Enterprise Project Management

Enterprise Project Management (EPM) is the field of organizational development, wherein organizations are supported in managing inherently and adapting themselves to the changes of a transformation. Earlier, the focus was generally on a single project management, followed by the unlikelihood of a project of not being the sole enterprise, while in the recent years Enterprise Project Management (EPM) has become more specific by incorporating governance practices (IT). For the governance to be well facilitated, there exists a vital necessity to be able to manage, monitor, and assess the status of all projects in the enterprise through a set of Enterprise Project Management processes, methods and application packages.

From the perspective of an IT management, Enterprise Project Management essentially means enterprise-wide network administration, which is becoming progressively complex, wherein the corporate network environment is no longer tied to a single vendor, leave alone a single platform. It now includes more corporate intranets which are multi-domain, multiprotocol and multiplatform systems and contain hardware and operating systems from a diversified variety of contending vendors. It thereby creates a situation, wherein an administrative overhead gets created which can easily make the cost of owning such networks unaffordable for all, unlike the largest and most profitable organizations.

There is considerable pressure on organizations such as public agencies to manage capital projects to successful completion, both on time and within the proposed budget. It is only when managers get to track project costs and status in real time do the gaps for an otherwise successful project emerge, thereby sharing this vital information with all agencies and individuals involved in the project. In such cases, critical assistance to capital project managers at each major stage of the process is provided by the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution. Capital project portfolios can therefore be managed by organizations so as to maximize value and ensure that constituents, contractors, and stakeholders receive clear and accurate progress reports on a regular and continuous basis.

Project selection: Investment decisions with clearly defined priorities are perfectly aligned by successful organizations. The systematic support that is needed to identify the capital projects which claim to deliver the highest value to your constituents is provided by Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, which also takes into consideration the availability of budget and resources. This solution therefore helps capture standardized business cases, wherein each potential capital project is evaluated against factoring costs, benefits, and risks into the prioritization process, resulting in a defensible project selection.

Project management: It is a herculean task to manage a project to completion since it includes solid planning, skilful execution, coupled with on-going resource management and progress tracking. These projects can be scheduled, tracked and updated with helpful tools provided by Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, thereby optimizing resources, minimizing costs, managing scope, and delivering on time. It also enables the team players to enter their work status directly to keep the project information regularly updated.

In order to update and monitor progress and to keep the team players and senior management well acquainted with the project developments, the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management solution provides a wide range of reporting and analysis which enables real time delivery. It also features rapid reporting capabilities which provide the required information, besides the ability to respond quickly to changes and minor issues, much before they become major problems.

Project evaluation: In the final phase of the project, advanced reporting and analysis of the capital project is provided by the Microsoft EPM solution using Microsoft Office Performance Point Server 2007.

The key features of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management solution include:

• Program and project dashboards wherein status-at-a-glance reports are provided and digital alerts are keyed to performance indicators, such as budget, schedule, and risk which help identify critical problems much in advance.
• Powerful scheduling tools –support schedule, resource, and management of cost using the methodology of your choice. It enables the team players to enter details directly, thereby enabling project managers to have more time for planning, managing, and tracking projects.
• Collaborative project management and communication tools – organise delivery of continuously updated project information to project stakeholders and other constituents senior management.
• Therefore, Enterprise Project Management is said to solve the following problems:
• Negligible business value is produced with too many projects – There are many projects yield little or no value since there is negligible accountability, unclear objectives and vague performance expectations. Although a maximum of the organization’s resources are consumed, managers have a very little objective information to track the project progress. As a result, it is too late to solve critical problems if they arise mid-way, since there is little or no time to recover.
• The project manager and the team players are completely immerses in project work – With changing priorities that are not clearly set and standardized, employees face conflicting demands for their time. It therefore results in a haphazard work, since the total time demands on the best of the resources are so heavy that their work gets affected, which can lead to adverse effects.
• Failure of strategic initiatives – The amount of resources hired in aggregate makes it difficult for critical strategic initiatives to get completed.

The use of Enterprise Project Management Software has many advantages, such as managing clients and leads, project information, assigning and updating tasks with invoice facility, etc. It also enables the manager to manage user roles, resources, trouble tickets, system attributes and forums. Event scheduling, sharing files and effective communication is also accessible via this software.
Online Enterprise Project Management software tools feature –

• Project planning software: projects are planned at the task level
• Resource assignment: resources are assigned with respective tasks
• Project tracking software: planned versus actual time spent on all tasks are continuously tracked
• Collaboration: Managing projects is simplified by enabling collaboration between project managers and project team players. This system also provides project dashboards, online status reports and risk/issue tracking
• Earned Value: Planned work that is actually performed is combined based on project schedule and budget, thereby calculating the work which is actually accomplished and the estimated project completion date.