership.”

So, how do you go about commoditizing such a product/service offering? I have a few ideas.

First, make the technology all install at once
This is within the technical grasp of the large EPM system publishers. Make a one-click install that works for most mid-market size deployments. When we think of an enterprise deployment, we start talking about multiple servers, web farms, load balancing and other high-end challenges that just don’t exist when the total number of users is 200-300.

Next, pre-configure the software for my use
Sure it’s true that every company is a little different but there are many commonalities between firms. Instead of having the software arrive with nothing in it, the publishers could spend time making sure it’s pre-configured for the most common use with reports, customized fields, lookup values etc. all pre-set. Just add users and you’re there!

Also, make training available to the masses
There are so many great ways to distribute training now that EPM publishers need to take advantage of. Online instructor led or Computer-based courses, Teach yourself books, mixes of online and text-books and so on. The costs of such training would need to drop dramatically and the training would have to be broken into bite-sized pieces so any sized organization could digest them.

Don’t forget to abandon acronyms
Any arcane science has its secret codes. In the project management world we talk about things like CPM, SPI, CPI, EV, BCWS and so on. Even in high-end project management circles, these acronyms and abbreviations are being abandoned in favor of straight descriptive language.

Finally, build the processes into the software

There is a process to being effective with managing projects but the 80/20 rule has always applied here. Twenty percent of the process delivers eighty percent of the value. A basic fundamental process, created, perhaps around the tenets of the PMI could be woven right into the software of most EPM systems so that organizations could adopt it or not as they saw fit.

If you think of the project management systems market as though it was a pyramid, with the most experienced users at the top and the neophytes at the bottom, then the use of project management so far has been focused at the very tip of the pyramid. I hear sometimes someone say that all kinds of complex algorithmic functionality should be added to project management software in order to do better analysis but it’s certain that there’s little return for such an investment. No, the big returns for systems publishers are to make project management systems and project management methodology accessible to the masses. It should be like acquiring any other commodity; a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste. Project management software as a commodity would be used by millions, upon millions of users and that’s where the big payoffs come for software firms.

That makes commoditizing epm software inevitable.

One of the first things I need to do whenever I go into a company to talk about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) is to get some kind of a consensus of what it means.

I can hear some of you laughing.

“Surely after all this time,” you’re saying, “we have a common understanding of such a basic term in the project management industry.”

No, I’m afraid not. It’s perhaps remarkable in an age when we talk often about Project Management Maturity Models but a common understanding of EPM is not only not that common but there is a huge range of possible interpretations.

EPM for some means everyone storing their data on projects into a common repository. For others, it means grouping projects together which share some common element, perhaps a resource pool or inter-project dependencies. For some, EPM means working on projects at a portfolio level. Still others might mean tracking actuals in a single timesheet. There are people who say that it’s not really enterprise project management unless you’re doing resource capacity planning and there are people who say it’s not “enterprise” unless it’s integrated directly to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

That’s already a lot of possible directions to go and yet there’s more. The sheer size of what someone might mean by “the enterprise” is also critical. In the last month, I’ve been in organizations which thought of an enterprise as being a division of 50 people, a complete company of 400 people, a division of more than 1000 people and a department of about 10 people.

So, all of that to say that there are a lot of definitions of what Enterprise is and what Project Management is and what Enterprise Project Management is.

So, let’s transpose our definition conundrum to selecting tools. There are many vendors in the project management industry who promote their “enterprise project management systems”. This can present a challenge to those trying to find a tool to help their project organization to become more effective.

Microsoft is an excellent case in point. With the release of Office 2007, we see of course, the release of the new version of Microsoft Project. There are now 6 products to purchase from the Project department of Microsoft. Project Standard, the trusty veteran has been with us now since the early 90s. Project Professional 2007 is the big brother of Standard designed to link to Project Server. Project Server of course is now in its third iteration and its associated Project Web Access. There is also Project Portfolio Server 2006 for Project Portfolio Management and the associated Project Portfolio Client Access License. I’ve seen organizations which use Project Standard as a solution for their enterprise requirements so, while it is designed as an individual efficiency tool, it’s certainly possible to work with it either alone or in concert with other tools to make an entire organization more effective. Project Server of course, is what we’ve heard most of from Microsoft in the last 4 years for organizational solution needs.

