IT Project Portfolio Management

Successful Work Management: Sharing What Works

Learning project management best practice doesn’t just happen. Especially for those who don’t come from the traditional IT project portfolio management background.

Over the last couple of years I have noticed that there is a lot of project-based work accomplished by managers who aren’t formally trained project managers as companies turn to projects for increasing productivity. Because these "accidental" project managers are often left to themselves to figure out the best ways to manage projects, motivate teams, and get work done, searching out information to help learn best practices becomes critically important. That being said, some of those "accidental" project managers turn out to be incredibly effective and some of the most intuitive and successful managers.

Without getting into a discussion about certification and formal training, there are other ways for budding project managers to learn the ropes. (Anyone considering the path of the PMP should talk to Josh Nankivel at PM Student or Derek Huether at HueCubed, both of these guys are great resources for preparing for the PMP exam.) I’d like to talk about some less formal ways we share information and learn best practices.

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I am a big supporter of the social network of project managers on Twitter who so willingly share valuable information with the rest of us. There is a tremendous amount of really good, real-world information, available to anyone who is willing to do a little bit of digging. There are excellent blogs, webinars, user groups, conferences, tradeshows, and seminars. In fact, it’s never been easier to learn how to best implement sound work management methodologies within your organizations.

I think this almost instantaneously available information benefits the project management community. We are very fortunate as project professionals that there are so many talented and capable people willing to share their insight into what makes successful projects click and what it takes to be a skilled project leader. I believe this "community" lifts the profession and creates greater perceived value in the workplace.

I know that I enjoy the time I spend with my peers in person, on the phone, and even online. I think it helps me be better at what I do and inspires me to share with the rest of the community. As I talk to people about what makes them successful, it’s rarely a discussion about software (although the right software tools contribute to project success). It’s usually about implementing sound methodology and best practices.

Why don’t you give it shot. Ask a question via someones blog or on Twitter and see how willing they are to help you find an answer. You might be surprised at how quickly someone who normally charges hundreds of dollars and hour in consulting fees will step up to answer your question.

Can your PPM software defuse a bomb?

Spy vs Spy When Companies Merge

Synergies…Efficiencies…Economies of scale….that all sounds great! Why wouldn’t two big companies want to merge?

Well, one reason might be that if they’re in the same industry, they probably use a lot of the same software, and sorting out which packages to Retain and what to Decommission is an enormous undertaking.

It’s a good thing that one of my clients knew about AtTask when they needed to sort it all out.

The AppRat Team

Our Applications Rationalization Team (or AppRat, as it’s more commonly referred to) was charged with sifting through 4000+ software applications as two major companies merged. Initially, we tried to use a combination of a small website database and spreadsheets stored in Livelink to keep track of things. It didn’t work, as this diagram shows, so we converted to @task.


Before: Web DB/Livelink/Excel - Limited access to Web DB - Restricted to 99 custom columns - Daily extract to Livelink - Repetitive data reformatting - Data staleness caused confusion		After: @task - Multi user environment - Unlimited custom parameters - Common view to all users - Reusable custom reporting - Real time reporting for all audiences

Ownership vs Usage

The AppRat team set up a single Project with a Task for each of the 4000+ apps they needed to either Retain or Decommission. Behind each such app Task, they also tracked over 100 custom data parameters to help guide the Work Management. Often, apps were used by more than just one department. And sometimes, the Owner making the Decision to Decommission an app wasn’t the same as the User(s) wanting to Retain it.

Hence the bomb scare that lead to this post.

Always cut the Red Wire

With all that data flying around, it’s easy to see how certain scenarios could be overlooked. Recently, our executives challenged us to prove that we were only Retaining what was Used, and that we were Using what we Retained. Huh. Sounds obvious…but we really weren’t sure how to show it. So we decided to build a dashboard to look for exceptions.

It worked. We can now spot and defuse explosive exceptions right away. There’s a screen shot below with a real example.

The moral, though, is that by leveraging @task’s flexible custom data and exceptional custom reporting, we used our IT Project Portfolio Management platform to solve one of the more challenging aspects of the merger.

That’s dynamite.