Ntumba continuously one step ahead with Project Portfolio Office
Monday, 22 April 2013 Ntumba, a 100% black-owned professional company specialising in accounting, auditing and advisory and information systems services, has implemented Project Portfolio Office (PPO), an online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application, in order to better manage project growth.
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Ntumba continuously one step ahead with Project Portfolio Office
Monday, 22 April 2013 Ntumba, a 100% black-owned professional company specialising in accounting, auditing and advisory and information systems services, has implemented Project Portfolio Office (PPO), an online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application, in order to better manage project growth.
“Management required an application that would offer an accurate view of each project’s performance in order to discover and address challenges before they become business risks,” says Jabulani Zimu, a director at Ntumba InfoSys.
According to Zimu, Ntumba’s client base has grown exponentially since 2008, when it started focusing on auditing, financial accounting and business consulting and advisory services. Recently, the company added information systems services (which Zimu heads up), wherein PPO will play a large role in deploying ERP/CRM systems, information technology governance and information security systems at its clients’ sites.
“We are now undertaking numerous projects for various clients using PPO, and have found that the solution effortlessly gives management that much-needed project intelligence. Primary users of the application will be our project managers and team members.”
“PPO seamlessly integrates into daily operations, ensuring that the development of workflow runs efficiently, subsequently offering immense value to all types of operations. Of course, being a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, it also offers users rapid deployment as well as reduced investment and financial risk,” says Guy Jelley, Project Portfolio Office CEO.
“The application’s simplicity, user-friendliness and ease of go-live have stood out for us. You simply sign up to PPO and you are ready to manage a project using the system. Naturally, an added advantage is that there is no need for upfront infrastructure or resource investment,” adds Zimu.
“We recently finished two projects using PPO, namely the development of our new Web site (www.ntumba.co.za) and our new internal ERP/CRM system, via which our clients can communicate and submit documents online. I attribute the success of these two projects to the ease of project scope, process control and communication management inherent in PPO, which has also had a tremendous effect on delivery turnaround times,” he concludes.
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Increase the Perceived Benefits of Project Management Methodologies
A PMI survey conducted a few years back supported the premise that companies which have instituted consistent project management practices enjoy a higher project success rate than those which have not. PMI’s March 2012 Pulse of the Profession publication stated that in organizations which used standardized project management practices, 71% of projects met their original goals and business intent which is higher than the norm.
These two statements would seem to support the merits of implementing a project management methodology (PMM). However, the December 2012 issue of PMI’s Project Management Journal includes an article which challenges this conventional wisdom. This article covers the results of a qualitative-based research study to assess the effectiveness of project management methodologies through a series of four case studies.
The research revealed that key benefits identified by instituting PMMs were supporting senior management in their drive to control, monitor, standardize and unify practices as well to help staff with lower levels of project management knowledge or experience. Unfortunately, minimal benefits were perceived by the group which you would expect would benefit the most from PMMs, namely, project managers!
Although somewhat counter-intuitive, these findings align well with my own observations of how successful organizations I’ve worked with have been at improving their project management capabilities.
PMM compliance tends to be strongest with junior practitioners as they find that PMMs act as a guide to give them structure and confidence to lean on in place of tried-and-true experience. Senior management also support the use of PMMs to the extent that compliance with a PMM increases the predictability and consistency of status reporting and governance practices.
On the other hand, experienced project managers don’t recognize the benefits to themselves as they will likely have worked with multiple PMMs over their careers and would have honed a set of practices which work best for them – in other words, they have developed their own customized PMMs.
Occasionally, there might be breakthroughs – for example, seasoned project managers who have never benefited from a fully automated project management information system might appreciate the reduction in project administration effort provided by these tools. However, even when using such solutions, flexibility or creativity constraints will exist which generate frustration for senior practitioners.
Just as a person can be spiritual without observing all or even some of the practices of a particular religion, competency at project management is not an effect of compliance with methodologies. In fact, some project managers I have observed as being totally compliant with their organization’s PMM regularly demonstrated poor judgment in the management of their projects.
