Project portfolio management trends enterprises need to know in 2023
The world is changing. Even more so given the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects. The new management and work methods enable remote working, making it even more challenging to execute the organization’s strategy for value delivery. Organizations are now required to secure data for project documentation and team collaboration, in addition to managing remote teams. Another challenge is to facilitate uninterrupted communication between remote team members. These challenges will only get more complicated as remote work becomes more common. To overcome this, it is worth investing in project portfolio management solutions. Project portfolio management software will bridge the communication gap between remote teams. To ensure that all team members are on the same page, you can assign tasks, prioritize them, track their progress, and centralize communication. Appropriate software for your needs can help you solve problems in specific sectors. This article will discuss the latest trends and top ideas in enterprise project portfolio management for 2023. Trends and changes in project portfolio management: Project management includes the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to reach goals. An effective project portfolio management software can provide many solutions to enterprise problems. Let’s look at the top trends in project management software for 2023. Strategic portfolio management It is not enough to complete projects or programs on schedule and within budget. Companies today face the most significant challenge in aligning their portfolio with their strategic business goals. Portfolios focused on the continuous delivery of value for the company and its customers must be aligned with strategic objectives. There are many PPM tools and solutions available that can be used to manage and execute the company’s portfolio. These project solutions can help you translate your organization’s strategic goals into project plans, products, and services that deliver value to your business in an agile and flexible way. Integration of PPM tools in a single solution Kanban boards, timesheets, and Gantt charts are all still used by many organizations to manage various aspects of their project portfolio. It is easy to manually register and manage all this information, mainly if it is indifferent and separate solutions. It raises the question: Is it easier to have all these functions in one interface for your PPM software? Advaiya Solutions utilizes the power of Microsoft Project Online to provide customized portfolio management solutions that will enable you to plan and execute your strategy from one interface. Project management and adoption of mobile apps Remote workers love to use mobile apps for messaging and checking their emails. This trend is also evident in the 2020 Productivity & Remote Workplace Survey* by GetApp, where 51% of respondents said mobile messaging was used at least once daily to collaborate on work-related tasks. Remote teams will be more inclined to use smartphones for real-time collaboration. Business leaders like yourself will need to invest in mobile software tools. Remote employees can keep track of project updates and check in with their stakeholders. They can also communicate with colleagues via mobile apps. Remote cooperation Although remote working isn’t new, we now see larger teams that work remotely from multiple locations. Companies used to hire people to work at their offices, with a few exceptions. Many companies have made it possible to have employees working from anywhere in the country or the world, despite the “back-to-the-office” push. Hubstaff’s report in 2021 on remote project management found that 40% of companies employ more than 1000 remote workers. Its importance will increase in the future. Remote work does have its disadvantages. Remote work can lead to misunderstandings and a temporary lack of communication. Some team members may need more motivation. Making a team culture and informal communication can help to solve the problem of employee misunderstanding. It is also a good idea to conduct several videoconferences throughout the week. You can use many online tools to communicate with project managers, area managers, executive board members, product owners, and Scrum Masters. Email, instant messaging, videoconferencing, collaboration tools… all of these have replaced the insignificant and tedious face-to-face meetings. You may lose your focus due to the proliferation of collaborative tools. Some stakeholders might need to be updated about the progress of specific portfolio initiatives. Portfolio management will be easier if you can automate communications and integrate these tools with your project and portfolio management software. Integrating complex technologies Many companies have been following the digital factory model since it was first introduced several years back. The work process is organized in a digital factory model, where each unit handles product supply. Although this principle benefits companies in the short term, it does not apply to IT teams. It is, therefore, crucial to ensure that there is cooperation and supply from all technical groups, as this could cause confusion in the technological stacks. Enterprise project management software is a current trend in the industry. The company’s development means that the team is more dependent on technology. Project management principles now include a technology component. This