Author: Mike Morton

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Improve your Brainstorming. Start Eightstorming.

Written by Mike Morton on October 15, 2007. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Improve your Brainstorming. Start Eightstorming.

Do you sit down to brainstorm in your workplace to get ideas? Do you throw out suggestions during discussions in the hope that they will trigger ideas that can bring significant benefit to your organization – and to yourself, of course?

You’re using a very traditional approach and it’s time to shift from random and unstructured techniques to an advanced systematic form of brainstorming called eightstorming – eight-step brainstorming. The eight steps go beyond what most people do when they brainstorm in several innovative and highly effective ways

ASK QUESTIONS. Ask questions for which you have no answers. When you don’t have readymade answers, you are forced to leave your comfort zone and bound to stretch your imagination. The better the question you ask, the better your answer will be.
SEEK INSPIRATION FROM OTHER FIELDS. Move to another industry for inspiration. If you’re in banking, look at scuba diving for ideas. Jot down 5 things that come to your mind when you think of scuba diving. For instance: goggles, floating objects, oxygen tanks, webbed feet and coral reefs. Now find banking ideas that relate to these random inputs.
COMBINE DIVERSE ELEMENTS. All new ideas are combinations of old concepts. Look out for existing ideas in your workplace that you can combine to create a new entity.
TAKE A 180 DEGREE LOOK. When you’re looking for a solution, why not turn a problem around on its head and see what happens. Overturning a situation can lead to more solutions than you had imagined.
VISUALIZE THE SITUATION. If you have a problem and have difficulty in describing it, why not draw it. Doing simple scribbles can help you turn complex problems into easy to understand situations.
DO RAPID THINKING. If it’s difficult to get one idea, try to get ten. Often, the thought of getting ten optional solutions to a problem will lessen the strain you feel in an idea-generating process. Plus the very act of generating multiple solutions in rapid succession will improve your innovative skills.
LEAP OVER THE OBVIOUS. The initial ideas that roll out in any discussion or brainstorming session will often be the weakest. Keep your eyes open for these obvious ideas and use them as a support to move ahead.
USE HUMOUR. Loosen your tie and make a hilarious comment on your current problem. Humor has the power to spark off unexpected ideas and can take you to new creative heights.

In a nutshell, it is quite easy to generate ideas when you have the right tools to do it. Either you innovate or you perish.

Kishore Dharmarajan is the author of Eightstorm: 8-Step Brainstorming for Innovative Managers. Paperback: 112 pages. Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
ISBN-10: 1419668315 ISBN-13: 978-1419668319. Available at Amazon.

Spreadsheets: The Most Expensive PPM Tool You Didn

Written by Mike Morton on October 15, 2007. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Spreadsheets: The Most Expensive PPM Tool You Didn

Spreadsheets are everywhere. Microsoft estimates there are 450 million users of Excel world-wide. And it is no wonder – the spreadsheet is a very handy tool. People use them for many purposes: from simple lists and tables to advanced calculations and graphs.

They can be a great productivity-enhancing tool and offer many advantages including:

Ease of Use – Most people already know how to create spreadsheets or could learn very quickly
Availability – Spreadsheet applications are on almost every laptop and PC, just a click away. as a result, they have become a standard form of communication between computer users.
Flexibility – Spreadsheets allow even non-technical people to do things they never thought possible without learning a programming language
Inexpensive Start-Up – Because spreadsheets are typically already installed on most laptops and PCs, and creating a spreadsheet can be very fast and easy, they have very low start-up costs.

For these reasons, spreadsheets are the project tracking and project portfolio management (PPM) tool of choice for many organizations – both large and small. They offer a very quick, adaptable and inexpensive way to create a project inventory list from scratch. Then it is very easy to grow the use of spreadsheets for PPM from there. We create spreadsheets of our project backlog, spreadsheets of our active projects, and spreadsheets of our finished projects. And, it doesn’t stop there. We also create additional spreadsheets for our resource lists with availability projections and spreadsheets of our project plans. Some even create project scope statements and other documents in spreadsheets.

So, what does it take to implement PPM on spreadsheets?

