By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP
The Oracle® E-Business Suite Project Management application (PJT) integrates with Microsoft® Project out-of-the-box to provide for bi-directional integration between Oracle E-Business Suite Projects and Microsoft Project (MSP). This provides for downloading the project structure and current working version of the project from Oracle and updating them in MSP to create the detailed workplan structure, together with resource assignments and resource scheduling. 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 »
Challenges
Determine if you have a demand or supply oriented environment
- Demand resource management is more prevalent with internal resource organizations, i.e. IT organizations. The primary focus is to assure that resources are optimally allocated to projects in keeping with the organization’s stated goals and objectives. Or, in other words managing the problems of “everybody is over-booked” or “there’s more work than resources”.
- Supply resource management tends to be more attuned to billable professional resources. The primary focus is in balancing staff retention, skill mix and gross margins by assuring that resources are optimized to their maximum capacity. Or in other words “Is everybody billable?” or “Do we have enough analysts or too many designers?”
- Professional services and other resource intensive organizations may have both issues at the same time Read the rest of this entry »