Yet, there are a couple of elements that Microsoft has also released recently that are fascinating possible solutions.

Inside of the new version of Microsoft Office SharePoint, a product which is provided at no additional cost as part of Windows, Microsoft has included “Lightweight Projects”. This template allows an organization to create simple GANTT charts complete with dependencies, resources, Critical Path analysis, and a bar chart view. The module was actually created by the Microsoft Project development team for the SharePoint group. Lightweight projects can be promoted to Project Server 2007 at any time should you need to put them into a more complete structure with more depth and options but for some groups, this will be an interesting feature to look into.

Of course there are already organizations which have used SharePoint’s other features to track project documents, issues, risks, to-do lists and more. For them, this may be enterprise project management. Here at HMS we’ve assisted organizations with creating enterprise management systems for tracking key project data using only SharePoint.

The most popular project management system in the world (yes, I’m talking about Excel) has also been enhanced with Office 2007. In particular a server component for Excel which is part of the Office System 2007 is something that project management Excel aficionados should look into. The server component allows the massive Excel farms that have been so problematic to support to become centralized enterprise-like components. Where once we would have thought of Excel only as an individual productivity tool, that thinking is due for some revision with this new version.

Microsoft also has tools for project management that are part of its Dynamics line if you think of project management as an accounting or cost-based conversation. And, if you’re in an IT environment doing development, then the new Visual Studio Team Services system is a centralized enterprise-level system which includes scheduling and resource allocation.

But, by far my favourite of the new products in the Microsoft camp is Groove. Groove was one of Microsoft’s acquisitions this year. Whether you’re talking about Groove Server or the Groove client, the Groove Project Space is a fascinating way to collaborate with a team. Documents, lists, assignments and more can be assembled in the Groove space which can interact with SharePoint, with the Groove Server or even peer to peer.

I’ve talked only about Microsoft so far but there are offerings from numerous other vendors for systems that are worth consideration including Primavera, eProject and others. So, which of these various tools are the best? Just as I’ve often said in these pages, there’s no way to answer the question. If you’re looking for a solution, you’ve got to first identify the problem. For any organization which identifies business challenges at the enterprise level that require an enterprise project management solution, the first step is to identify exactly what that business challenge is.

When we consult a client on EPM, we go through a simple yet powerful process with the management of the organization early on in the deployment. We start by having senior management identify key business decisions that they either can’t make now or can make only with great difficulty that they believe would be made easier through the deployment of an EPM system. The exercise is virtually always fascinating. Once we’ve identified as many possible such business challenges we trace what would be required to deliver information to management in order to make that business decision easier. Then we sort the requirements based on those which are possible to deliver based on data that is already available to us and those which will deliver the biggest impact on the organization.

There are a couple of instant benefits to this process. First participants in the meetings are almost always surprised to find out that the perspectives of others in the meeting don’t match their own. Just finding out that others in the organization are not looking at the same metrics or trying to manage the same business challenges is usually eye-opening for everyone in the process. Second, we are able to focus on what aspects of an EPM system should be deployed in order to deliver the fastest return on investment. I have never done this exercise where I have not been surprised by at least some aspect of what was revealed.

There is a plethora of enterprise project management tools on the market and if you’re thinking that implementing one of them will result in making your organization more effective, then start your search in house. Start with identifying what aspects of your business will benefit from what type of system and the selection of which category of EPM tool to search for will become infinitely easier.

Project Management systems – it’s about deployment. Sure, there are lots of functions to consider and everyone wants to know your “methodology” but if you are committed to having projects fit into a an organizational system, it all comes down to deployment. Can you assemble a system that will actually be accepted and used by the end-users who will have to use it. Deployment includes all of it: developing the concept, buying or writing the system, installing it and configuring it of course and, most importantly, getting acceptance from the end users who must populate it with accurate and appropriate data.

Over the next few issues of PM Times we’ll be looking at how to deploy a project management system. We can’t of course, give you a complete course in the few paragraphs we have here. That would take a book. We can however, raise some of the key issues and give you some food for thought in dealing with whatever your current project management system environment is today. Whether you’ve got a well established project management system or if you’re just getting started, looking at how your system should be deployed is key to its success.