Implementing PPM on spreadsheets generally requires the creation of multiple spreadsheets. One reason for this is that the information needs for decision-making change as the project progresses through the life cycle. For example, while the project is still in the pipeline, it is important to understand project alignment characteristics, value, the requested due date and the estimated start date. However, after the project is initiated, of greater concern are the project’s health, progress and the likely finish date. Another reason for multiple spreadsheets is that certain functions in the decision process do not lend themselves to a project list format. For example, if a scoring model is used for value assessment, this is typically done in different spreadsheet from the project lists.

The flexibility and ease of use of spreadsheets also leads to the creation of multiple personalized spreadsheets within an organization, often called the “not invented here” spreadsheet. This is an all-too-common occurrence when people who are not satisfied with the standard spreadsheet create their own personalized version that looks “just” like what they want. The result is multiple spreadsheets with the same information and the opportunity for data inaccuracies.

The spreadsheet was not built with the idea of multi-user access. However, some of the objectives of PPM are to create visibility, communicate information and facilitate discussions. This requires the information within the PPM spreadsheets be shared, consolidated and sometimes reformatted for other purposes. As a result PPM spreadsheets are typically emailed throughout the organization. Often a great deal of manual work is required to consolidate or reformat the information. Alternatively, some organizations attempt to set up shared spreadsheets, resulting in check-in and check-out requirements, and user access controls that are difficult to establish and manage.

True project portfolio management also requires a governance model and controls with an integrated workflow. Having a defined process with decision points and requirements for movement from one stage to the next allows an organization to remain in control, be consistent and make improvements. Spreadsheets were never designed to be able to implement a workflow, though there is no question that a PPM workflow could be designed and created by a spreadsheet guru.

“My solution is really quite cheap”

Since spreadsheets are so pervasive and inexpensive to create, they are perceived as a free solution for PPM. One blogger, who created his own set of PPM spreadsheets, recently commented, “My solution is really quite cheap.” However, he goes on to say, “But there is, of course, a manual overhead.” It is this “overhead” that can turn the spreadsheet from a cheap tool into a very expensive PPM solution.

Performance management consultant and founder of Hired Brains, Inc., Neil Raden wrote: “The benefits of spreadsheets are undeniable; however the drawbacks can be significant.” According to Raden, people have a tendency to be more aware of upfront costs than of the ongoing maintenance costs of using spreadsheets. With regard to PPM, the problems usually start occurring when the spreadsheets grow from a personal productivity tool into a departmental solution used by multiple people. Raden goes on to state that, “the ongoing effort to support a complicated system, built with components that were never designed to operate in a collaborative manner, is very significant.”

“Don’t worry, it is just a little chunk of ice”

Just like with the iceberg metaphor where you only see the tip, there are many costs associated with spreadsheets that are not apparent initially. In the end, all those positive characteristics of spreadsheets also lead to hidden costs and risks. These costs are generated from the creation and use of multiple spreadsheets, the attempts to collaborate and share information from these spreadsheets, and the fact that spreadsheets were not designed for certain PPM functions. The resulting hidden costs include:

Wasted Time
Spreadsheet users waste hours of time trying to consolidate information from multiple spreadsheets and transferring selected information from one spreadsheet to another. Individual users also waste time trying to perfect their own view by resizing columns and rows, justifying text and many other beautification activities that really don’t add value.

For the University of Oklahoma Information Technology organization, spreadsheets were the standard for project lists. Mitch Seal, a project manager for OU commented, “Everybody had their own personal version of the projects and information in custom spreadsheets. These spreadsheets were rarely maintained on a regular basis. This made consolidation of information very time consuming and, in some cases, impossible.”

With multiple spreadsheets and duplications of data, much time is wasted in looking for and correcting inaccuracies in the data. Or worse, these inaccuracies never get corrected and create a risk to the organization.

With differing skill levels from the users of these spreadsheets, often there is time wasted as the builder of the spreadsheet explains the intricacies of their work, so others can use it. And, given that the creators are constantly modifying their work, there is a constant need to explain the changes.
Inefficiencies
Spreadsheet Inefficiencies occur in multiple areas. The preferred method of communicating information from spreadsheets is to email them to others. In some cases, this is completed instantaneously. However, in other instances, there is elapsed time between when the spreadsheet was emailed and when it was opened. This leads to delays in work and decisions. Basically, the information needed might not be available to a person when they need it.

