Project Partners Blog

By Ravi Shankar, PgMP

This is Part 2 of a 2 part blog series on Program Reporting in Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management (PJT).  These  blog articles and our May 4th Webinar will help you understand how to use Program Reporting in your organization.

Program Roll-up Metrics

The following metrics roll up at the Program level:

• Financial Performance (Budgets, Forecast, Actuals for Cost, Revenue, Margin, etc)
• Effort
• Cost
• Revenue
• Earned Value
• Billability
• Billing and Collection
• Backlog

Read the rest of this entry »

By Ravi Shankar, PgMP

The Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management (PJT) application offers a key feature that is not yet widely used, but delivers valuable functionality: Program Reporting.  This 2 part blog article and our May 4th Webinar will help you understand how to use Program Reporting in your organization.

Program Level reporting, as distinct from managing the Program itself, is the process wherein related Projects are linked to the Program Project. While the Program itself is a Project, and hence could have its own activities for costs, budgets revenue, etc, it could also be the recipient of rolled up data of related Child Projects, whose financial, Workplan and Progress information are visible in the Performance Management Tab of the Program.

For the Program level roll up reporting, we link the individual child projects to the lowest WBS of the program project. A linked child Project could by itself be also a Program i.e. could have roll up of Projects to itself. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kimberly McDonald Baker

Project Partners is pleased to announce that we will be presenting six papers at the Collaborate 11 conference in Orlando, Florida in April.  While at the conference, be sure to visit us in Booth 953 in the Exhibit Hall, and enter to win a Kindle. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kimberly McDonald Baker

Project Partners is pleased to announce that our OP3 product, which provides bi-directional integration between the Oracle E-Business Suite Projects Applications and Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management applications, is now certified to work on all supported releases of these Oracle applications.

OP3 is the only bi-directional integration product currently warranted to work with all releases of Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management and Oracle E-Business Suite Projects (Oracle Projects) Release 11.5.10.M through Release 12.1.3. OP3 integrates project structures and plans, budgets, actual costs and committed costs. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kimberly McDonald Baker

Project Partners worked with Iberdrola Renewables to implement their Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system – which resulted in awards for both Iberdrola Renewables and Project Partners. 

Iberdrola Renewables is a very exciting company in the fast growing renewable energy field.  Its portfolio of power assets require 24-hour energy management and scheduling, every day of the year.

The firm identified several key challenges they wanted their new Enterprise Project Portfolio Mangement system to address. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Ames, PMP

Concluding our discussion from the prior blog articles, we now address success factors number 4 and 5.

Finding the Bottlenecks

One of the big advantages to having an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system is the ability to see how each project affects the rest of the projects. Project managers have been trained to look at the critical path of their own projects but do they know if other projects are impacting their performance?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do team members work on multiple projects?
• Does your project share a facility with other projects?
• Is your project dependent on another project’s output? Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Ames, PMP

Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 4:

Determining which Projects to Start and When to Shut Them Down

Selecting the right projects is as important, if not more important, to your success as executing projects efficiently. The projects you select should support your firm’s strategic direction and contribute to the bottom line. Once projects have been selected they need to be ranked against each other to determine which projects are the most critical and who will win when resource conflicts exist. Just selecting and ranking projects is not enough, projects need to be continually reevaluated to ensure that they still meet your organization’s strategic direction. Over time priorities change, new opportunities arise, project ROI decreases, so you need to know how changes effect your project portfolio and where to put your resources. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Ames, PMP

Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 3 in the Key Drivers to EPPM Success.

Measuring What’s Important

Team members will work to what they are measured against, so it is important to ensure that you are measuring the right things and that management is encouraging the right actions. It does not make any sense for a team to spend lots of money on overtime when cost is the critical factor. Former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden used to say “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.”

When a program starts it is important to establish the measurement criteria. If your project has a fixed budget you should be targeting cost controls and allow your schedule to slip if necessary. If you have fixed deliverable milestones you do everything possible to complete them on time. Too often organizations measure non-value-added metrics.

What should be done to ensure this does not happen? Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Ames, PMP and Kimberly McDonald Baker

Continuing our discussion from the prior blog article, we are now ready to address success factor number 2 in the Key Drivers to EPPM Success.

All Business Systems Talk to Each Other

An Enterprise Project Portfolio Management system is one of many business systems that an organization may use to improve its operations, but it must not live in a vacuum. An organization’s projects touch accounting through project costs and expenditures. Projects touch engineering through cost and material estimating, drawing releases and change orders. Service projects are affected when scheduling client engagements. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Ames, PMP and Kimberly McDonald Baker

Too often organizations make an investment in an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) system but they fail to recognize the full benefits. One of the reasons is that people fail to see an enterprise PPM solution as more than just a scheduling tool.

When used properly, however, an EPPM system can be a critical factor in driving business value, not only by making sure a project stays on schedule but also via ensuring that the right projects are selected, resources are used efficiently and decision makers have the information they need to drive corporate strategy.

Key Drivers of EPPM Success

1. Top down commitment, bottom up participation
2. All business systems talk to each other
3. Measuring what’s important
4. Determining which projects to start and when to shut them down
5. Finding the bottlenecks
6. Constant learning

This series of blog articles will address each of the above success factors. Read the rest of this entry »