Does anyone have any thoughts on implementing an enterprise Project Tracking / Resource management solution. Especially - ABT's Result Management Suit - Integration with MS Project 98 - Level of project management expertise needed to track time and resources in a meaningful way at the task level. - Any experince with decoupling the scheduling tool from the project tracking and resource management tools. Resource are pulled out of the pool and put back in but not tracked while they are on a project via the plan in the PT and RM tools.
We are looking into developing the same thing for our organization. We have chosen Teamplay by Primavera as our tool to replace Microsoft Project. We are considering building our Project Tracking process around Teamplay to ensure we have one data source of all project information. This would require us to roll existing projects into the Teamplay database. The Teamplay database is an Oracle database and this will allow us to do adhoc reporting for senior management to perform "what if" analysis on the projects and their resources. Or we can also provide the standardized reports provided by Teamplay. I'm interested in any thoughts on "Processes" that will support the Project Tracking - how to implement some of the processes and what are some of the processes I need to consider. Anybody please respond. Saving Changes...
I'm in the process of evaluating several enterprise level project tracking tools. I've looked at 4 so far:
PacificEdge ProcessMax by Pragma Systems Realtime by AMS WebProject
Of those, Realtime might be a good choice for your needs. We are looking for more of a communication tool and project repository. ProcessMax seems to be winning the race. Saving Changes...
I'd like to suggest the tools available from Scitor (www.scitor.com) and ProChain (www.prochain.com).
Scitor offers a product similar to AMS Realtime: mulit-project manager, centralized database for projects and resource assignments, web reporting for management and teams, connected to the time keeping system for realtime updates, etc. The also have implemented the capability to support Critical Chain methodology, which gives them an edge over the other tools.
ProChain is much more simplified in its approach, and is simply an add-on tool for MS Project. ProChain is centered around the Critical Chain methodology.
I'm still in the process of evaluating these two, after reveiwing the plethora of PM tools available today.
From what I gather on the discussion here we have many individuals here looking at project tracking and resource managment tools which are 'new' to the PM market.
Unfortunately many of you are not considering an old product with a new 'skin': ARTEMIS 9000 on an NT or dare I say it an 'IBM mainframe', or even P3 by PRIMAVERA a product similar in it's flexibiliy of operation/implementation.
Some of these older products have the ability to be 'scalable'. I know of one ARTEMIS 9000 implementation where they were able to perform resource leveling on over a half a million activities in the enterprise. I am not sure of the PRIMAVERA or ABT products but I suspect they approach that as well.
The ARTEMIS product application language has built into it a crtical path diagaramming solution with resourcing. One of the strengths of this product is that your resources table, your constraints table and your activity tables all reside on different datasets. Resourse loading 'what-ifs' can be performed by swapping out different resource availability tables that reside within the project. One could also 'de-couple' the project tracking from the resource tracking. I have seen many implementations of ARTEMIS where it is strictly used to track schedules without resources applied.
The trouble with many of what we in the business call the 'canned' application packages is that they are just that. One can only apply the software as it comes 'out of the can'. If the designers of the software say you must have resources allocations applied to each and every work task before you can analyse the critical path diagramming method solution you are stuck.
The real world situation you might be faced with might demand that you come up with an EAC date based only on estimated hours for each task based on a fully funded/fully staffed model of the project. Many a software package in it's implementation requires you to have every piece of data associated with a project 'up front' before any EAC analyis or resource leveling. This will become a trap when you decide to 'buy-in' to a 'canned' software package solution.
Please consider some of the older PM products properly applied and staffed with knowledgable users before you pick a 'canned' solution package. Saving Changes...
We have just completed our evaluation, and have selected Pacific Edge - Project Office. It was a close race between this and AMS RealTime. We looked at several others, and had narrowed the field to these two.
Pacific Edge had more of what we wanted, at a better price, with a more flexible implementation schedule. Also, unlike many (perhaps most) organizations, our focus was not on gathering team input as to hours spent. It may shift to that someday, but right now it smacks too much of "time sheet" which is definately NOT part of the culture here. Our goal was to find a tool that allowed us to analzye and report on resource allocation over the entire portfolio. Project Office does this, plus everything else we needed. It builds on the investment we have made in MS Project, and presents a UI that is clean, intuitive, easy, and familiar. Several of the others did not.
The most important suggestion I can make is to determine what your focus is - resource management, time collection, metrics? Then keep that as your focus in the selection. Saving Changes...
I am evaluating MS Project 2000/MS Project Central which seem to be pretty neat. It seems that Microsoft finally wants to do something about project tracking.
I also have a brief look at ABT Results Management Suites 5. It seems to be a superior tool but more expensive too.
I think ABT is more willing to research into new areas. Its Project Planner, for instance, allow one to monitor the performance of the methodology chosen in one's own shop. That is pretty useful in particular if there is a need to grow experience in new project type such as e-business. ABT actually pointed me to this website to find the knowledge base that would work with its Project Planner. Presumably there is a library of different project type which I can use. So I should be able to get, say, the ratio of web designer to web programmers for small, medium or large e-business project. That would be cool. It really boils down to what your organization is going to do.
- Hoi - Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Hoi,
If you look over on the right-hand side of the screen, you'll notice a list of "processes." These are the gantthead approaches for various types of projects, including Distributed Application Development. Surf through a few of those -- is this what you're looking for?
Saving Changes...
Anonymous
A new player on the scene to consider is PROJ-NET by Rational Concepts (www.rationalconcepts.com). They are entirely web-based, run on your corporate intranet, employ the latest in applet/servlet technology, and can be implemented very quickly. They are also very competitive on price. The tool is very scalable (it's being used by Raytheon and the Navy on their new destroyer development) and is modular, which allows you to pick and choose the apps you need. Saving Changes...
I'd like to second Patti Platt-Rust's recommendation of various Critical Chain based p[ackages. The CC process is really maturing quickly as companies like Lucent, Seagate, Balfour Beatty, BA Systems, Boeing, and others are finding it beneficial.
In particular, at the recent TOC World conference, I saw a demo of Scitor's PS8 Critical Chain functionality, and it looks very impressive. Fast, clean, and not reliant on MS Project. The ability to separate out the non-essential and distracting features of MS Project and focus on the CC functions is a welcome change.
I still have to live with it for a while, but I would not be surprised if it becomes my CC tool of choice for recommendations to my clients.
A couple other comments on PS8. The Critical Chain functionality is an option you chose when starting a project file. So even if, for some reason, you're looking for a non-CC package, this one will work for you AND give you the opportunity to check out the CC approach.
For an enterprise solution, it also has web-based reporting and (optionally) updating capabilities.
Like I said -- pretty impressive. Saving Changes...