Emailing of spreadsheets also leads to the potential for multiple versions of the same spreadsheet being updated independently, and even more inefficiencies due to duplications of effort. Special reporting also causes another inefficiency when certain people only want to see a subset of the information in the main spreadsheets. This requires the generation of special views of the data that can be communicated to these people – and even more versions of the spreadsheet.

On occasion massive PPM spreadsheets are created over time with no thought to the value of the additional data or the compounding problems in using the new creation, causing data overload. More data does not always lead to better decisions. Often it leads to paralysis or “minertia” – the focus on minutia that leads to inertia. Along the same lines, spreadsheets have so many neat features, that we often over-analyze the information, creating new filters and generating pivot tables of data to our hearts content, almost always an inefficient use of time.
Risks
There is no doubt that the use and communication of spreadsheets can lead to higher risks for data security. With the portability of spreadsheets, it is very difficult to control access to them, both internally and externally. It is very easy to send a spreadsheet to a destination outside an organization’s control, whether intentionally or accidentally. Having copies of the spreadsheets and data in multiple hands only compounds the potential risk. To a minor extent, there is also a potential risk of making a bad decision as a result of the data inaccuracies that often occur.

Is there a better way?

Spreadsheets are a valuable tool and a great place to start at the beginning of a PPM initiative. They are a great personal productivity tool because of their availability, ease-of-use and flexibility. And, they will always play a part in PPM for certain types of reporting and analysis. However, they are not “free” of cost and become a very expensive tool when trying to use them for a departmental PPM solution.

It does not take much of a productivity gain to justify the cost of some of the more affordable PPM solutions on the market. If your employees waste as little as one hour per day with PPM spreadsheets, the costs can be substantial.

Orbus, Inc. an industry leader in developing display and exhibit products based in Chicago, Illinois was faced with this situation. They managed their portfolio of projects and resources on a series of spreadsheets that were constantly being updated and emailed throughout the company. According to Steve Westcott, Product Development Manager for Orbus, “We wasted a lot of time waiting for spreadsheet updates, emailing them across time zones and consolidating data. Using a tool specifically designed for PPM we were able to increase our productivity by 25%.”

Mitch Seal of OU also implemented a PPM solution and commented that, “It allowed us to consolidate all our project information into one solution and has the added benefit of giving us the capability to control our process.”

Summary

The proliferation of spreadsheets for PPM is an indication that users have unfulfilled needs. With this, there may be resistance to a single PPM solution and the abandonment of the more familiar spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are quick and easy. Although it is difficult for any PPM solution to meet this standard, it is critical that the solution be non-complex and easy-to-learn. It is also helpful to provide familiar spreadsheet-like views and not try to over-automate the process. This will just add unneeded complexity. Organizations have implemented a sophisticated PPM tool only to see their users fall back to the more familiar spreadsheets for these reasons. If you want your PPM solution to actually be used by your organization, keep it non-complex and used as an aid for the decision-making that will increase the value delivered by your department to the organization.

Steve Chamberlin is the CEO and Managing Partner of 3 Olive Solutions, LLC (www.3olivesolutions.com), a provider of Portfolio Intelligence™, an affordable SaaS PPM solution for organizations ready to make the transition from spreadsheets to an integrated, process-oriented solution. He can be reached at 847 993-1078.

References

Raden, Neil, “Shedding Light on Shadow IT: Is Excel Running Your Business?”, DSSResources.COM, 02/26/2005

Darryl Lyons’ Blog, http://dangermoose.blogspot.com/2006/01/project-management-using-spreadsheets.html, accessed on 03/07/2007

Microsoft and Excel are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation

Portfolio Intelligence is a registered service mark of Three Olive Solutions, LLC

What to Expect From Your New Project Management System

Written by Mike Morton on October 15, 2007. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on What to Expect From Your New Project Management System

You have heard about project management (PM) software. You are aware that many companies use it, but that those who do are typically large IT companies, or perhaps large construction companies. You might be wondering: “Would it fly in our place?” The answer is: Perhaps it would.

