SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013

ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

Project Server – Who Can Benefit From It And How?IGOR SLIŠKOVIĆ, PROTERON CONSULTING

sponsors

About The Presentation - Thesis• EPM solution can show positive ROI• The source of value will differ from organization to

organization. • Yet there are clear conditions which, if satisfied, ensure

EPM system value realization. • We would like to discuss those.

The Scale of ROI Approaches

This presentationCalculate but with sanity

check

EPM Improves employee

productivity and projects success

rate

EPM provides ROI of 275% with

payback period of 13 months

assuming Level 2 PM maturity of the

organization, …

„Excel” ROI approach

• Logic• We don’t need to find exact value of improvement. It’s enough

to find credible/believable assumptions• Exact math we do with assumptions serves the purpose of

giving the reader necessary confidence

List all the areas of

improvement

Estimate current

effort, cost and risk

Estimate potential

improvement

• Guess• Survey

Calculate benefits

• ROI• Payback

period

Areas Of Improvements

15%

10%

10%

10%

25%

Improvements Quantification

Number of Project users 30

Organization size 1000

Average annual cost per employee

40.000 $

Costs

PRICE YEARLY COST (3 year horizon)

LICENSES 14.000 USD

Project Online 33 USD per user per month

Project Online With Project Pro

58 USD per user per month

SERVICES 12.000 USD

Implementation Cost 20k USD (one time)

Support 5k USD per year

TOTAL 26.000 USD

Investment in internal change management

??Total Number of Project users

30

Number of Project Pro users 5

Challenge• Company with 30 PMs and delivery resources would

deliver 2-3M USD worth of projects a year• Cost for tool and training is 25k USD

Would you bet your own 25k USD in exchange for savings that tool might

produce?

Source Of Improvements

Aligning Projects With

Resources Capacity

Benefit

Synchronizing Projects With

Highest ImpactAligning

Projects To Strategic Goals

Providing Estimation

Tools And Best Practice

Methodologies Assigning The Right Skills To

The Right Projects

Providing Workflow And Visibility Into

Project Performance Capturing

Planned And Active Projects

Providing Portfolio

Reporting And Analyses

Providing Automated

Report Generation

And Analysis

Feature

Team Planner View

Portfolio Analyses

Resource Plan

Resource Levelling

Demand Management

with Templates and Workflow

Centralized Resources with Role and Skills

Rich Reporting

Centralized Projects

Simple and Process Driven

Status and Time Reporting

Project Pro Schedule

Development!

WOULD THIS HELP?

Black Swan• The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is

a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.• The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We don’t want to exhaust ourselves in saving worthless minutes while missing major opportunities or risks!

Source: Wikipedia

What Does A Manager Do?• A manager makes decisions and sees them through!• What do you need to make good decisions?• Experience• Intuition• Guts• Data• Luck

The main value of EPM system is: • Fresh, accurate and relevant data that can be used to make short

term steering• Historical data that shows trends (or lack of those)In other words – give a tool to a few the most expensive resources instead of many with small impact.

Influence Of Company Type

Services Company• Projects are delivered for external customer project

have a clear price, cost and profitability attached.• Demand for resources comes from • External billable projects• External non-billable projects and engagements• Internal projects

• The ultimate goal is to have the supply of projects that exactly matches the full capacity Resource Management is the most important capability• Typically, you don’t skip the sale because resources are

overloaded portfolio selection is not that important in it’s basic form

Want to have a tight control of those by many dimensions

You don’t waist time in questioning the value of PM tools for Services

company. It’s there! Use it!

Idemo delat!

Level of usage in Microsoft partner companies (with licenses on hand) shows that, considering implementation, maintenance and organizational change perspectives – EPM is worth using

Non Services Company• Demand for projects and resources comes from business units• Constant change in demand and project priorities is a business

fact• Agendas other than company interest might drive the project

selection and priorities• Effects of poor project management are not visible in a short

term• Project resources worth managing are mostly located in IT (at

least in Financial and Telecom sector) • There is no implementation if resource department’s management

doesn’t support it

• Business units are not interested in resource management! Tracking costs, collaboration and transparency are typically their main drivers.

The Discipline• The same question asked by every customer – “How can we make sure

employees will feed the system?”• Organization that doesn’t have a lever to make employees do their job

is not likely to have potential of making changes based on EPM system so it cannot benefit from it• Team member’s responsibility is not only to do the job but also to

provide necessary data for others to do theirs• What can be done to address the “discipline issue”?

• Compliance reporting• Data quality role• Employee’s individual targets• Make the system as usable as possible (“are you telling me that there is an

issue with entering 10 numbers per week in your Outlook calendar?”)• Project assistant role• Make EPM system data the source of other system/process dependency (e.g.

invoicing)

Scope Of Implementation

• Must cover all capabilities with appropriate depth• It’s impossible to manage resources

without a level of certainty in demand • For managing the demand there must

be a filter with criteria and decision• It’s impossible to manage resource

supply without planning and tracking work done

• It’s impossible to track status without planning and tracking work done

• …

Implementation Requirements

Provide Project Status

Manage Resources

Manage Demand Manage Supply

Standardize planning Standardize Status Reporting

Select Based on objective criteria and capacity Dilligent Planning and Tracking

The worst possible approach is: “Let’s try it on one project”

The Planning And Tracking Process• Proficiency in developing and maintaining Project Schedule

is essential yet typically very rare• It’s difficult to get “experienced” project manager for a basic MS

Project training It’s the single most important “soft” implementation blocker

• If you have PS-skilful project managers agile implementation possible (finally found opportunity to use that popular word!)• Years of experience in managing individual projects provides

very little competence in organizing EPM environment it will not happen by itself and external help is necessary

• Pleas visit 10:15 session tomorrow “It’s Not A Bug. It’s A Feature” for discussion on possible adoption blockers

questions?

thank you.

SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013

ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013