Fulcrum Business Solutions recently sent Dries van der Colff, Technical Director, and Lyzette Lourens, Manager of Training Solutions, to the Microsoft Partner Technical Briefing in Seattle. Fulcrum held a feedback presentation over lunch at Die Werf in Pretoria, focused on project management within organisations and in particular, strategies to fully exploit Microsoft`s Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution.
EPM is considered one of Microsoft`s biggest products and turned over in excess of $500 million in the previous financial year. EPM is regarded as the Microsoft product with the greatest impact across organisations and is now also widely regarded as a truly stable and mature product. Van der Colff`s particular interest in the event was to investigate the product functionality and research the extent to which it lives up to the expectations of the organisations that invest in it.
According to a recent US study referred to at the conference, fewer than 5% of companies have maturity levels high enough to fully exploit the functionality of EPM. The process of implementing an EPM solution will immediately elevate most companies to a greater level of maturity, but to maximise the EPM functionality and indeed the success of projects, organisational maturity is a critical factor.
This maturity level is determined through a number of factors, including the people, processes, organisation and technology that make up any organisation. In order to assess their maturity, companies need to define and measure themselves in terms of these criteria.
Some companies may be far more mature in respect to technology and somewhat lacking in processes or people. If a matrix is drawn up measuring the levels of each maturity component, many companies will be amazed to find they are operating at an overall low level of project management maturity.
"We at Fulcrum have developed a detailed questionnaire to analyse and establish the level of maturity within a company," says Van der Colff. "Once the maturity levels have been measured, we can work with companies to implement strategies to improve some or all aspects of their maturity, thus ensuring they maximise their return on investment in relation to the their EPM systems."
Van der Colff goes on to say: "In addition to a mature company approach to projects, which includes among other things, clearly defined goals, a defined senior sponsor, a phased approach, a project champion and so on, many projects fail because they don`t align with a company`s overall strategic focus. A mature organisation will have systems and processes in place to ensure that any new projects will be in line with the company`s overall goals which is a key factor a project`s success."
EPM going forward
The big question at the conference was, of course, what next? Lourens assures us that the next version of EPM, currently code named "Project 12" will be huge.
She says: "Microsoft is very much in tune with project managers` requirements and the new release will reflect this focus. The next version will be a tool designed to align project work and people, helping project managers and organisations to understand the past, control the present and change the future."
Details of the enhancements are not freely available at this point, but the main focus of the new version include improvements to both the desktop and server versions, the aim being to provide great results with less effort for both big and small users. Functionality has been enhanced, resulting in better tools to build, manipulate, track, view and report on project plans. On the server side, plans are afoot to make the product easier to implement and use, with increased scalability also on the cards.
Share