In this issue we’ll look at establishing requirements for a project control system. In the next issue we’ll cover creating the deployment plan. The next issue will cover training and finally we’ll look at integrating your pm system with other elements of your enterprise.

Requirements of a project management system
It used to be hard enough to set the requirements for a pm system for the organization. Internal experts and sometimes external consultants would congregate and, after extensive interviews with staff and management would go to the market to see what might be available. From the myriad dozens of potential products, the selection team would make a short list and vendors would troop in to display their wares. With luck, the selected system would meet most of the “must-have” requirements and would also squeeze into the budget.

The pace of change in today’s world makes one nostalgic for those simpler, kinder days. Imagine that five years ago there were perhaps 4,000 organizations who had ever heard of the World Wide Web. Now, some 4,000 new domain sites are registered every day. Two years ago, Java was something you had with your donut in the morning. Now, it is on the must-have list of every project management systems requirement.

What hope is there of setting appropriate requirements for a project management system your organization when technology upon which those requirements must rest is changing faster than you can even complete your analysis.

Well, it’s not as bad as you might fear. First of all, forget for a moment about technology. Your search should focus instead on who needs access to the system and, once they get it, what they’ll want to do. The great thing about the proliferation of Microsoft Project is that it has given us a good benchmark to use in describing functionality to end-users. A little thought about your own project management process here, at the beginning of your implementation will be the highest leveraged effort of the entire exercise.

Work on some of these questions:

• Who has access to the raw data to create new projects and to update existing ones? Should they have direct access to the project management system? What benefits would they gain from direct access? What benefits would the organization gain?
• What is the project management skill level of the projected users
• Who receives now and who will receive the output of the project management system? What reports will they need? How will having that report or data make them more effective? Is there an actual purpose to the reports they are receiving now?
• What lack of project-oriented information or analysis is hurting the organization? What impact would the availability of this information have?
• Who will champion the project management system? What is their authority? Who at the most senior level of the organization is sponsoring the initiative? What are their expectations? Are they achievable?
• Are there external influences in the implementation of this system (e.g. contract requirements)? What are they?
• What other systems will the pm system need to integrate with? Are these systems open enough to integrate? Will the system need to depend on third-party interfaces?

Once you’ve answered some of these questions you can start looking at some of the key building blocks in creating a project management system which will be acceptable to multiple users across your organization. Concentrate on some of the following factors while looking for potential vendors of expertise and systems:

• Suitability to purpose. Ask the vendor what experience they’ve had with your type of industry. Get references and (don’t forget!) call them!
• Flexibility, flexibility and (did I mention this?) flexibility. An “open-architecture” system will be one which can be easily enhanced and upgraded and modified from one use to another. This is key when technology may change faster than your projections.
• Multiple levels of interface for multiple types of user. Sorry, one size does not fit all. Many enterprise-wide vendors will have flexible interfaces or multiple products.
• Open data architecture. “If you can get at the data, you can do anything.” is a bit of an overstatement but key to interfacing with other systems.
• Keeping your options open is key to success in the deployment of a project management system. Until the next issue when we look at your deployment plan, I’ll leave you with this thought from Napoleon Bonaparte: “A battle plan lasts until contact with the enemy.”

In our last issue I talked about determining your requirements for a corporate project management system. This month we’ll talk about creating your plan for the deployment of your project management system.

What?! You don’t have a plan? Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, you’re not alone, many project managers have attempted to deploy their project management system without a plan. The bad news? You’re not alone, many project managers attempt to deploy a project management system without a plan! I think it’s the ‘shoemaker whose children are barefoot’ syndrome. We tend to apply our skills last to our own projects.

The first step in making for a successful deployment of your project management system is in looking at the exercise as a project with everything that entails. Does this project have a sponsor? Who is the client? What is the schedule? What are the conditions for success? Here are a few elements you should be looking at when you are planning out the deployment of your new project management system:

Management Support
First of all, does this plan have management support. Problems with deploying project management software suffer most often from a lack of a product champion in the executive suite. Sometimes, decisions about implementing pm software come from management as a reaction to some problem (either real or perceived) about a particular project or projects in general. This might look like executive support but the support is very short term. Does management understand the scope and duration of the plan or are they hoping for an overnight fix? (You know what I mean – “As soon as that new software’s here, all our projects will be back on schedule”)

Look for management support that will last long term – It may be a year or two before the final effects of this implementation are felt. Is your project champion ready for the usual backlash that comes with a change in culture?