The Guide to the PMBOK (Fourth Edition) states “Good practice does not mean the knowledge described should always be applied uniformly to all projects; the organization and/or project management team is responsible for determining what is appropriate for any given project.” This may also be a key reason why agile methods continue to gain new disciples – a key tenet of agile is empowering self-managing teams to define the best methods of managing their work efforts.
So what can you do to increase the perceived value of your PMM in the eyes of your senior practitioners?
Start by classifying the practices within it into the following three categories:
Mandatory practices for which compliance to a standard is essential
Mandatory practices for which compliance to a standard is nice to have
Optional practices
An example of a practice from the first category is creating and maintaining project schedules which adhere to a set of guidelines to enable the ability to report on a project portfolio as a whole. If project managers do not follow these guidelines, it becomes impossible to support enterprise resource management or to visualize cross-project impacts.
An example within the second category is storing the current versions of key project documents within a common folder structure in an online document repository. While it is convenient to store documents across projects using a consistent folder structure, this is a “nice to have” so long as team members and stakeholders are able to locate documents for a particular project.
Lean Six Sigma practitioners might consider the third category as “waste” as these practices are unlikely to be followed by all but the most compliant project managers.
The benefit of this categorization is it allows you to focus compliance efforts where it is crucial, but provide flexibility for all other instances. While project managers might like full “artistic” freedom, most will understand the benefits of consistency where it matters. Go one better by engaging them in the development or refinement of the must-have practices. Finally, kick it up a notch by establishing practices to address some of the pain points experienced by more seasoned project managers and you may successfully turn your former Luddites into advocates!
As Peter Senge said “We all know the difference in ourselves between doing what we’re here to do versus doing what someone said we ought to do. That’s the difference between aspiration and compliance.”
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Introducing the new, improved Project Portfolio Office (version 3.4.2)
Tuesday, 2 April 2013 Project Portfolio Office is pleased to announce the introduction of the latest version of the PPO application, bringing its users even greater value and more functionality – and all at no additional cost.
Version 3.4.2 will be the first of several upgrades planned for this year, all par...
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Introducing the new, improved Project Portfolio Office (version 3.4.2)
Tuesday, 2 April 2013 Project Portfolio Office is pleased to announce the introduction of the latest version of the PPO application, bringing its users even greater value and more functionality – and all at no additional cost.
Version 3.4.2 will be the first of several upgrades planned for this year, all part of Project Portfolio Office’s strategy to help its clients better manage their portfolios, programmes and projects.
Simple and seamless, existing users will not need to request the new version or even do anything specific to download it, except enjoy the new functionalities which are now already available to them.
This includes:
PDF Reports - reports generated in the PDF view will now include page numbers on PDF pages;
Filters on null values - users are now able to create filters using a null or blank value filter condition. For more information, please click on this link;
Security enhancements - e-mail notifications and report mailers are more closely regulated, ensuring that only active PPO users receive them. For detailed information on this new functionality, see the following knowledge base article;
Report mailers – the foundation to enable the setting up and scheduling of report mailers from the front-end of PPO has now been laid, taking the first step in facilitating this as an administrator functionality going forward; and
Microsoft (MS) Project 2013 support – this will now be provided to users of MS Project 2013.
Additional Report - An additional Daily Resource Allocation report has been deployed and the Monthly Resource Allocation report has been renamed to the Weekly Resource Allocation report;
Says Guy Jelley, Project Portfolio Office CEO: “As a company that has always taken its users requests and needs very seriously, Project Portfolio Office is pleased to be able to bring even more functionality and new features, as well as greater value, to our user base. We look forward to hearing your feedback and providing further benefits across our subsequent upgrades planned for later this year.”
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Introducing Joe and Mary…
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Project Portfolio Office has managed to help Joe and Mary at ACME solve their project management woes within 90 seconds!
Wishful thinking perhaps, but now that we have your attention, we’d like to share our new explainer video with you – short, sweet and pretty funny (if we do say so ours...
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Introducing Joe and Mary…
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Project Portfolio Office has managed to help Joe and Mary at ACME solve their project management woes within 90 seconds!
Wishful thinking perhaps, but now that we have your attention, we’d like to share our new explainer video with you – short, sweet and pretty funny (if we do say so ourselves).
It’ll show you how PPO can help you and your business resolve your project management difficulties.