I remember many years ago, when I was a rather newly minted project management software instructor, speaking with someone who had attended a course that I had delivered approximately six months previously. He was working for a federal government department that had decided to push a certain scheduling tool out to all managers with the instructions “get some training on this tool – you are now all project managers.”

I asked this individual how he was doing with the software since the training. To paraphrase, he replied “Not so great. I thought this software was supposed to mean less work for me. Now, I have to build these schedules, think about the activities, how long they take, what order they must be performed in, who is working on them, track progress… etc. It’s a lot more work than I was doing before.” I asked him, “Were you not doing any of those things in any form before?” “No.” What this person had not understood prior to the training was that he was now expected to manage his project using the discipline of project management. He did not initially see that the tool’s job is to facilitate and automate a process that would be extremely cumbersome to manage otherwise.

“What about the benefits of all this work?” I replied. “Are you better able to anticipate workloads on your team? How about your ability to meet deadlines? Has that improved?” “Well – yes,” he replied. “Very much!”

Project management software: more than just a tool

The single biggest challenge to implementing a project management system is not the technology itself, but rather the discipline of an organization changing from a functional management process to a project management process. You may have heard some people say that project management software is simply a tool. If unused, it is merely a disc or two.

I recently purchased a sliding compound miter saw. I love this tool. I enjoy working with it, and I find myself looking for projects that require me to use it. I purchased it shortly after starting a crown molding project using a table saw. When it came down to the fine details, I just couldn’t get my table saw to easily do what I required of it. To get the job done right, you need good tools.

The same can be said for PM software. With the right tool, many organizations have embraced project management simply because the tool has allowed them to plan, execute, monitor and control their projects infinitely more efficiently than they could ever hope to otherwise.
The real benefit of PM software is that it automates what would otherwise be very difficult and time-consuming to perform manually. Just as a word processor does not guarantee a good novel, project management software does not guarantee a good plan, but it does set you on the road to building a better one. With good scheduling principles applied, it forces you to think about what needs to be done, how long it will take to complete, what order tasks must be performed in, whether you have the resource base to perform it within a limited time frame, and what it will likely cost.

Picking the right tool

You might find some applications easy for the average person to use upon startup but in the end limiting, when it comes to accounting for all of the reporting requirements that arise over time. When it comes to selecting a project management system, be careful in your selection process. Make sure that it does all the things you need it to do. Knowing what it needs to do requires that you take a good hard look at what you are doing now, and how your current methods fall short of your management requirements.

So what are some of the key requirements you may want to consider when looking for project management software? As a first consideration, you might want to examine whether you need to manage programs, or simply projects in isolation. The latter option is often employed by construction companies. Many of these firms are simply interested in developing a schedule of tasks over a given timeframe, often without the use of “resources” to plan and track who or what is required to complete the work.

Other organizations take things to the other end of the spectrum: managing programs of interconnected projects, resources and their related work assignments with associated project costs, all in a single database repository, accessed by windows-based and web-based client tools.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, consider that an application that stores all data in a single database will provide a better vehicle for maintaining consistent processes, reports, and data structures, such as a resource pool. It means that upper management can be provided with information from attributes that are made common to all projects to answer questions such as “How much are our West-coast projects doing as compared to our East-coast projects?” or “What division has the greatest return on investment?” For middle and line management, it can mean answering questions such as “What projects are my engineers working on?” and “Do we have the staff to complete our objectives by year end?”

When it comes to selecting a project management system, be sure to get some advice from those who have implemented their systems many times before and know the ins and outs. The implementation of these systems is not rocket science, but it does demand a process, and there are plenty of things to do wrong. Just ask a rocket scientist if he or she would dare to launch a rocket without the use of a good project management system. The key to the success of any system ultimately is in the hands of those who use it. The software itself may be filled with many features, but features are only valuable if they are put to use. Good and rigorous training is the key to this.