Also, what about funding. In this day of $300 project management software it’s easy to overlook the overall costs of implementing a change in a corporate system. Will you have the funding required for training? How about consultants to help tie your pm system to other legacy systems in the company? Has the I/T department set aside funds for technical support or people to help with the implementation?

Getting a product champion identified at the highest levels can be the most significant factor in overcoming the problem with all projects: Murphy’s Law.

Degree of deployment
While you’re assembling your plan, one of the most significant elements will be its scope. Implementation of a project management system if often thought of in one of only two camps: 1) Let every project manager do what they want or; 2) Choose a corporate-wide system and implement it everywhere. The problem of course with either plan is that few organizations benefit from them. The most common structure is one where some projects warrant a high-end project scheduling system, other projects warrant some kind of desktop planning system and yet other projects are so simple they warrant no project scheduling system at all. While you’re deciding who will and won’t be using your newfound package, think about what the payback will be for project managers at different levels. It is sometimes easier to leave small, low-risk projects out of the plan altogether. They’re numerous, they’re often very unique, very different from each other and the payback of having them in the central system is often very low.

Deciding on your level of penetration in the organization will be critical element of success. Pick your battles. If the small-project project managers want to do their own thing, it may be worth your while to get them off your list by letting them.

PM Process
Have you thought of where you’re going to gather the data for this new and improved software? Is the company ready to provide it or are you looking at cultural changes in the way they operate. One of our clients recently was working on implementing the corporate timekeeping system we publish. Management committed the company to move to a weekly time collection from the bi-monthly payroll-oriented collection they used to use in order to properly implement activity-based-costing. “No problem,” said management. Well, it has taken an enormous effort to get that message out to the rank and file who were so used to doing the work on the 1^st and the 15^th. Some resist doing the timesheet weekly despite the obvious advantages for the company. You need to look at what your new system requires and plan for it in advance.

Implementing a new package is also a perfect time for implementing process changes that may have been long-delayed. People will be changing anyway. You might as well take advantage to have them change to more productive ways of working.

Training
Can I say this enough: training, training, training. Not just in product functionality. Make sure you put aside enough funding and time to get people trained in the new way they’ll need to do business in order to support your new system. Make sure people know long in advance how much time will be required for users to come up to speed and make both an incentive to get trained and a penalty for avoiding it. It doesn’t matter if you spend $300, $30,000 or $3,000,000 on your new system; either get your people trained or plan to use the new CD for a coffee coaster.

Legacy Data
It’s a category that too many people forget. Unless you’re a start-up, you’ve got projects in progress. What will you do with all the legacy data from you existing system? That system may have been automated, may have been database-based, it may have been manual. You’ve still got to consider the value of the data in that system (or systems) and arrange the resources required to get it translated into the new system. Data conversions are often a tricky business. Get your new software supplier to check on the data and give a firm-price bid on converting it. You may need to pay them a day or two of investigative time but the back-end savings will make it well worth it.

Legacy Systems
Finally, don’t be too quick to throw those legacy systems in the trash bin. If you’ve got projects in progress, it may be less disruptive for everyone to let some projects wind down with the software that is being used on it. Make sure you’re going to give the project manager some benefit by switching his in-progress project data from one system to another before you mandate the change. If you’re keeping those legacy systems for awhile (and many do) then make sure there’s a firm plan to retire them once they’ve fulfilled their function and make allowances for moving their data and training the personnel working on them at a later date.

Conclusion
All in all, deploying a project management system can be an exciting time as the new features and functions start to impact the way you do business. It’s an opportunity for an organization to become much more effective but it’s also not risk-free. Make sure you take the time to plan before you leap.

In our next issue, I’ll be looking at how to weave your way through the myriad categories of project-oriented software in order to choose the one that’s right for you.

So, it’s time to bring it all together. You’ve used your talents thus far to choose the perfect project management software system; to implement it perfectly within your organization and to train your personnel within an inch of their lives. Now, it’s time to fulfill on some of those promises you made to management when they approved the budget in the first place and to integrate the project management system with other systems in the organization.