process is called PTMQ, the acronym for people’s technical talent to implement technological achievements in specific projects or companies. Talent is the critical feature of PTMQ. The staff is aware of trends and adapts quickly to them. The integration of technology allows project managers to accomplish tasks more efficiently and achieve the desired results within the project budget and time. A hybrid approach to project management Classical approaches only use one project management strategy. Traditional specialists use this approach. Modern PPM solutions include PMBOK and PRINCE2, Agile, and the waterfall model. These are the most popular work methods you’ve heard of over the past few years. They are all used in different departments for different purposes. That is the key. While there is no single best method, each must serve its purpose within your organization. The organization’s leaders may prefer traditional approaches like Waterfall or innovative ones like OKR for strategy planning. But, agile methods like Scrum and DevOps are more suited to development teams. Hybrid management is the future of business. Companies realize that adaptability to
Project management tools by Microsoft
Planning is an important part of the project life cycle. Before starting the execution of any project the project manager needs to create a plan of action which includes breaking down the overall project goal into tasks and assigning resources to these tasks and defining the timeline for each task. Project planning plays an important role in project success. It enables the organization to decide the timeline of the project and anytime track project progress against this schedule. For project planning and scheduling Microsoft has some awesome tools and organizations select their tool as per their requirement and available resources. Microsoft provides its project planning and scheduling offerings majorly in three forms – Project Server (On-Premises) Project Online Project for the web. Microsoft Project Server on-premises and online has almost similar features. If an organization has the proper infrastructure, and resources trained on the infrastructure side and potentially need more data security then Project Server On-Premises is best suitable for them. Project Server on-premises requires installation and maintenance of at least Microsoft Project Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. Eventually, everything is moving to the cloud. It reduces the burden of managing the servers on-premises and installing patches. If an organization has O365 licenses, then it must opt for Project Online. All the features of Project On-Prem and Project Online are similar for project scheduling and managing. Project Online and on-prem are best for managing complex project plans. For Project Online Project P1, P3 and P5 licenses are available which an organization can purchase as per their need. For managing small projects, Project for Web is quite a beautiful tool. Project for Web has several features which are special. Project For Web is built on Microsoft Power Platform whereas Project Server On-Prem and Project Online are built on SharePoint. Data of Project for Web stored in Dataverse, which could be easily accessible via other tools of Power Platform including Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. Project For the web is best suited for users who want to manage a simple project plan with tasks and resource assignments without much complexity. It integrates into the Microsoft 365 suite. Program and portfolio management, financial management, resource management, and other advanced project management functionalities like baselining, critical path, etc. are not available in Project for the web. Along with Project scheduling, there are other project-related entities that are also important like risk, issue, change requests, etc. Project for web accelerator is a Power App that extends Project for the web. It provides several additional features to the Project for the web. Project Request Program Risk Issues Changes Status Project Request – Using Project for the web accelerator, project managers can create project requests with minimal information. By looking at the request information stakeholders can decide and approve it. After the approval, the request was converted into Project. Want information about our project portfolio management solutions? Click here. Program – To see a bigger picture users can create a hierarchy of programs and projects. By this users can group projects by their characteristics. Risks and Issues – A project manager always wants to track and maintain a log of Risks and issues in a project along with their mitigation plan. Changes – As the project proceeds with its deliverable, there are changes coming in terms of scope or design. These can be logged using Project for web accelerator. Status – The project manager can routinely update stakeholders about the health of the project. It also provides flexibility to centralize the status reports. Microsoft has Its project management offering for all types of organizations. Now it’s up to the users which tool they want as per their project requirements and resource availability. Shruti Vyas Shruti is a technical consultant at Advaiya. With over nine years of experience in the IT industry, Shruti has a passion for data and an ability to understand and analyze it effectively. She shares her insight on various topics such as custom application development, project server customization, client-side scripting etc.
