Project Management Software & PSA Software

Are you ready to transform your PMO?: Forrester Research Inc

As the economy continues to recover, firms are looking at how to prepare for growth while maintaining a lean approach. Because of this, project management offices (PMOs) are continually evolving responsibility and focus to prepare for expanding demand and stay relevant. Today’s PMOs are moving away from traditional organisations that emphasise a rigid academic approach and toward more flexible approaches that adapt to changing delivery models. Today’s office takes a more strategic, bare bones approach. With executive support, the new PMO strips away inessentials and takes a less hierarchical approach to projects, embracing communities of practice (CoPs) to develop pragmatic methods that are consistent, measurable and effective.

Professional services business optimisation: RTM Consulting

As consultants, we all spend considerable time thinking about our clients’ businesses. We can discuss key elements of their strategy, business model and, most importantly, how the work we are performing for them will positively impact their business model. Pre-sales and sales activities generate a significant amount of information about the client’s goals/problems/needs. Proposal documents point out how our services will address the goals/problems/needs. In delivery, project status reports and conversations with clients stress the importance of the project to achieving the client’s objectives. Once project delivery is complete, as we look for that ‘killer client testimonial’, we follow up with the client looking for feedback on what results have been achieved. These activities represent a great deal of work and demand considerable attention. Additionally, these activities do not account for the time that the professional services (PS) executive team spends on managing the tactical activities of the PS organisation.

Complying with the Working Time Regulations: IRIS Project Solutions

From April 2009 the Working Time (Amendment) Regulations 2007 have boosted the minimum holiday entitlement for most full-time workers to 28 days. The regulations also require the same considerations to be applied to part-time workers on a pro-rata basis. In order to ensure that organisations comply with these regulations fully, holiday entitlements must now be calculated in hours to ensure that part-time staff or staff who do not work the standard company hours receive the correct entitlement. At a time when it’s even more critical that projects are completed on time and on budget, how do you ensure that you provide your staff with the necessary holiday entitlement; cope with unexpected absences and still do not let your clients or your projects suffer? If not planned for effectively, both holiday requests and unexpected absences can have a serious impact on the smooth running of your projects, your organisation and ultimately your bottom line.

Data migration for project leaders: DataFlux

The project leader plays a critical role in ensuring a successful data migration but exactly what responsibilities and activities should project leaders fulfil? This white paper provides the answers with a series of detailed sections including essential activities such as planning, forecasting, risk management, team selection, communication and collaboration. Data migration projects can pose significant challenges for project leaders. As a discipline, data migration is still in its relative infancy. There is a noticeable lack of industry associations, formal education and published best practices compared to similar disciplines such as data warehousing, data quality and data integration. There are many pitfalls awaiting the poorly skilled and inexperienced project leader and as a result far more data migration projects fail than succeed. The aim of this white paper is to help reverse this trend by providing expert advice and a set of best practices to help chart your data migration project to future success.

From profit killer to consultant burn-out: IRIS Project Solutions

For most management consultancies, the utilisation rate of their consultants is one of their key performance indicators and a key target on which staff are measured. Get it right and the chances are the business will be highly successful. Get it wrong and the consequences can be disastrous. Under-achieving can be a real profit killer. A relatively small reduction in utilisation rates can result in a disproportionately large reduction in profitability. And whilst avoiding under-achievement is the focus of many directors and managers, the effects of consistently high levels of utilisation should not be ignored. In the short term, the effect looks good – ie, increased profitability. But in the long term, the effects can be reductions in efficiency and quality of work, through to staff burn-out and resignations. So how do you get the balance right? Utilisation may be a simple percentage number but there are multiple factors that influence its outcome. It’s a complex matrix of clients, projects, tasks, due dates, deliverables, consultants, skills, availability, bids and contracts.

Portfolio risk management – no time to waste!: Risk Decisions

At any one time, a large organisation may have a significant number of ongoing projects, of varying types, stages and sizes, with different stakeholders, customers, suppliers and deliverables. Organisations align their project portfolio with business objectives in order to ensure they are delivering value. One thing is certain – these projects will have a significant amount of budget and resources assigned to them; what is uncertain is exactly what benefits they will deliver. It is a challenge to keep projects aligned with business objectives. Projects are approved, with defined scope and cost/time/performance targets; but the environment within which they are executed is constantly evolving: external political, environmental and market conditions change; sponsors come and go with regular management reorganisations; and customer expectations evolve over time. There are also internal challenges: projects compete for resources, customers, management attention; and projects are often interdependent, having impact on each other. So no matter how good your organisation is at keeping projects on track, they may often be overtaken by events beyond their control.

How to effectively introduce people and project planning: Maconomy

The ultimate pay-off of good capacity and resource planning (CRP) is a greater overview of and control over your business, but to reach that you first need a strong foundation for truly effective project planning and resource management. This white paper presents a plan to implement CRP in your organisation in a methodical and effective manner. It is useful to read if your firm decides that it needs to establish more sound and realistic planning throughout departments and project groups, and therefore you purchase, or plan to purchase, a suitable solution.