Here’s the first thing to know. Sometimes, it’s better to look integrated than to be integrated. Ok, that’s a little trite but it’s true. Over the years, I’ve met a remarkable number of otherwise clever people who use Ostrich management practices when thinking about integration. There are a couple of things to remember when talking about integration that can make or break your entire project management software implementation project.

First of all, regardless of what I say in the next few paragraphs, you’ve got to apply a reality check to every aspect of integrating multiple systems together. It is an easy thing to get caught up in the intricacies of a particular link between systems; to become enamored with how elegant the integration between two particular systems will be accomplished. However, if you don’t stop every once in awhile and ask yourself exactly how much effort this link will be saving.

Not long ago, I was consulting a firm who was designing an integration between a project scheduling system and the project invoicing elements of a central ERP accounting system. The person in charge was asked to describe to me how the link would be accomplished. For the next 30 minutes, in an inspired soliloquy, this person went on to enroll me in how completely; how elegantly and in what complex form the programmers would be able to create this automated link. It would take only 6 weeks of effort for a 4 man team to deliver this work of art I was informed.

That’s sounded great to me. After all, the presentation came with slides, flowcharts, ERWIN diagrams and a complete narrative. Clearly, this person had put their heart and soul into this particular aspect of the project. It was the cornerstone of his project management software implementation. I had only one question: How many transactions would his link process each month? That is, how many invoice items were there that had to be transferred from the project management system to the invoicing system? There was a long pause. An average of 12 was the final answer. And how long would this take to transfer manually? About 30 minutes each month, I was told. The 4 person/6 week effort would take over 36 years to pay dividends. I didn’t make this particular person very happy but clearly this particular bit of integration made no sense. This is, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. When you get so caught up in the details of a link between systems, it is easy to lose sight of the overall picture.

Here are a couple of basic elements to consider before embarking on the integration of your pm system with the rest of your organization’s automated infrastructure:

First, make a careful determination of what needs to be integrated. This may take some effort. First of all, you’ll need to determine what people want to be integrated. You’ll have to use your discretion here. Some people will be responsible for a particular system and have some notion that you will be integrating it poste haste. Their ideas of what will make the organization more effective or not may not be based on complete knowledge of what your project management system can do or has been configured to do. Just because someone (often very senior) wants two systems integrated doesn’t mean they can be, should be or need to be in order to make the organization more effective.

Next you’ll need to find out what perhaps should be integrated but that for some reason or another people are reluctant to have integrated. This may not be obvious. For a variety of reasons, there may be people who are responsible for a particular system who feel threatened by the integration of your system with theirs and who will therefore not offer up their system to be integrated. Some finance people for example, will feel that the movement of data into the finance systems from any external system risks compromising their system’s data regardless of the degree of integration. Yet, despite their reluctance, the linking of the project management system with theirs may offer huge potential benefits to the organization so you’ll need to seek such systems out.

Last, you’ll need to determine from the complete list of what can be integrated what should be integrated. Remember to apply a reality check on a regular basis to determine this list. You should constantly be asking yourself, “What is the return on investment of this particular link?” That is, “What is the estimated cost of this link in man hours or dollars and what is the estimated savings in time from doing the work manually?”

Once you’ve chosen the systems to integrate, you’ll probably want to start designing the links right away. This can sometimes be done with just the IT department but be careful. If you do not involve the people responsible for each of the systems affected during the very beginning of the design process you are risking a tremendous backlash.

People who are responsible for particular systems in an organization often treat them like they are their own children. Integrating in even the most non-intrusive, date-out-only fashion can make the feel violated. You must involve these people from the very beginning. Seek them out, ask their opinion about the integration. Find out what would make their lives easier and involve them in the design process. In far too many implementations, I have seen this not done only to find a link that is technically sound but practically unimplementable because no one has checked that organization’s process can support the link in the first place.

Remember, each link you are designing has the potential to invalidate the use of another. It may be possible, for example, to load budget dates from an accounting system or the shop floor manufacturing system. Yet, if you do both, how will you determine what is the source of these dates? You’ve got to look at the overall picture. Use flowcharting to follow data through the process you’ve implemented with your project management system to ensure that multiple elements of your integration plan don’t conflict with each other.

