Project Performance Management Solution (PPMS)

1. Project Performance Management Solution (PPMS) Solution Overview

2. Agenda • Common Challenges • Solution Goals • Demo, from two perspectives: • Project Managers • PMO Team • Going Forward

3. Common Challenges • Redundant, manual processes are time consuming for the PMO and Project Managers, often significant time spent each month preparing static reports for Executives. • Data Analytics and KPIs are difficult to monitor because data is housed in disparate sources including spreadsheets, shared drives, SharePoint sites, etc. • No audit or historical information is usually not available to Project Managers causing them to spend excessive time to provide leadership with project performance status updates • With numerous manual inputs, the opportunity for errors is high while reports produced come with a low degree of confidence.

4. Solution Goals • Help organizations streamline data collection processes. (e.g. eliminate the need for redundant data-entry). The solution simplifies the information-capture for both the PM and the PMO • Enable robust reporting on authoritative data using techniques like scorecards, dashboards and / or reports. • Help organizations to centrally manage authoritative data. (e.g. manage data in a structure / format that supports data analysis and reporting scenarios) • Reduce or Eliminate opportunities that invite typos and errors. Guide the users through the process to reduce guess-work and provide better visibility into what will be reported. • Providing for a smooth transition, demonstrate how objective metrics can be derived and compared against subjective measures.

5. Tools • We focused on achieving these goals by leveraging to the greatest extent possible, products and technologies that most agencies already own or have access to, such as: • Microsoft Project Server • Microsoft SharePoint • SQL Server Platform • Microsoft Office

6. High-Level Solution Architecture

7. Breakdown of the Tools • Project Server 2010 – Leverages current investments and provides significant scalability. With a few custom fields, we capture the key information needed and simplify the tool at the same time. Project Managers of any maturity level will recognize the flexibility of the design. • SharePoint 2010 – Also leverages current investments and provides outstanding collaboration and Business Intelligence tools. Project teams are given collaborative space which becomes a one-stop shop for all project-related information. • MS Excel 2010 – Perhaps the most widely used data collection and analysis tool in the world. Not only is this a familiar interface for users, but Excel is very flexible and supports the ability for PMs to easily update their financial baselines, projections and performance indicators. Using Excel will drastically improve user adoption of the system because there will be little to no learning curve.

8. Demo – A Day in the Life of a Project Manager

9. DEMO A Day in the Life of a Project Manager

10. From the standard Project Web App site, Project Managers can easily get to any of their projects. PM selects their project and clicks here to access its SharePoint site (or they can just go straight to the SharePoint site)

11. The task provides the PM with an explanation of what is required and a link directly to the Microsoft Excel-based budget tool, making it easy for them to access the tool that is used to prepare and save their financial baseline for their project. The site provides them with links to content (pages and even videos) that help them perform their work. Importantly, the site automatically generates tasks which remind the PM when various activities are needed. For example: immediately after a new project site is created, a task reminds the PM that they need to prepare a financial baseline. They use the site to create and manage their project deliverables. They use the site to manage and address issues They use the site to manage and mitigate risks The SharePoint-based project collaboration site is the single location that the PM goes to access all project-related information and tasks. Each Project in Project Server has one of these sites.

12. The Project Manager uses Microsoft Excel to create their Financial Baseline. The Excel-based tool includes a custom task pane that guides the PM through what they need to do.

13. When they click “Manage Baselines”, they are taken directly to the place within the workbook where they need to enter their baseline projection data. The rows and columns presented to the PM align precisely with the tasks and task durations that exist within their current project plan. This enables the them to easily spread cost projections across the time range of their project plan.

14. At this point, the PM’s task has been completed. A financial baseline has been saved in accordance with the Project Schedule. The Project is Ready for Execution! A month goes by and it is now time for the PM to prepare and submit their monthly financial projections and subjective performance measures. As always, they visit their project’s collaboration site to do this.

15. Once again, this task tells them what they need to do and provides a link directly to the Excel budget tool. No need for them to look around for this Excel workbook! Today when they visit their project site, they notice a new task pending their action. This task is reminding them that it is time to perform their monthly projections.

16. After clicking the link in the task, the project budget spreadsheet is launched. Once again, the rows and columns presented in this sheet align precisely to the current project plan. For example, if the duration of the project plan increased, additional columns will appear in the spreadsheet so that the PM can project costs into the new periods.

17. If their revised projections exceed the PMO’s threshold, they will be notified that an action is required. Once they have entered their projections and subjective performance measures, they simply save their projections for the given reporting period. At this time, the PM can also easily enter their subjective performance measures and gain quick insight into various project-level status and measures.

18. At this point, the Project Manager (PM) has completed their monthly projection process. A projection snapshot has been saved into a centrally managed database and the Project Management Office (PMO) gains immediate visibility into project performance. Each month, a task is automatically generated for the PM reminding them that they need to perform their financial projections. That task is prominently displayed on the landing page of the Project Site as previously depicted.