Project and portfolio management solution to improve work productivity
The most difficult challenge for organizations as they grow is aligning projects with their high-level business goals. Executives and managers struggle while prioritizing projects and allocating resources to achieve optimal efficiency. Project portfolio management is key to unlocking these difficulties. What’s project portfolio management? Project portfolio management a.k.a. PPM is the process utilized by organizations to plan their schedules and allocate resources to make sure that the project portfolio is a success. It is the system that helps analyze the potential returns, performance, and risks of undertaking a project so that the right work can be prioritized. It is a data-driven process that helps executives and managers to prioritize the projects effectively. This involves reviewing project portfolios regularly to determine which projects to cut, how the budget is spent, and what ROI each project portfolio delivers to ensure that resources are effectively used. What are your objectives in project portfolio management? Business is built on taking risks. While it is important to take a risk, remember that higher risks don’t always mean higher rewards. Smart decision-making is what determines risk vs. reward. PPM aims to identify what’s working and what’s not, and how organizations can streamline their efforts to measure overall effectiveness in line with the business strategy. However, organizations that engage in project portfolio management are typically bombarded with some common challenges like effective execution, resource allocation, etc. Challenges of project portfolio management – Some of the biggest challenges of project portfolio management revolve around Project execution: While some projects might survive with a simple structure, the entire portfolio needs complex governance, which can lead to oversight conflicts. The projects running in the organization may not run under a defined governance process due to the lack of a central tool. Resource allocation: When an overwhelming number of projects are executed in parallel, a lack of insights leads to resource conflicts, bottlenecks, and delays. Risk management – Risks are known in advance. but the lack of impact analysis and unawareness about the leading indicators like impact on time, resources, etc. often delay the projects, negatively impacting the revenue and ROI. Project portfolio management can be complex and challenging. Therefore, executives utilize project portfolio management solutions to review and monitor data and increase work productivity. Once the process is streamlined and infused properly, projects align better with organization goals and overcome these obstacles. The best enterprise portfolio management software – Introducing Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project is one of the best project management software for managing small to large projects. Microsoft Project is a robust PPM tool that manages all aspects of project portfolio management. Using MS Project for portfolio management tools can help you accelerate your work and make smart data-driven decisions to improve project performance and resource management. Key capabilities of project portfolio management solutions Safe and efficient resource management: PPM solutions allow for resource sharing to improve efficiency and management. It provides centralized storage that can be accessible to all users. This allows you to see who is working on which projects now and in the future and helps you plan and distribute your portfolios wisely. Reduce turnaround time: Another significant advantage of PPM is the decreased turnaround time. With PPM tools, managers can keep track of all work by scheduling them in a precise manner. It allows companies to complete projects in a shorter amount of time and also helps them avoid making mistakes and wasting time. Better collaboration: Sometimes project teams include members from different departments. They also have to manage day-to-day responsibilities, making it difficult for other stakeholders to attend meetings and keep up-to-date. PPM software gives teams greater project portfolio visibility and transparency by making the whole project visible to the company leading to reduced communication gaps and improved collaboration. Robust Reporting: Monitoring the work progress is crucial to long-term success. PPM software is crucial in monitoring project stages and can give insights that will keep you informed about what’s going on at the portfolio level and with available drill down to specific project and activity levels. Swati Swati has spent most of her career programming codes and she has found that all these years in software development still hasn’t diminished her love of writing code. As a founding member of Advaiya, she has been instrumental in leading development initiatives, establishing innovative processes and successfully executing large-scale projects to meet client needs. Swati possesses excellent analytical and problem-solving capabilities and takes keen interest in all aspects of a project lifecycle management from requirements analysis to architecture, design, implementation and closure. She attended the University Institute of Technology, RGPV where she received her Master’s in Computer Applications Degree. She is also a Microsoft Certified Professional and a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in Enterprise Project Management. She also has received a number of recognition’s at Advaiya.
