Generic Enterprise Outline Codes for Projects

Most deploying organizations identify and develop custom outline codes that meet their reporting needs. Although each organization has specific requirements, a significant number of custom outline codes are used by companies regardless of their field of activity. Among those codes are Project Location, Project Status, and Project Type.

It is important to remember that these outline codes are provided here as guides and not as "must haves." It is up to the EPM deploying team to decide which codes should be used.

As discussed in Chapter 3, "Knowing Product Limits and Overcoming Them," each organization must carefully consider which codes are relevant and what the reporting requirements of various stakeholders are. It has been our experience that most organizations that want to deploy an EPM solution will most likely have a need for certain outline codes that are common across industries.

Project Location

Project location was discussed previously, and it is always a good idea to have projects grouped by their geographical distribution. Grouping projects by location helps not only the executives and portfolio managers but also product development, sales, and marketing managers. For example, grouping projects by location can help identify the workload for various locations, help analyze the proximity of vendors and suppliers, and help an organization balance the financial burden represented by each project.

Project Status

An enterprise project outline code, which we recommend using, regardless of industry, is the Project Status. Project Status represents an important classification for a project portfolio because it provides important information with regard to project pipeline loading.

For example, a project pipeline that has many projects in the execution phase but few that are closed or canceled is a sign of an unbalanced pipeline and that these projects may be lingering in the execution phase when they should actually be closed or canceled.

Examination of the project pipeline loading is also the first indicator of the resource needs, and it is an important tool for future balancing and synchronizing the projects and resource requirements with organizational availability of all resources (human, financial, material).

The following is an example of a Project Status outline code:

• Initiated

• Approved

• In Execution

• On Hold

• Canceled

• Closed

Grouping Projects By Project Type

Often organizations initiate projects to address an issue or a change that has been legislated by government or mandated by a professional organization or a certification agency. Most of the time, these projects face tight deadlines that cannot be modified. Alternatively, organizations initiate projects as a response to a business need discretionary to the organization. In such cases, it is useful for portfolio managers to group the projects into the following three major categories:

• Government Legislated

• Nongovernment Mandatory

• Discretionary

CAPTURING DIFFERENT TYPES OF WORK

Project Server 2003 offers the possibility to capture time spent by resources on almost any work initiative in an organization. Portfolio managers and resource managers find it particularly useful when they can get visibility and understand the level of effort that resources are allocating to each activity by type.

For example, an organization wants to know how much effort is allocated to project work versus nonproject work. In this case, the deploying organization may group work initiatives into two major categories: project and nonproject work. Otherwise, the organization may choose to further detail the nonproject work into four other categories: administrative, maintenance, support (help desk), and service requests (or work orders).

The custom outline code could be named in this case Type of Work. The code could have the following structure:

• Administrative

• Project

• Maintenance

• Support

• Work Orders

Grouping Projects By Sponsoring Division

Project Sponsoring Division is a particularly useful outline code for organizations in which projects are executed by a different division than the sponsoring division. This gives portfolio managers the necessary tools to group projects by various sponsoring divisions within the organization. When organizations decide to employ the Project Sponsoring Division outline code, it is advisable to employ a second code as well: Project Performing Division.

Project Performing Division

Project Performing Division is an outline code that allows functional and portfolio managers to identify project workload by performing organization. In many cases, the sponsoring and the performing organization value would be identical. In this case, we suggest using the sharing feature of the two outline codes.

Project Priority

Almost all deploying organizations have a need to group projects by their respective business priority within the company. Most common values for this outline code are represented in the following list, in three different approaches:

• Project Priority (most typical)

  • High

  • Medium-High

  • Medium-Low

  • Low

• Project Priority (typical for organizations with a relative small number of projects, under 50):

  • Values 1 through 3

• Project Priority (typical for large organizations, with a large number of projects):

  • Values 1 through 10, 100, or 1,000