Why projects fail: avoiding the classic pitfalls: Oracle

There is an age-old saying that goes something like this: “We can do anything we want, but we cannot do everything we want.” This is the classic conundrum that all firms face. Organisations across industries are challenged to deliver an increasing number of projects and programmes, while maintaining flat (or decreasing) budgets and resources. In such an environment, only one outcome is possible…project failure. Are project failures considered normal? Long-held beliefs and studies have indicated that a majority of projects end in failure, perhaps suggesting that project failures are becoming an accepted norm. The oft-referenced, now decade-old Standish Group Chaos Report cited a 31% project failure rate – effectively lowering the bar, and along with it any optimism for a successful project effort. Project failure can be easily attributed to a number of factors. Six areas in particular highlight the biggest and most common failure culprits. These are constituent alignment, proactive risk management, performance measurement, project scope definition and management, critical project communication, and methodology usage. Each is discussed below, along with suggestions on avoiding the classic pitfalls.

Project excellence: PLI-SofTools

Managing the portfolio of corporate projects is now recognised as the core business management process. How effectively and efficiently projects across the organisation are planned, implemented and controlled ultimately determines whether the organisation survives and grows, or whether it falls into steady decline. This white paper presents a framework for implementing a culture of project excellence across the organisation. Most major activities on the corporate agenda – ranging from research & development to marketing programmes and business acquisitions – are projects of one form or another. Projects and programmes are therefore no longer the sole domain of the engineer; they now have relevance to all members of the senior management team. There are many difficulties in switching to a project approach to business management, but the potential benefits in terms of increased visibility and control, and operational effectiveness and efficiency are considerable. To make it work, there needs to be a balance between the needs of four very different stakeholders: sponsors, project managers, experts, and team members.

Achieving high returns on investment with Deltek Vision: Deltek

For professional services firms to succeed, they must build and maintain healthy client relationships, and aggressively manage and control the projects and contracts they win. Critical to achieving these goals and maximising returns and profits, is consolidating, automating and unifying all core business functions from client relationship management, proposal development, resource and project scheduling and planning, and employee time and expense to financial accounting, billing and human resources. Information from all of these areas must be readily accessible through real-time reporting, so profitability goals and targets can be monitored and adjusted if necessary, throughout the project lifecycle. Streamlining these processes into a software solution, with one database that can be shared across functional departments, ensures relevant information is available to make vital decisions that impact the bottom line.

Professional services automation: Deltek

The professional services firm operates through projects – ie, through discrete engagements for external or internal clients, delivered according to an agreed-upon scope, schedule, fee and set of deliverables. Some specific examples of project-based organisations include IT services businesses, architectural and engineering firms, design and planning firms, management consulting firms, systems integrators, accounting firms, research organisations and government contractors. In the supply chain of a services organisation, people and time are the most important resources when delivering on a project or engagement. Professional services firms must manage information and work to achieve success, in spite of project complications. The term ‘professional services automation’ (PSA) has been coined by industry analysts to describe the functions and activities that professional services firms must engage in to be successful. As the leading provider of PSA solutions to project-based businesses, Deltek views PSA as a comprehensive, universal, transparent, collaborative and knowledge-enhancing approach to managing information and work in professional services firms.

Three things business decision makers need to know about SOA: IFS

Anyone even peripherally exposed to business media that touch on enterprise application technology has seen the term service oriented architecture (SOA) bandied about in advertisements and articles. Major enterprise applications vendors are using the term SOA as a marketing buzzword and are indeed moving their product offerings in directions that deliver the flexibility and total application cost reductions that SOA can offer. But given the central role that SOA is playing in information technology, it is important for professionals involved with specifying and purchasing enterprise applications to get beyond a buzzword level understanding of what SOA is and what it is not. SOA essentially implies an application architecture made up of loosely coupled ‘services’ (for example, the various software features that are used in creating and processing a customer order) and service ‘consumers’ (other services that need to create customer orders, for example). Most business software applications can, of course, create customer orders. But a business application that is made up of services allows one to easily ‘rearrange’ the processes that create the need for a customer order, and how that customer order is created. This process tends to be very rigid in non-SOA applications.

Business benefits of project portfolio management: Asta Development

Project portfolio management is a term being used with increasing frequency in the area of project and resource management. Essentially it means grouping projects so they can be managed as a portfolio, as an investor would manage their shares, bonds and mutual funds. Portfolio management is the management of a number of projects that do not necessarily share a common objective, yet may use a common resource pool. Project managers are still managing individual projects but, rather than seeing them in isolation, each project is considered in the context of the portfolio of projects undertaken by the team, department or organisation as a whole.

Managing services spend: Epicor

Service enterprises are under relentless pressure to cut costs, reduce waste, eliminate inefficiency and consolidate operations. The mandate is clear: control expenses now! To survive in today’s economy, every enterprise must put the reins on spending in every location and category. Easier said than done. The ability for service enterprises to effectively source, procure and manage their spend is not keeping pace with the demand for promptness and compliance in purchasing of goods, services and other materials. A solid initiative needs to be augmented with a well-defined and well-implemented supplier relationship management (SRM) strategy. Rogue spending infiltrates even the most disciplined service enterprises, and is even more apparent in organisations with remote offices and employees. Vendor lists grow like weeds. There is confusion over who manages what service areas. Manual approval procedures for requisitions and invoices are cumbersome. Suppliers remain passive and uninvolved. Mergers and acquisitions only exacerbate the problem.