Project management software differs greatly from other desktop-type applications such as word-processors or electronic spreadsheets. If, for example, you choose to learn a word processor by yourself, you could probably start by simply typing a letter on day one, and then learn how to perform a mail-merge a month later, without losing any of the work you did on day one. On the other hand, with project management software, you really need to understand the basic mechanics of the entire system prior to using it. Your data should be defined with the correct level of detail, and in such a way that the system is able to carry out it’s most basic function: that is, to calculate activity dates. This is something that is typically not evident when a new user starts using a scheduling tool.

Get the right training

Training should typically come in three forms: initial tools training, which should cover the basic mechanics of the system; what it can and cannot do; customized training; after configuration, how the system is to be used in your organization, and finally, follow-up mentoring. This last step is where many organizations fall short. As an instructor of project management systems, I have met many individuals who completely understand the system during the initial training sessions, but soon forget the information in the months that follow due to lack of post-training practice.

In many software courses, each feature is typically taught once, with its functionality reinforced perhaps a second time during a follow-up exercise. This is often all that is required to understand a feature by itself; however, when combined with 30 to 60 other features over a three day course, many students are likely to feel slightly overwhelmed. Nobody ever walks away from a project management course ready to teach it to the next person, but with a bit of practice and familiarization with the system, most participants report within a few weeks that they are comfortable with, and enjoy using the system.

A final word of advice: if possible, establish a project management office (PMO). The members of the PMO typically provide support to the rest of the organization by standardizing and maintaining project management processes and procedures, as well as managing the system. These individuals usually become the system “gurus” who ensure that data structures are maintained, technical issues are dealt with efficiently, and that management is able to rely consistently on the information as being accurate, relevant, timely, and valuable. In short, a PMO will allow you to expect good things of your project management system.

, is Director of Product Knowledge with Project Management Centre and has been training and implementing project management systems since 1994.

Adrian Pierce, B. Com., PMP

Project Portfolio Management Megatrends

Written by Mike Morton on October 15, 2007. Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Project Portfolio Management Megatrends

As we look forward to what’s next for Project Portfolio Management (PPM), there are several trends that will play out over the next few years. The fundamental tenets of PPM such as visibility and centralization of data will continue to drive value, but new trends are emerging now as PPM transitions from powerful concept to real-world practice.
The basics are in place. Analysts and thought leaders have chronicled how PPM applications have fundamentally altered the project landscape. By integrating project information in one place, PPM changes how organizations approve, plan and deliver projects. From a bottom line perspective, PPM enables organizations to improve their return on project investments.

Trend 1: No Longer Just Nice: No longer a leading edge practice, PPM has started to transition from a “nice to have” into a “must have.” In the private sector, PPM will become a competitive necessity, especially in sectors where time-to-market, quality and cost control are key success factors. In the public sector, PPM will raise the bar for financial accountability for programs and projects, and that new level of visibility will become expected by constituencies. In fact, in some cases it has already become a mandate.

Senior managers will begin to expect a certain level of visibility and accountability for the project portfolio. They will grow increasingly accustomed to reliable reports and metrics that tell them what’s going on as of right now, as well as providing a predictable pipeline of what is coming up next. The lessons learned in the leading edge organizations will begin to carry forward, not just through case studies and press coverage, but through the migration of experienced leaders who have seen the value and the impact. Experienced leaders will carry those tools and techniques with them from one assignment to the next.

Trend 2: Predictable Implementations: Early stage PPM implementations were all unique. There were very few best practices in place and organizations were still learning about the impacts that PPM would have. The pioneers were learning as they went, which is typical in a newly developing market discipline. Increasingly, we will see much of the mystery of PPM transition into standardized implementation approaches. Predictable and standard patterns for successful PPM are emerging, and these patterns mitigate both risk and cost. These patterns correspond to what my company calls PPM Domains. Similar to the way there are best practices for configuring a chart of accounts for financial accounting, best practices are now emerging for configuring your PPM applications.