Also, before you start creating your first link between your pm system and the rest of the company, you have got to determine who will be responsible for it after it’s created. Beware. The operational responsibility of such a link may be very contentious. It may be perceived as something that gives someone power over another system. It may be perceived as very desirable or very undesirable and either can cause you problems. If you have involved the people responsible for each of the systems from the beginning, this question can be resolved with a minimum of fuss during the design process. If you haven’t you’re much more likely to end up with an emotional hot potato on your hands. So, make sure you design not only the technical elements of your link but the entire life cycle including maintenance, future growth potential, responsibility for usage of and control over the movement of this data.

Finally, don’t forget to apply simple rules of Return on Investment (ROI). It is the one sensibility check that will stand you in good stead as you create your design plan. The simple formula is to determine how much effort it will take to design, create, operate and maintain the particular link you are making and to subtract the cost of moving the data manually or using any existing structure. Working in person-hours is the most obvious measure but use any denomination for the analysis that works. Remember, sometimes it’s better to look integrated than be integrated.

A number of years ago I was privileged enough to listen to Ken Mattingly give a keynote address to a room full of project managers. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, think of the movie Apollo 13. Ken Mattingly was the astronaut played by Gary Sinise who had to stay behind because they were sure he would get the measles while enroute to the moon. Mattingly is now Rear Admiral Mattingly and I was eager to hear what he had to say about project management. When he opened the floor for questions, someone asked him if he could give his definition of project management.

“Sure,” he replied. “Project management is doing a specific thing within a specific time with insufficient resources.” We all laughed but I scribbled it down.

It’s almost universally true. After all, if you had more than enough resources and unlimited time, who would need project managers or project management? Lots and lots and lots of people would work on the project until it was done whenever that was.

Everywhere I go, project resources are overloaded and project managers struggle to allocate those resources on the work that they have committed to accomplish.

In a multi-project, matrix organization, everyone wants their project to be selected and approved. In a 2006 survey done by UMT for Microsoft, the majority of organizations polled reported that they selected projects for approval based on their individual merits only rather than comparing them against the merits of other projects. In fact, this method was more than 50% more popular than any other answer.

Not only do project sponsors want their projects approved, but once they’re approved, they want them to be done first, as the highest priority, before any other project is undertaken.

That is a lot of pressure towards a resource management crisis.

The result?

This:

I see this picture all the time at the clients I visit and when you’re as used to it as I am, it doesn’t take too long to interpret. The blue bars represent resource capacity. The red bars represent resource requirement. In any period where the red bars exceed the blue bars, the resources are overloaded. In this example which would be taken at the beginning of January and looking forward to the next 12 months, the resources are overloaded in January through June. Then the resources are under loaded from July through the end of the year. If we look for a moment or two longer at the height of the bars, we can see that the requirements in January through April are overloaded by about 300%.

This is not going to be fixed with a little overtime and some elbow grease. This overload is unfixable. It was caused by starting too many projects within this period and it’s a fact that they won’t happen when they’re planned. And yet, if I look at the end of the year, it is clear what will happen here. The underloaded months will take the projects which are sure to be delayed and by the end of the year most of this work will be accomplished.

If you’re reading this and saying under your breath “How can that guy see our internal data,” don’t worry. The good news is, you’re not alone. The bad news is, you’re not alone. This is a very common scenario.

Now, it’s clear that the projects which have been pushed into the first half of the year won’t all happen as they were scheduled so what will happen?

1. Management by Emergency.
   This is almost certain. All the projects underway in the first half of the year are going to be under tremendous pressure. That pressure is sure to translate to emergency after emergency after emergency.
2. Low staff morale
   This is often characterized by high staff turnover though in the last 18 months or this has been less prevalent due to the economy. As a sidenote, one thing to be caustious about if you are in this situation is that the economy may be masking staff turnover even if staff morale is low. That may make for a big wave of staff changes as the economy improves.
3. Low productivity
   It’s simply not productive to have priorities change hour by hour or day by day. Staff are told “Do this. No, do that. No, do this other thing. No, do this again”. All the change in focus inevitably means loss of focus and less productivity.

