Enterprise PPM Best Practices - What's Important?

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Project Management 2.0

by - Dave Garrett

New technologies, concepts, and Web 2.0 tools are popping up everywhere. How can you use them to help your project team collaborate, communicate - or just give your project an extra boost? [Contact Dave]

Enterprise PPM Best Practices - What's Important?

Situation: You are coming up on a PPM implementation and want to focus your efforts.

We recently spoke with the folks at HP who have very significant experience and tools with some of the largest scale PPM efforts out there. A quick look at some of the analyst reports will show you the scale that they work on, which is complex and often high risk.

They were kind enough to share the following list of best practices with us. I'll give you the list and share some of my personal opinions on the topic. I'd certainly love to hear yours as well. A list like this can be dry to those who haven't experienced the importance of some of these things first hand. The war stories are what make them come alive - so please share them.

My personal pick of these is under team structure. I think that most PPM implementations fail because they lack ongoing commitment - a long range plan and most importantly PEOPLE that will see it through long-term. Organizations often invest heavily in tools and up front implementation, but resist investments in the people who can really make it all work. Tools only facilitate these sorts of solutions. People make it happen.

What's your pet best practice in PPM?

Executive Sponsorship

Active executive support

Establish vision and objective

User Adoption

Formalize the user adoption / change program

Establish accountability to adoption at all levels in the organization

Establish formal incentives or MBOs to encourage desired behavior

Time Sheet Compliance

Project Performance & Status Reporting Compliance

Service Levels

Allocate time in each release for end-user prioritized enhancements

Use PPM Center data in regular management communications

Training

Train the core team before or at the start of implementation

Leverage eLearning to reach large user bases

Only grant end-user application access when certification is complete

Governance

Implement a governance model

Establish a standards committee (or more as needed)

Team Structure

Treat knowledge transfer as continual vs. a post-project event

Build up internal competency as fast as possible

Enlist and formalize extended team member roles (w/ key influencers)

Implementation

Start simple and manage scope tightly

Apply rapid prototyping

Consider use of Conference Room Pilots (CRPs)

Clearly document landscape of 3rd party integrations and strategy

Learn and apply best practices

Define a reporting strategy

Avoid / minimize customization

Design for performance & scalability and reassess periodically

| Posted: August 29, 2008 01:12 PM | Permalink |

Comments

Aaron Porter (MBA, CSM) says:

This is a very timely article for me and, as always, great information. I just want to point out 1 thing. Implementing PPM is not just about implementing PPM. For most companies, this effort not only represents significant organizational change, it also represents significant cultural change.

There are a number of sources for steps to lead organizational and cultural change. I am partial to hybridizing Kouzes and Posners' 5 Practices of Exemplary Leadership and Kotters' 8 Step Process of Successful Change, but I don't think that the specific methodology is as important as including steps to address the people side of organizational change in the overall planning process. Even the best planned implementations can be foiled by ignoring the needs of the people who, in the long run, will be using what is implemented.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:53:03 PM EDT

STEVE ROLLINS says:

I agree with HP best practices as this will fit most immature environments. But why start at the beginning when you can start at the end and be operational in two-three weeks?

How you ask? It is simple, load your current project loads through the MS Project Gateway in the PPM tool. Most all PPM tools have this feature. Second step is to relate these projects to the highest level strategic objectives. Third step is to improve the integrity of each project schedule by making it statistically valid. This will lead to significant improvement in schedule integrity and overall predictability.

If you take the above approach, it won''t matter what your material level is! The only things that will matter are that you will have quicker results and less money in the Vendor''s pockets!

Monday, October 20, 2008 1:54:48 PM EDT

Douglas Badger says:

I like the simplicity of Steve Rollins' "start at the end" approach (posted Oct.20/08), BUT it assumes all the current projects in the enterprise are using MS/Project (using MS/Excel is more common I believe) and assumes the Portfolio Management Office KNOWS about all the IT projects in play across the enterprise.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 10:43:55 AM EDT

Shawn Belling says:

The most important part of an EPM implementation is the top-level leaderships' total embrace of proejct and program management as key, core business processes within the organization. Once this is true, clear and communicated throughout senior and middle management, the nuts and bolts are comparatively easy.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 5:44:36 PM EDT

Naomi Caietti says:

Dave:
Certainly, HP has been a leader and pioneer in this area globally. Also, with any best practice consider the culture and your resource assets to help achieve the model that best fits your organization. I've shared these thoughts in this space before so here are my excerpts:

" A PMO Manager, must be able to understand executive leadership's vision and understand the organization, its challenges, opportunities and where it wants to go. The PMO Manager who takes on this challenge must take the time to consider the alignment of his/her vision and its alignment and be able to lead the PMO under their own vision. The organization will continue to manage projects ineffectively if no "governance" structure is setup. The ole adage "You can't manage it, if you can't measure it" is true especially in a PMO. Now, I did not say, that projects can't be managed and completed successfully without the governance. If the PMO were to have more "authority", it would be able to better leverage the true value it has to offer.

A PMO will struggle to show quantifiable "value" if it has no authority over the organization buying in to participate to gather data a Project Manager must have to implement its most powerful program or branch, "Portfolio Management".

Today, I will argue that most, not all projects have some IT element to them. A PMO Project Manager may manage or collaborate to manage the project and/or product management lifecycle of a project. Effective governance of one or more PMOs in an organizations will be done through partnership between the Business and IT. Jeff Kaplan wrote an excellent book called "Strategic IT Portfolio Management" in which provides executives with the tools to: illuminate, assess, and improve existing practices; design a governance structure and allocate appropriate decision rights; ensure centralized control with decentralized execution; increase collaboration between business-unit and IT leadership; and instill a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. Wikipedia states that IT Portfolio management is distinct from IT financial management in that it has an explicitly directive, strategic goal in determining what to continue investing in versus what to divest from. PMOs and Portfolio Management done right will add value. " -Jun 18, 2008

Thursday, October 23, 2008 3:53:38 PM EDT

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