Standardized approaches to PPM implementations must address the entire lifecycle of the project portfolio. These standard approaches include functions such as workflows, reporting and metrics. I like to address the entire PPM lifecycle via three standard PPM Domains: Manage Supply & Demand, Prioritize the Project Portfolio and Deliver Projects and Applications. These three domains of PPM activity emerge in every PPM implementation, and they provide a vehicle for successfully phased implementations. Standard approaches and best practices are emerging for each domain, and these standards are eliminating much of the labor-intensive guesswork of implementations.

Trend 3: Software as a Service (SaaS): As SaaS continues to move from interesting to viable to a competitive threat, PPM solutions are ideally suited to run as SaaS applications, otherwise known as PPM On Demand. There are several reasons why SaaS is so well suited for PPM: rapid deployment; team collaboration; reduced risk of failure; tighter vendor/customer relationships; reduced cost of implementation and support. But perhaps the biggest reason is the rapid innovation cycle. It’s at least twice as fast to deliver innovations to customers in a SaaS model, and as a result PPM using a SaaS model is evolving rapidly.

Since SaaS applications have little to no technical implementation (servers, data bases, etc) they are up and running in short order. When a SaaS application uses a multi-tenant architecture, it should be as easy as “File + New + Save” to complete the technical aspect of a new customer implementation. Provisioning of new hardware and software is incremental and highly efficient, so there is lower overhead to support each customer. Perhaps even more importantly, the human resources required to implement and run such a system are already in place, trained and leveraged. What this means is that once you decide to implement, the entire technical aspect of the implementation should take just a few minutes.

Project teams must work well together to be effective. At their very core, projects are a team sport, and there are many different levels of team collaboration. You have big teams broken up into smaller teams; you have teams that cross boundaries within organizations; you have teams that cross boundaries across organizations. And it is a well-established fact that communication is one of the core factors of project success or failure. Teams that communicate effectively are more successful than those that don’t. SaaS applications are designed from scratch to operate securely over the web, which means that teams within and across different organizational boundaries can easily access the PPM applications and information from anywhere at any time.

SaaS implementations involve virtually no technical component to the implementation, so the risk of the “go live” is significantly reduced. But the technical aspect of any software implementation is only part of the risk. Two other big risk areas are in business process change and end user adoption. SaaS applications are designed to be highly configurable, which makes them more adaptive to the needs of unique business processes. In other words, users don’t have to write code to automate business processes. Finally, the SaaS business model depends on end user adoption for financial success. That translates into a laser focus on the user experience, which in turn leads to greater adoption.

SaaS vendors get paid by their customers over time, which leads to a compensation model that requires several years to mature from the standpoint of the SaaS vendor. The economic terms of such a relationship create a financial motivation for the SaaS vendor. The SaaS business model depends on the successful adoption of the application service, and thus SaaS vendors pay very close attention to their customers. If SaaS customers do not derive value from the application service, then the SaaS vendor won’t realize the financial return from the customer. SaaS stands for Software as a Service, and the operative word here is “Service.” High levels of service are simply built into the business model.

Reducing costs has historically represented a key factor in outsourcing any “non core” service or capability. In addition, outsourcing “non core” efforts enables an organization to focus its limited resources on “core” activities. Very few organizations would consider PPM software to be a “core competency” and so, bearing these expenses represents an unnecessary burden. Traditional “on premise” PPM applications are expensive and they consume valuable resources. Upfront license fees can be substantial, and the costs of implementation, support and upgrades can be daunting. With SaaS, those economics change. Implementing PPM as a service is not only less expensive; it allows organizations to focus their limited resources on more pressing objectives.

PPM has emerged in recent years as a next generation practice that builds on the disciplines of project management and program management. With an enterprise wide perspective, PPM incorporates other techniques and practices and fundamentally changes the ability of an organization to manage projects as investments that should have a predictable return. It’s not just project management software with some new features – it’s a brand new application. This new discipline requires a new set of tools and technologies, and those technologies are maturing with each release of the PPM suites. With SaaS as the delivery model for PPM, the innovation cycles are accelerated, which means that PPM capabilities are improving at a rate that is significantly faster than traditional on-premise delivered software.

