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
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 »
By Robert D. Anderson, CPA
This blog article is a continuation of the June 7 article.
Financial Focus
It is important to note the development of the analytic package was done by the Oracle OBIEE team and did not include the assistance of the Oracle Project Development group. As a result of this development approach, some items viewed as important by heavy project users, such as Engineering and Construction firms, are not included in the initial release of Project Analytics.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Jason Ames
Primavera’s Project Portfolio Management suite is known for its ability to help you manage your projects and reduce the risk of project failure. But did you know that with Primavera P6 v7 Web Client you can use predefined workflow templates to request new projects? The project request process is extremely important because each new project not only represents an opportunity to help a company grow, every new project has an impact on every other project occurring in the organization. Each new project utilizes a company’s time, money and resources and should contribute to the company’s strategic goals and ultimately to the company’s bottom line.
Utilizing the Primavera project initiation work flow in P6 v7 web access, you can greatly improve your project selection process via the steps below. Read the rest of this entry »
By Robert D. Anderson, CPA
An article by Adam Bookman provides an interesting perspective on why about 68% of IT projects fail to deliver the original desired benefits. He quotes from a study done by the Standish Group that identifies three primary reasons:
1. The initiative was outsourced to IT and not owned by the business
2. The right tool drives success
3. Best Practices represent the best starting place
Looking back over 20 years in the Accounting and Finance role at major US firms and another 14 years consulting with large international companies, these findings agree with my observations. The most successful initiatives have always been the ones where people in the direct operational area take full ownership and IT plays a supporting rule. The worst initiatives have been the ones solely driven by IT with no business buy in. Read the rest of this entry »
Since January, Project Partners consultants, both in the US and in India, have had the privilege of working on-site with Oracle to test the Fusion Applications. An absolute win-win situation for everyone involved. It is our chance to see the live product in action, to test, test and test again to insure quality and to get hands-on experience and training using the best-of-the-best in Projects Applications. In exchange, Oracle receives a tremendous amount of feature validation, field expertise, and knowledge from those of us who live and breathe the world of Projects every day. This early look at the product before all the code is frozen helps guarantee the quality release we have all been waiting for.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Robert D. Anderson, CPA
During the last two years, Project Partners has been approached by several firms who run Oracle Order Management and now want to implement Oracle E-Business Suite Projects applications to provide a project-level profit and loss view, as well as contract and client profitability across the firm. Generally this request is happening at the same time the firm is undergoing massive growth and management wants it done quickly so they can get a handle on the growth that is happening and make sure it is profitable or identify problem areas quickly so action can be taken to prevent serious impact to the overall business.
The Oracle E-Business Suite Project Management module (PJT) does not create transactions but provides several tools to allow the tracking of financial transactions that are happening in the Project Costing and Project Billing applications. In addition, it offers both direct tracking in the tool and integration with project management tools, such as Microsoft Project Standard Edition and Primavera P6, as well as an open interface to interact with other similar management and scheduling tools in the market. Since the financial, resource and schedule information all resides in Oracle, the ability to leverage Key Performance Indicators and grouping them into Key Performance Areas, progress tracking and status reporting all combine to offer a strong tool to present the exceptions out of large volumes of data so the firm can take appropriate action at an early stage in the work. Read the rest of this entry »
By Tamim Kulaly, PMP
The first important question is “why do projects fail?” There could be several reasons:
- Project over run – The project takes longer than planned
- Cost over run – Executing the project cost more than budgeted
- Underperformance – The project team did not deliver the goals of the project
- Plan too optimistic – Evidencing a lack of understanding of true scope of the project
- Scope creep – The scope of the project increased but plans and budgets were not revised accordingly
- Other – Sometimes things go wrong due to lack of appropriate resources or equipment failure or bad weather or other unpleasant surprises.
To avoid the downfalls of project failures, project centric organizations should look into Risk Analysis products to minimize project risks. Oracle’s Primavera Risk Analysis is a full lifecycle risk analytics solution integrating cost and schedule risk management. Users will have an objective view of required contingency to account for cost and schedule uncertainty as well as analyzing the cost effectiveness of risk response plans. Read the rest of this entry »
Join Project Partners and Oracle Corporation on Wednesday, February 24 for a free, live webinar to learn about Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture (AIA) solution for integrating Oracle Primavera and Oracle E-Business Suite applications. You’ll gain valuable information about how this solution will help their organization bring E-Business Suite and Primavera silos together. Read the rest of this entry »
By Peter Budelov
Project Managers (PMs) lead a hectic life because they not only need to manage the day-to-day operations of a project (i.e. work deliverables, schedules, cost and revenue), but they also must spend time with the appropriate IT tools to do this. The keystone in making good project management decisions is having accurate, timely and easy to access project reporting data.
Typically when using enterprise project management applications, this data is available, but not necessarily easy to get to, may not be easily displayed in a user friendly manner, does not necessarily have all the data needed, is not configurable, and certainly unavailable in a disconnected mode. Read the rest of this entry »
