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Innotas Releases Latest Update to its On-Demand PPM Platform

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Innotas Releases Latest Update to its On-Demand PPM Platform

San Francisco, CA – Innotas (www.innotas.com) has announced the availability of the latest release of its On-Demand PPM Platform, including enhancements to application portfolio management and Web Services APIs.  Ideal for IT departments of almost any size, this latest update of Innotas On-Demand PPM (http://www.innotas.com/solutions/index.html) enables more dynamic creation and maintenance of portfolios; powerful roll-ups of data at the portfolio level; and extended flexibility in modeling portfolios with unlimited hierarchy levels.

With the newly enhanced Application Portfolio Management (http://www.innotas.com/capabilities/apm.html), managers can now capture budget and spend against projects and applications, hugely critical for determining ROI and evaluating which projects and resources are most critical to the success of the organization. Additionally, projects can be linked to portfolios directly from a project, enabling managers to see which portfolios a project is linked to (including allocation % and other portfolio details) directly from the project.

Innotas On-Demand PPM (http://www.innotas.com/capabilities/index.html) provides both senior management and day-to-day team contributors with tools to manage and monitor projects, resources and portfolios. The new release expands these capabilities for a vastly improved user experience. For reporting, dashboards and searches for projects and resources, the project filter has been enhanced to allow projects to be filtered based on the portfolios to which the project is linked. For example, you can filter resources in the Capacity and Demand screens (based on all projects in a portfolio), or define filters to generate project lists based on portfolios.

“Based on our initial expectations of the Software-as-a-Service model, and the concept of shared application code, we’ve been surprised with how easy it was to configure Innotas and gain the “custom” configuration and visibility we required, said Douglas Badger, CGA CISA CGEIT, director, IT Portfolio Management & Systems Assurance, Office of the CIO, University of Guelph.

Continued Badger, “For example, we look at configuration in three tiers: “self-serve” (i.e. changes a customer can make for him/herself), changes that require assistance from support (i.e. our Customer Success Manager), and changes which may or may not be made by the application developers. In years past, this kind of deep configuration would have required a very expensive, installed solution that would have taken months to deploy plus a huge learning curve for our users. Instead of relying on a “typical” project management office, with Innotas On-Demand PPM we can build, manage and gain greater visibility into a higher-level portfolio structure, which we can then break down into IT Assets and IT Demand.”

Keller Graduate School of Management and DeVry University Earn PMI Global Accreditation

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on Keller Graduate School of Management and DeVry University Earn PMI Global Accreditation

Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. – DeVry University and its Keller Graduate School of Management announced today that Keller’s Master’s of Project Management degree program earned accreditation by the Project Management Institute’s Global Accreditation Center (GAC). In addition, DeVry University’s Project Management concentration within the undergraduate Business Administration degree program also was awarded accreditation. DeVry University and Keller represent one of only 13 universities in the U.S. and 21 schools internationally to be granted this designation by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s leading association for project management professionals.

PMI’s Global Accreditation Center is the governing body for enforcing the policies, procedures and standards for accrediting project management degree programs. Each degree program must demonstrate it meets PMI’s rigorous standards, which includes an assessment of each program’s objectives and outcomes, faculty and student evaluations, onsite and online resources, annual self-evaluation, and proof of continuous improvements in the areas of project management.

“GAC accreditation confirms that the scale and quality of an institution’s project management degree program conforms to a comprehensive international standard. It also makes a public statement about the deep commitment of the institution and its faculty to ongoing evaluation and continuous quality improvement,” said Ed Andrews, PhD, PMI director, academic and educational programs & services. “PMI offers well-deserved congratulations to DeVry University and its Keller Graduate School of Management for the recent accreditation in project management.”

“The GAC accreditation offers the endorsement from PMI that we are one of the highest-quality providers of project management education,” added David J. Pauldine, president of DeVry University. “We are proud of our project management curriculum and the unparalleled flexibility for our students to take classes both online and through our nationwide network of more than 90 locations.”

Project Management to the Rescue: No Bailout Necessary

Written by Cynthia Low on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Project Management to the Rescue: No Bailout Necessary

Including 10 Ways to Use Project Management to Change Your World

As I watched the last few months of news, filled with the Presidential campaigns bantering back and forth and the doomsday headlines about the financial crisis, I had to shake my head and wonder – why can’t our government and the financial giants on Wall Street and around the world use the principles of project management to be effective?

If you listen to the news long enough, you would think being effective is difficult or impossible. Nothing is further from the truth! With project management, anything is possible. As an entrepreneur who runs my own business, I balance a budget, develop new products, and serve my customers, and I have found that even when the economy isn’t doing well, there is always opportunity. To tackle those opportunities, you need tools in your toolbox; project management is an optimal tool for times like these.

Good project management enables companies and organizations to:

  • Develop and deliver high-quality, low-cost products customers need and want.
  • Effectively use resources (people, money, and time) to meet organizational goals.
  • Manage a portfolio of projects that are all building blocks of the overall strategic vision.
  • Capture the collective wisdom of staff and lessons learned on previous projects or information about the overall growth and development of individuals and the organization.