Trend 4: Collaboration across Boundaries: Collaboration means communication. It is now a well-known phenomenon that communication is one of the key success factors for projects and project teams. Because PPM solutions involve a large number of team members who are working together on tasks and deliverables, PPM solutions are beginning to drive more and more collaborative capabilities. But these collaborative capabilities aren’t just unstructured chat sessions. They are fully integrated into the work plan and the reporting systems, so that the knowledge is captured and available to broader audiences. What we are going to see is what I call “collaboration beyond your own domain.”

Departments and teams must communicate and collaborate in order to be effective. As the number of team members grows, the number of communication points grows, and that leads to greater project complexity. On top of that, project teams are often distributed across offices, time zones and cultural boundaries. Since communication is so essential to success, distributed project teams are challenged before they start. One way that PPM provides relief is to create a framework that incorporates all team members into the project. But this is not just some amorphous workspace for files and shared electronic white boards. PPM provides a structured environment that is aligned with the goals and objectives of the project itself. For example, team members can capture threaded discussions on the task itself rather than in some invisible instant messaging or email discussions.

PPM creates visibility across teams, and many organizations have different team members working across organizational boundaries. A project may be broken up into separate functional teams or even separate organizational teams. These boundaries establish barriers to communication and information that can impede the success of the teams. PPM applications will continue to advance their ability to provide appropriate levels of visibility without sacrificing security. This is one area where PPM poses an important departure from traditional project management solutions. Since PPM is inherently collaborative, and since those points of communication may cross sensitive boundaries, PPM applications must be able to provide secure access controls so that team members see what they need to see and nothing more.

Projects often require the participation of different organizations with different reporting structures. Multi-organization projects have unique success factors. Different organizations may have different goals and objectives for the exact same project. In the simple case of two organizations collaborating on one project, one organization might be focused on cost and time-to-market, while the other might be focused on revenue and resource utilization. These divergent objectives can create significant challenges to the project and, when multiplied across the portfolio, the challenges multiply. PPM systems have already begun to provide a platform where different organizations work together on the same core deliverables, even though they may have different objectives. This shared visibility impacts the balance of power on a project-by-project basis, but it will ultimately create the most benefits for the project sponsors, and will probably impact how incentives are developed and tracked.

Trend 5: Push Technologies and Analytics: As the PPM market matures, PPM applications are improving their ability to provide meaningful analytics to all layers of management. But these analytics will not just be passive reporting systems. They will begin to incorporate push automation, so that all team members will have access to the PPM information most meaningful to them. In other words, PPM applications will start to come to the user rather than waiting for the user to come to the PPM application.

PPM aggregates the most relevant performance indicators that reflect the performance and status of the project portfolio. With PPM, portfolio managers can go to one place to manage the performance of the entire portfolio of project investments. This creates the opportunity for alerting and notification systems that reach out and actively send alerts to the entire array of stakeholders. Now that the data is integrated and reliable, metrics have real impact. Users will be able to create and configure rule-based thresholds that are monitored centrally. When those thresholds are triggered, stakeholders will be notified via email or other messaging services. Examples might include the crossing of predefined budget thresholds, deliverable status, resource conflicts, etc. This will drive the importance of PPM metrics, which will have the subsequent effect of driving the underlying processes and tools that reflect those metrics and what they mean.

Trend 6: Connecting to the Web: The World Wide Web offers an almost limitless field of information services: intelligent search, web based education, research into standards and best practices, and much more. PPM applications will begin to reach out and take advantage of that information and those capabilities. The key early on will be to connect to the web in a way that adds immediate and clear value.

With more and more services coming on line every day, the web offers a huge wealth of opportunities to complement the PPM offering over the web. PPM applications, especially the SaaS variety, will begin to incorporate other services into their offerings. Examples might include search, learning, content management, wiki, and much more. In addition to other web-based services, the web offers a virtually limitless pool of information and experience-based knowledge. PPM applications will begin to tap into that massive knowledge base to retrieve relevant information. For example, projects that address specific topics will have the ability to perform sophisticated research and bring back relevant information.

Trend 7: Web Services: As a technology, Web Services has moved into the viability stage and more examples are beginning to emerge in the software market as a whole. These services will emerge with increasing speed as the technologies stabilize and as the particular PPM solutions establish sound, scaleable Web Services interfaces. In the beginning, these services will be mostly used for data exchange, but over time we will see the exchange of PPM functionality across the web.