Well if it’s that common, it should be easy to fix right?

Fixing this kind of problem is unfortuantley easier said than done. The source of this problem orginates a couple of levels higher that the PMO and can only be fixed there. Yet project managers have the methodology to fix this.

Now, you may have seen software tools that promote the kind of functionality that will “automatically” resolve resource overload challenges. Every project portfolio management (PPM) tool has something in this category. However, no matter what tool you choose, you will need to do the core work with management if you want to solve this dilemma.

Whether you choose software or not to help you fix this problem, here is what you’ll need to do from a process standpoint:

1. If you want to prioritize projects, forget about just giving them a ranking or some number, doing so just makes all the project sponsors crazy as they argue why their project should be a priority 75 instead of 92. Instead work with senior management so they agree on what business factors affect the importance of projects. Some examples might include:

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  • Return on Investment/Profit (an obvious one for private firms)
  • Project risk (again pretty obvious)
  • Technical competitivWheteness might be a little less obvious
  • Client satisfaction
  • Strategic advantage to the organization
  • Reduction or avoidance of threat to the organization

2. Create a set number of answers for each business factor. Try to stay away from a score of 1-5 or 1-100 and instead go for a descriptive answer. It will be much more powerful if you can have the answer correspond to a measurement. For example, “Improve Customer Satisfaction by 10% as measured by our quarterly customer satisfaction survey

3. Now you’ll need to create a formula that scores the answers from the business factors. This is where software may be attractive.

4. Finally you’ll need to weave in the cost of each project. You can think of cost in almost any denomination so long as all projects are measured the same way. So, total person-hours or person-days, total dollars or whatever. This will allow you to create a business factor score/cost calculation so you can determine which projects will give you the biggest bang for the buck.

Now, if you’re thinking you can do this in isolation and then present it ‘faite accompli’ to management, think again. Doing so will make you responsible for any project which is not priority #1 and that puts you no better off than you are already. The secret to success in this process is get senior management to define these factors themselves and to agree on the relative responses for each one. When that happens, the resulting levelled schedule is, by definition, doing the projects that are in the best interests of the organization first.

Project prioritization is often a part of project management that is avoided by senior management but the impact in a tough economy of avoiding prioritizing can be significant. That’s why looking at project priortization now may be timely. PMOs may find management more receptive than ever to participting in making this kind of process successful.

It’s the hot button lately in project management circles. How can teams collaborate? It’s not idle chatter. It’s been apparent for a long time that a project manager’s role is not just calculating a schedule from his hidden laboratory deep in the bowels of the organization. Now a project manager is expected to spend the vast majority of his or her time working with others. They may be negotiating with the clients or recruiting new team members or empowering and encouraging the team to be more effective or referreeing resource conflicts with resource managers. And that’s just one-on-one or with small groups. The project manager is also expected to speak publicly to the board or the media or the users or the team.

With collaboration being such a hot button it’s not surprising that project management software publishers and consultants are happily explaining how wonderful it will be for clients to improve their collaboration tools. I get such requests on a regular basis.

So let’s pause a moment and just review what collaboration means and what implementing better collaboration entails. Dictionary.com has a couple of definitions of collaboration but the most useful to this discussion is: “To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.” Not too useful for practical purposes but the idea is having people work together. Well, a project almost always involves people working together so we know we’re off to a good start. What might team collaborators collaborate on?

A few categories of how teams might work together might include document management, meeting management, communications follow up or working with virtual teams. Let’s tackle a few of these:

Document Management

One of the most popular things pointed to when talking about collaboration benefits is document management. In many project environments, moving documents around numerous participants in the project team can be a critical success factor. In high tech, these might be design criteria. In engineering, they might be archtectural plans or engineering drawings. In bio-research they might be regulatory documents. It seems attractive to link these documents to task reports when doing project schedule reports but the big benefits of this kind of collaboration process is managing the workflow of the document. Should this be part of your project management process along with schedule management? There are a couple of factors to consider. First of all, does your organization already have a document management system. Many large organizations do. If so, then going with the flow on a system that’s already deployed makes a lot of sense. Secondly, does your entire project team have access to it? This may not be so obvious. Many project teams extend beyond a single organization. If that’s the case, then setting up a parallel document management system for documents associated to the project might be more sensible.