Look at change as a perfect opportunity for you to use your project management skills and know-how to change the world. Here are ten ways to get started:

10 Ways to Use Project Management to Change Your World

  1. Set a personal and an organizational vision for long-term sustainable success because you tend to create what you focus on. Focus on failure, and that is what you will get. Focus on people, and even in turbulent times, you have a better chance of being able to make a huge difference.
  2. Create your own “school” of what it is you need and want to learn so you can be and become an effective contributor to other people and to your organization’s success. Seek out opportunities to do your own formal and informal learning. For example, you can take Cheetah’s PM Scorecard assessment (http://www.cheetahpm.com/index_frame.asp?task=http://www.cheetahlearning.com/rs/courselist1.asp?id=30-pmscorecard5) and get a sense of your project management skills.
  3. Develop a “can do, we will prevail” attitude, and bring those around you up with your thirst for knowledge and your enviable project management capabilities.
  4. Join the Project Management Institute as an individual and as a corporate member. Participating in this professional trade association helps both individuals and corporations better self-identify with doing good project management and that, in and of itself, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  5. Diversify and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This is true whether you are an individual relying on one industry or one company to meet all your financial needs or whether you are an organization that relies on one customer, or one product, to sustain your economic well-being.
  6. Develop a safety net that will let you take appropriate risks in your career, and in your projects, so that you can weather whatever comes along. It’s just like the flight attendants tell us on their pre-flight safety instructions: You need to secure your own mask before helping others.
  7. Don’t fall prey to those around you (and especially the media) with “the sky is falling” mentality. Do a risk management reality check on your projects and current events to develop your own risk management plan to handle the legitimate risks facing your life and your projects.
  8. Create a change management plan for your life. When new opportunities arise (and sometimes these come disguised as difficulties), assess how these will impact you achieving your overall goals, and develop a strategy that incorporates change into your reality.
  9. Drop commitments that are no longer serving you. You need to “cut bait” on the projects and commitments that are like the infamous bridge to nowhere. Look at these projects that are going nowhere and ask yourself, “If I had to make the decision today to start this project, would I?” If the answer is no, stop wasting your valuable resources on it.
  10. Find the path of least resistance where you can make the biggest contribution for the least amount of effort. Every individual and organization has unique talents that when used effectively, in the right environments, can have significant impact. If something has become too hard for you to do, maybe, just maybe, you should not be doing it. Seek out other opportunities where you can have more fun and make more of a difference. My personal motto is “What is meant to be, happens easily.”

So, don’t buy into the Doomsday mentality. Use your Project Management skills to make your own world and to make the most of every project, every day. It’s your time to take center stage and be at the forefront of meeting the challenges in your life, at work, at home or wherever you may find them.

 

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, is the founder and Chief Cheetah of Cheetah Learning. Distributed to hundreds of newsletters and media outlets around the world, the Know How Network brings the promise, purpose and passion of project management to people everywhere. Visit www.cheetahlearning.com to learn more about Cheetah PM, the fastest way to learn about project management and get your PMP. 02/09

 

Project Managers and Downsizing

Written by Mike Lecky on . Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Project Managers and Downsizing

What should a PM do when the economy turns down and their employer must lay off workers? Large layoffs change the tone of the working environment and the resources available to the project. It’s also a pretty good indication the strategy of the organization has changed.
Recently Microsoft announced they would layoff 5,000 workers. On the same day Sony announced their layoff would affect 8,000. Clearly many of these workers would hold operations or manufacturing positions. We can only speculate how many would be supporting the myriad of ongoing projects in these two organizations. We don’t know how many projects would be affected by the changes although we can expect there would be many.

During the planning stages of large downsizing initiatives, senior management is tasked with assessing the impact of the cuts to active projects, and to projects in the pipeline for future initiation. The PM is not usually asked for the impact on their project prior to the layoff. That is, not unless the project is quite large or has significant implications to the competitive position of the company. Yet there is likely to be an impact and the PM has a responsibility to assess the impact and communicate their findings to senior management.

As a general guide the PM might consider three areas: alignment to strategy, impact on resources and affect on motivation.

In the face of tough economic times, organizational goals and the strategy to achieve these may shift. This would be cause to review the importance of all projects in terms of the value they are expected to deliver and their alignment with the new goals and objectives of the organization. A PM needs to be clear on the value expected from the investment in the project they are responsible for. If this changes so will the project scope.

Resources available to the project include budget for both internal and external spending. Changes in staff and contractors assigned may impact the project scope. Perhaps contributors with unique experience are lost impacting the ability to achieve the product of the project or to do so in previously established timeframes. Given the extent of the economic fallout, there is a good chance that changes at key suppliers will impact the project.

Finally, a significant disruption such as a large layoff can affect the remaining workforce by altering the tone and motivational dynamic of the working environment. Understanding the impact this will have on project activities is important to managing the project through the organizational change.

Whether project managers are asked for an assessment of the impact of a major layoff or not, it is incumbent on them to do so and ensure adjustments in the corporation are properly reflected in the project they are managing.