PPM applications need to integrate with other applications to provide a complete solution to the enterprise. Enter Web Services. Web Services offers a new approach for connecting applications, both in terms of functionality and data. Unlike traditional integration, whether hand-coded or through an EAI engine, Web Services offers a radically simplified approach to integration. Although Web Services is still in the early stages of development and adoption, it provides a compelling alternative to traditional approaches to integration.

One feature of Web Services style integration is that you now connect applications via a single Application Programming Interface (API). That has several important implications. A second feature of Web Services style integration is that the interface is publicly available over the Internet. A third key feature of a well-designed Web Services style integration is that it is highly standardized. It must be, or else it simply wouldn’t work. These three features mean that Web Services will become increasingly more reliable, scaleable and predictable. Web Services style integration over the public Internet will remove a great deal of the idiosyncratic nature of point-to-point integration that exists today. That will reduce cost, improve reliability and accelerate the ability to connect applications in a meaningful way.

PPM is no longer a specialty discipline. Customers can now tell the story: PPM has emerged as the next generation of project management. PPM tools and techniques will continue to mature and stabilize, and the supporting processes and content will mature as well. As PPM matures, project managers will spend less time on overhead and more time delivering high value projects. And organizations will get more disciplined in how they spend money on discretionary projects and programs.

Demian Entrekin is the founder and CTO of Innotas. As founder, Entrekin oversaw marketing, product development, sales and services for the company. Today, he focuses on strategic product direction. Prior to Innotas, Entrekin co-founded Convoy Corporation and was chief architect of its initial products. In that role, Entrekin helped the company lead the middleware market with an annual growth rate of 670 percent and played an instrumental role in Convoy’s subsequent acquisition by New Era Networks in 1999. A recognized thought leader in Project Portfolio Management, Entrekin has published numerous papers on PPM and his blog (PPM Today) explores current issues related to successful PPM implementation. During his 18 year career, he has assumed leadership roles as a consultant and as an entrepreneur, delivering commercial and corporate database applications.

Are We Really Only as Old as We Feel?

Written by Mike Morton on September 13, 2007. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Are We Really Only as Old as We Feel?

Editor’s Comments

Sometimes, after a hectic day of crises, panics, deadline pressures and all the other stress factors that make up the workday, we can feel a lot older than we really are. But, no matter how we feel, we all fit into what Adwoa Buahene and Giselle Kovary refer to as “generational cohorts.” In their article Leading a Multigenerational Team, they point out that each of the four cohorts they define, has unique, values, characteristics and skills based on its life experience. The challenge for the project manager is to engage all team members, and direct the intergenerational skills to the success of the project.

No matter what cohort you belong to, the ability to make sound decisions is critical to the success of the project and, very likely, your success as a project manager in a very competitive field. Sean Best and Tamara Best stress the importance of finding and trusting your data and focusing your attention for the greatest gain. In their article, Decision Making: Trusting Your Data, they discuss how to turn ‘information’ into ‘data.’

After reading the National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook 2007 survey, Michelle LaBrosse realized that the qualities and skills that employers rated most highly paralleled those inherent in project management. In 10 Ways Project Management Skills Can Help Your Career, Michelle discusses something she’s believed for years: Project management skills are a career accelerator, no matter what career you’re pursuing.

To many, television is about glamour, adventure and excitement. To others, it’s the task of making sure that everything runs smoothly. TVOntario, Canada’s equivalent to PBS, needed a solution to manage projects involving input from multiple team members, many of them off-site. In Creating and Delivering Great Television Programming, Cynthia West tells us how the problem was solved.

And our regular bloggers, Claude Emond, Andrew Miller, David Barrett are back with their take on what’s going on in the world of project management. We would also like to welcome a new member to the team, Mike Lecky, who will share his views on different aspects of project management each month.

That’s an overview of the September 2007 Project Times. As usual we hope you find it informative and helpful. We also look forward to your comments, because they go along way towards helping us get better with each issue.