Watch it, share it, love it!
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Project Portfolio Office aids AfriSam development
Friday, 15 February 2013 Leading black-controlled construction materials group in southern Africa, AfriSam, has chosen to implement Project Portfolio Office (PPO), an online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application, in order to meet its project management and reporting needs and assist in the organis...
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Project Portfolio Office aids AfriSam development
Friday, 15 February 2013 Leading black-controlled construction materials group in southern Africa, AfriSam, has chosen to implement Project Portfolio Office (PPO), an online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application, in order to meet its project management and reporting needs and assist in the organisation’s ongoing transformation.
Says Sumaya Moosa, AfriSam project management office (PMO) manager: “AfriSam is committed to being not just a ‘good’ but a ‘great’ company. We believe that the roll-out of PPO will form an important part of this development moving into the future.”
Moosa explains that AfriSam’s information services department was looking for a mainstream PPM functionality that is delivered as a service, to support immediate project process automation and reporting needs.
“The establishment of a project management discipline within the AfriSam information services department required that a technically sound tool be implemented to enable the achievement of project and process governance, adherence to standards and procedures as well as the adoption of project management methodology,” she says.
“We evaluated a number of tools, based on our requirements for automation, compliance to standards and methodology, cost-effectiveness, security, transparency, mobility, accuracy, and ease of use.
“PPO was the best match to these criteria, scoring higher than all other vendors, and it was thus decided to implement this solution within the department. Furthermore, we wanted to be able to implement the tool from 2013, and PPO has the functionality to be scalable and easily integrated. The PPO costing model is also extremely straightforward, allowing full user management - one of the most noticeable benefits as opposed to other complex pricing models,” Moosa adds.
Says Guy Jelley, Project Portfolio Office CEO: “Many competitive solutions within the marketplace offer role-based pricing, meaning that administrative users are charged for differently to project managers or team members and so on. In reality, it is very difficult to define such set user groups, as people may hold different roles across a number of different projects. More importantly, the business also needs to calculate how many of each type of user will need access to the solution before accepting this type of model, something that is not easy to quantify upfront.
“PPO’s simple pricing model with volume-based discounting allows users to estimate and manage their subscription costs easily and gives them full flexibility on the number of user groups and profiles for each.
“In addition, the pricing is tiered in such a way that the more users subscribed to PPO, the lower the price per user, positioning it as a tool not just for project managers, but rather for all project resources,” he concludes.
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Project Schedules Should Benefit More Than Just the Project Manager
I’d written an article previously which listed the benefits a good project schedule can provide, but most of those would be perceived as being of value to a project manager. “All you care about is the schedule!” is likely a complaint that has been heard by most project managers.
The danger in such cases is that project managers will struggle to get sufficient engagement or input into the creation or ongoing maintenance of project schedules. This can become a vicious cycle as the project managers are more likely to develop schedules themselves with minimal input which will only further the negative perception that these schedules are of limited value or don’t reflect reality.
While I don’t expect project managers to be primarily responsible for educating team members and stakeholders on project management practices, part of our role is to support and reinforce the importance of these – after all, we usually don’t know what PM 101 knowledge a new team member has when they are assigned to our projects!
So what are some of the ways in which project managers can convey the necessity or benefits of a schedule to their team members or to the functional managers that should support and demand their creation?
It helps to establish and maintain expectations between team members, stakeholders and customers. This should help to reduce the volume of the “Are we there yet?” requests from those outside of the project team.
It helps functional managers achieve some measure of predictability around resource allocation. In organizations where staff work concurrently on projects and operations, it can be very challenging for functional managers to plan for the peaks and troughs of day-to-day activities. Improved visibility into the demand from projects can at least remove one variable from this complex equation. It can also help functional managers keep project managers honest by confirming when team members are expected to be released from projects.
It should help the customer and project sponsor sleep better at night! If the customer or sponsor are relying on the project manager telling them everything is on track without a method of objectively assessing that, they are likely in for an unpleasant surprise.
It can provide protection to the project team if the sponsor or customer requests a change that cannot be accommodated without unnatural behaviors.
