Enterprise Project Management Using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003

The concept of enterprise project management is a very popular trend in project management. Microsoft Project Server 2003, as did Project Server 2002, answers the needs for managing and reporting on projects and resources for an entire enterprise. Microsoft Project Server 2003 uses the underlying technology platform of the desktop project management software to create a way to view and manage resources and projects for full enterprise visibility. It includes supporting functions such as viewing and managing timesheets, status reports, issues, risks, and documents. All of these functions together help the portfolio management office (PMO) establish a full array of enterprise standards, processes, and reports .

NOTE

The terms program management office, project management office, or portfolio management office are interchangeable. For the purposes of this book, we use PMO to mean portfolio management office .

Key components of Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 include the following:

• Enterprise-level resource management that provides a single repository for all resources already assigned to projects or available for project assignment

• Enterprise-level portfolio management that enables project and resource modeling and analysis across groups of projects

• A broad security model for controlling access to, viewing of, updating of, and publishing of enterprise and detailed project information

• Advanced reporting capabilities

• Collaboration and global template capabilities that help standardize communication and enterprise processes for more accurate and consistent data

What is Enterprise Thinking?

Enterprise-level project management is the management of projects, project resources, and the interrelationships between projects and resources, aggregated at the department, organization, or enterprise level.

This takes your organization from individual projects on the desktop with conflicting or duplicated information to full project enterprise visibility. Team members, executives, and managers will be able to see all or a subset of similar projects to better understand the scope of the work of their organization, and the way resources are being used. Because of this, the project manager and all members of the organization will need to start thinking more globally ”how their project schedule and their management processes relate and contribute to the whole enterprise business picture.

Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 provides the base repository, user interface, and reporting tools required to enable enterprise-level project management. The project managers of an organization can put the full array of projects, grouped in various ways such as department or business solution, into a Project Server that allows all people to see the projects for portfolio analysis. Resource managers or functional managers can review how the resources assigned to those projects are used, and determine the organization's resource utilization on a global or project-by-project scale. The project manager and project team can use collaboration tools such as email, status reports, and a timesheet function, and can easily communicate status, issues, risks, and progress on a project. And finally, the entire project team can find project- related documents in one place, instead of searching around to find critical information to project success.

The organization, via the PMO or some other organization like PMO, will need to create or enhance current processes and procedures to fully implement the enterprise solution successfully. As with any repository, to use the data from Microsoft Project Server 2003 effectively requires planning roles, rules, and processes.

Reading Part VIII

Each of the chapters in Part VIII, "Using Project Server and Project Professional," about enterprise project management is targeted at the functions that you might perform in specific roles using Project Server 2003 as follows :

• This chapter focuses on enterprise thinking and an overall view of Project Server 2003. This will help you see how all the pieces of Project Server 2003 fit together from a portfolio manager's perspective.

• Chapter 25 describes functional system administration of Project Server 2003 for the PMO system administrator and others who need to know what settings are required to create the enterprise views your organization needs.

• Chapter 26 describes Project Web Access and Project Professional from a PMO and project manager's perspective.

• Chapter 27 describes how executives, resource managers, and project managers view and use the resource information that is available via Project Web Access and Project Professional.

• Chapter 28 describes how team members will use the document management and collaboration features of Project Web Access, including time tracking, status reporting, managing to-do lists, issues, risks, and document management.

• Under "Customizing and Administering Project Server Access" at www.quehelp.com, you can find information on how user administration and security are performed by the Project Server administrator.

This part of the book will also use the example of the Elkhart Software Company to illustrate many of the concepts of using the enterprise environment.