Meeting Management

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings. They’re so common that many timesheet systems automatically include a meeting entry. (We get asked for one all the time with our own TimeControl timesheet deployments.) Having meetings is often collaboration by definition but how you conduct those meetings can make a big difference to the effectiveness of a project. Meeting management systems include numerous features such as agenda management, minute taking, meeting collateral management (such as reports that are submitted to be viewed by the partiicpants), attendance recording and even virtual attendance for those who are out of town. With so many organizations having to curtail travel and even inter-office movement in order to save costs and with so many project teams reaching outside the organization, an effective meeting management process and system can make a world of difference. Sometimes such meetings can have an immediate impact on the project inlucing changing priorities, changing resource allocation, updating risks and progress information. Just being able to record promises made in a regular project review meeting and being able to recall that information instantly at the next meeting can revolutionize project progressing. But, does this mean that that the meeting management system should be integrated into the project scheduling system? Possibly. The first place to look is to see how the meeting management process is integrated into the project management process. Then look and see if there is an existing meeting management system and if that system is available to all your participants. It might be more important to have meeting management linked to document management than to scheduling.

Virtual Teams

More and more we’re seeing project teams being defined outside of the walls and even the corporate organization. Teams might include the client and sub contractors and even regulatory authorities from outside the organization and executive sponsors and resources from within the organization. The team may extend not just beyond the walls of the organization, it might also extend into numerous time zones and even numerous countries. Just holding a telephone conversation can be a significant challenge if part of the team is just getting to work in the morning as another part is just leaving at the end of their day half-way around the world. Empowering the virtual team to work as a team can be a significant challenge that has to be addressed early in the project lifecycle. Being able to distribute documents, record virtual meetings for review by others offline, updating progress in multiple time zones and even just being able to deposit project deliverables and artifacts somewhere in a file management system that is managed and traceable can make the difference between a project that works twice as effectively or half. I have seen such virtual teams hum along at a breakneck pace, one group half way around the world is delivering aspects of the project that is being reviewed by a team on the other side of the planet in time to be updated by the first group as they return in the morning. It can move so fast that it feels like around the clock development and that too can pose a challenge. When the pace of work is twice as fast as some team members are used to, the project can go off the rails in an awful hurry. Systems need to be twice as vigilant if the work is moving twice as fast so deploying systems to allow that tracking to be done more effectively is essential.

Incident and List management

There are so many bits of data that get generated during a project that having a single place to track them can allow many people to connect quickly and effectively. Lists and artifacts can be almost anything. They might include commissioning lists, deficiencies, bugs, corrective measures or even just lists of team members. Having such information readily available to all team members can be a blessing. I’ve seen a number of projects where integrating such list management into the project system and having that system be outward facing; meaning available through the Internet improves the speed of managing those lists and identifying problems that must be addressed by other team members. Simple online list management can level the playing field quickly by allowing required intervention to be recorded that reaches any member of the team at any level. A process needs to be in place to prevent every team member from assigning incidents indiscriminately to executives but the ability to do so can make a project tremendously more effective. These lists are rarely at the level of tasks that are managed in the schedule yet they often are able to affect tasks in the schedule.

Communication with… everyone

Effective communication is everything to a project manager but when setting up your project environment its worthwhile to try to determine what kind of communication is appropriate for what kind of information. Will you be checking your FAX every hour? Is that how you’d like to transmit documents? Do you want everyone copying everyone on every email? Will you progress data in a physical meeting or can members dial in virtually? Will you be updating information via SMS on a cell phone or on an application on a smartphone? How about instant messaging? Just because you can instant message someone on their phone will you use this as a primary source of communication? What information should require instant messaging and if you’re going to use this does everyone on the team have access to the same instant messaging system and network? Figuring out your communications strategy before you start your project makes a huge difference.

Collaboration is a way of life in today’s project management world. Most project managers and project management offices don’t need a do-everything project management system but hoping that collaboration will happen by default is a fantasy. A smart project manager will organize how they want collaboration to happen before the project starts even when systems are already in place. Getting everyone onto the same page early often makes the difference between staying ahead of the project or living in reaction mode trying to catch up until the project is done.