It helps to pull everyone’s (that includes the project manager!) head up from getting too focused on the most immediate critical milestone, and helps to remind them that the current battle is just one campaign of a much bigger war.
Project schedules are detailed directions for travelling to a faraway land. In their absence, if the extent of one’s geographic knowledge is limited to what you can see or the places one has visited (and remembers!), it can become challenging to visit new destinations in a predictable fashion.
Running a project of even moderate complexity without a schedule is similar to navigating with those maps of old that indicated “Here be dragons”!
Kiron D. Bondale, PMP is the Director, Corporate Project Management Office for Agricorp. Kiron has worked for over thirteen years in the project management domain with a focus on technology and change management. He has setup and managed Project Management Offices (PMO) and has provided PPM consulting services to clients across multiple industries. For more of Kiron’s views on project & change management, please visit his blog.
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CIH invests in Project Portfolio Office for enhanced processes
Tuesday, 22 January 2013 Capricorn Investment Holdings (CIH), a Namibian-based financial services group with interests in banking, insurance, asset management, investments and microfinance, is improving project status reporting, resource utilisation as well as timesheet management, with the roll-out of Project Portfolio Off...
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CIH invests in Project Portfolio Office for enhanced processes
Tuesday, 22 January 2013 Capricorn Investment Holdings (CIH), a Namibian-based financial services group with interests in banking, insurance, asset management, investments and microfinance, is improving project status reporting, resource utilisation as well as timesheet management, with the roll-out of Project Portfolio Office (PPO), an online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application.
CIH’s flagship brand is Bank Windhoek, which was founded in 1982, but the group also has a diversified business portfolio, including Botswana and Zambia, and is constantly exploring new investment opportunities throughout the Southern African region.
According to Gida Nakazibwe-Sekandi, executive director: Group Professional Services at CIH, the organisation’s decision to implement PPO was based on the ease of use of the solution.
“The system is simple to use, particularly for those staff members who do not typically operate within a project environment, and its flexible pricing model makes it a most attractive option. Furthermore, as a software as a service (SaaS) offering, PPO’s Web capability will allow our Africa-based practitioners easy access to the system.”
In addition to better project, resource and time capturing management, CIH needed to enhance its data management for client billing and invoicing. “A number of our staff members will be utilising PPO, including our professional services staff, business process management practitioners, legal team, secretarial services employees, the group marketing and communication department and our internal auditors,” Nakazibwe-Sekandi explains. “We are also currently investigating the expansion of our current reporting output of PPO.”
“From a resource and capacity management perspective, PPO allows users to identify existing resources, their skills and experience, as well as to see which resources are available when,” explains Guy Jelley, CEO at Project Portfolio Office. “Not only this, but it provides for the central storage, retention and access to project-related documents, knowledge and lessons, crucial actions for any project team.
“By using PPO, project teams and other involved stakeholders are allowed far greater visibility of the status of work, projects, programmes and portfolios. It also creates a collaborative environment for teams to work, plan and complete projects together and provides the required communication and alerts to keep all members informed,” he concludes.
Released in 2005, Project Portfolio Office (PPO) is an award winning online project portfolio management (PPM) and collaboration application. Designed by project managers to assist project teams within organisations of any size and across all industries, PPO helps to plan, manage, collaborate, execute and report on projects, programs and portfolios. PPO’s cloud-based application is simple to use, yet enterprise capable, with numerous preconfigured solutions available. PPO is a true Software as a Service (SaaS) application, making it immediately available, with no long-term contract and billed per active user per month with real-time ability to change your user base. PPO is flexible and can be configured to support any methodology. The solution is currently being used on over 35,000 projects, with current clients including Deloitte, UTi, Kimberly Clark, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SABMiller, Vodacom, Cadbury and British Telecommunications (BT).
PPO’s capabilities include:
methodology and governance alignment;
time and cost management;
planning and task management;
resource and capacity management;
issue and risk management;
document and knowledge management;
reports and dashboards;
communication, collaboration and alerts;
portfolio management and prioritisation;
idea and innovation management;
change and quality management;
online approvals and configurable workflow;
customisable and integratable;
secure, auditable and access controlled; and
online help and support.
Try PPO free of charge at www.projectportfoliooffice.com