19. This time, the task points the PM directly to the Variance Request form. They can click the link and the form will be opened, prepopulated with information that comes directly from the database. No need for re-typing data that has already been captured in prior steps! Assuming the PM’s recent projection triggered the need for a variance report, a task will be waiting for them in their project site reminding them to fill out the report.

20. After clicking the link in the task, the variance form is launched. This form itself can be governed by a SharePoint workflow such that when submitted, a review / approval workflow is initiated.

21. Collectively these tools greatly simplify the work that is required of the PM. Additionally, more reliable data is collected throughout the process and this data is centrally managed in an authoritative database.

22. Demo – A Day in the Life of a PMO Member

23. DEMO A Day in the Life of the Project Management Office Member

24. From the PMO Central site, all reporting is driven via the Business Intelligence section on the Quick Launch. Click “Portfolio Dashboard” to start.

25. You are taken to the Performance Point Dashboard showing a Performance Scorecard for all the projects. Each KPI includes a drill-down to the project. For example, click to expand “Cost Performance.”

26. To look at a prior time period, change the drop-down for “Month” here. With this, we can view what the projects / portfolio looked like from a prior reporting period. Let’s click “2013 February” to see what the dashboard looked like 3 months ago. You can now see the projects and KPI for each of them. The white diamond means the data for that time period hasn’t been entered yet. In this case, the Project Managers need to update their projections.

27. Click a project to see what other information is available Great! You can see that all the projects have data entered for this month. The chart on the right is updated to reflect the information for the selected project. You can see that this project was projected to spend much more than the baseline at one point.

28. So far, we’ve been focused on Cost Performance. The other metrics work the same way. Go ahead and expand Schedule Performance, then choose a project.

29. For Schedule Performance, you can also see some additional milestone performance information.

30. Ok, let’s see what other reporting options are available. From the PMO Site, let’s click into the Report Gallery

31. This one is an Excel Services report that uses an SSRS data connection to pull data from SQL. Click the picture to open the report. The Report Gallery is actually a “Power Pivot Gallery” that uses some of SharePoint’s finest BI features. In this gallery, there are a number of reports. Let’s go through them to show the types of reporting that is available.

32. To return to the Gallery, click FileClose. The data in these reports are refreshed automatically when you open them.

33. These two reports pull data from an OLAP Cube. Let’s click the Milestone report to see the details.

34. Republish the report and close Excel when you’re done. These reports are all completely tailorable, as well. Click “Open in Excel” to see how easy it can be. Add the TaskStartDate by dragging-and-dropping it onto the Pivot Table. The reports rely on Excel Pivot Tables to slice the data. Via the web, you can filter or sort by any column. E.g. To see upcoming milestones, filter by Finish Date It’s that easy! The Start Date is now instantly added to the report. Using Excel, you also have Conditional Formatting and many other options available to make the report look nice. Make any other tweaks as you see fit.

35. This Portfolio Analyzer report is particularly interesting and uses PowerPivot to slice data. Click the image to open the report.

36. This data is starting to tell me something about my projects. E.g. Notice the projected expenses tail off near the end of the year. Next time I am planning my budget, I can better plan the portfolio with this information. Again, my report is updated instantly. Notice at the top of this report that there are several “slicers”. Let’s quickly look at only the DMB projects by clicking the value in the Portfolio Slicer. The report is instantly updated to show only the DMB projects. Let’s dig a little deeper. I am especially interested in a few of the DMB projects. Hold down Ctrl while you click the projects to include. To return to the Gallery, click FileClose. Finally, I only want to focus on this current year, so click 2013 in the “Year” Slicer. The same type of Slicers are available. On this page, though, I can even drill down to see the performance of specific phases in my project. This report also has another tab. Click the second tab to open the other worksheet. These reports show the same information in the previous tab but just in a different manner. E.g. I planned to spend 7% of my total budget on the AMS project, but so far, it only accounts for 3%. Why is that?

37. Finally, a new feature with SQL 2012 is PowerView reporting. This particular report uses PlayAxis to animate my report.

38. This type of report is particularly useful when preparing a presentation. The report can be exported directly into a presentation and can animate live data, directly from PowerPoint. Click FileExport to PowerPoint. In this report, we’re using Play Axis to animate the data. Click the button to the left of the time slider to play the report.

39. As you can see, once the data is in a database, we open up lots of possibilities for analyzing data, using out-of-the-box SharePoint and Excel Business Intelligence tools.

40. Contact Us -(703) 635-2627

41. Procentrix Overview • Founded in June 2006 • Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia • Supporting Federal Government and Private Sector Clients • Premier Provider of Microsoft-Based Solutions • Microsoft Authorized Provider of SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) • Microsoft Online Services Partner Founding Vision - To help organizations develop reliable IT based solutions with a focus on leveraging investments they have already made on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) products and technologies.