Critical path in Project for the web
When working on a certain project, it is very important to analyze how various tasks would affect your project timeline. Project for the web provides such a method to calculate critical path of a project. Project for the web helps you to calculate the estimated finish date of your project and the delay or timely completion of your project. What is critical path? Critical path of a project is the complete series of all the tasks in your project that needs to be completed on time to complete your project on its due date. Example: In this case, assuming that there is no dependency within your tasks, then the critical path of your project is Task 3 because it ends the latest and thus defines the finish date of your project. What is critical path? Without the ability to calculate obstacles within the time period of a project or analyzing different portions of a project which defines the completion, many projects would never even leave the ground. Critical path is basically a ‘red alert’ for your project. If your project does not follow the timing of the critical path, it will never be able to finish within the timeline. How to calculate critical path? Divide your project into tasks. Identify all the dependencies. Estimate the duration of your tasks. Determine the critical path based on the task finish date. Now moving away from theory, let’s see how we can work on this with Project for the web. Project for the web has three tabs in the top menu bar: Grid: Grid gives you a project online type of view of your project by listing tasks, resources, and other information in a tabular form. Board: Board gives a more concise bucket view of your project wherein when you click on each task, a detailed view is opened. Timeline: Timeline provides a Gantt chart view of your project with all the tasks displayed in a more graphical manner. 1. Select timeline 2. The view after enabling critical path will be something like this. The critical path feature is user specific. If two users A and B have permission on one project and user A enables critical path, the same will not be reflected for user B. Also, every time the user reloads the project, the ‘show critical path’ toggle will turn off. Thus, because of the incredible usability and effectiveness, critical path is a project necessity in organizations everywhere. In modern times, organizations tend to work on a hybrid system, and Project for the web effectively combines Agile methodology with timeline and critical path. Users with Plan 3 and Plan 5 licenses can make use of this functionality. Compare project management solutions and costs | Microsoft Project Hope this article has helped you learn how to find critical path in a much more straightforward way. Happy planning! Zenab Waglawala Zenab is an associate at Advaiya. With over six months of experience in the IT industry, she has a passion for data and project server development. She likes to share her insights on project server customization, data analysis through Power BI, data manipulation, and working with a database such as SQL, etc. She loves working with various project planning applications such as Project Online, Project Planner, and Project for the web. Her passion for technology and commitment towards customer satisfaction are the driving forces behind her career at Advaiya. She attended Geetanjali Institute of Technical Studies, where she completed her B.tech in Computer Science and Engineering.
MS Project Agile Connector Add-In | Advaiya
We are very excited to present the Agile Connector, an Add-in for MS Project Professional to facilitate agile methodology in Microsoft Project Online. What is MS Project Professional? MS Project Professional allow you to manage your projects more efficiently with the right timeline, budget, and resources. It helps you to improve project selection and delivery on time. Microsoft Project Professional now come with the Agile feature which allows us to create new agile projects or to apply agile views to the existing traditional “waterfall” project. The agile tools in Project enable us to track projects using Scrum and Kanban methodologies, including viewing task boards, creating backlogs and monitoring sprints, as well as displaying reports on agile statistics. Microsoft Project Online is a flexible online solution for project portfolio management (PPM) and everyday work. It enables organizations to get started quickly with powerful project management capabilities to plan, prioritize, and manage projects and project portfolio investments-from almost anywhere on almost any device. At the same time, if we open the project in Microsoft Project Online, it will display in the waterfall model. For now, the Agile feature is released only for MS Project Desktop version and is not available in Project Online. The custom fields used in Microsoft Project Professional for implementing Agile methodologies such as task boards, backlogs, tracking sprints and agile reports are not available in Project Online. To facilitate agile methodology in Microsoft Project Online and to provide the similar user view, Advaiya has developed an add-in for MS Project Professional which allows stakeholders to get insights into the agile managed projects in the equivalent way as they get with traditional projects. The connector provides features to synchronize Agile project tasks between Project Professional and Project Online. The Agile connector for Microsoft Project Professional add-in is designed to work with Microsoft Project 2016. Feature of Agile Connector Using the add-in, agile custom fields in Project Pro like Sprint, Agile & Board Status will synchronize with configuring enterprise custom fields in Project Online When a project is published from Project Professional – custom fields values will move from Project Pro to respective enterprise custom fields When the project is published from Project Online and is opened in Project Professional –the enterprise custom field values will move to respective custom fields in Project Pro. Key Benefits of Agile Connector: Sync Project Professional agile planning with Project Online Perform updates on agile based enterprise custom fields in Project Online Track all metrics related to agile project management across the portfolio of projects Get a unified view and centralized management of various agile, non-agile and hybrid projects across the organization Request for the Agile connector and Go Agile!
Establish project and portfolio management in your organization
In recent years, establishing Project Portfolio Management has become a key preference for most of the organizations. There can be seen a huge change in the way organizations are managed and the narrowing of the gap between Project & Program management and top leadership. According to a PM Solution survey, ‘Higher PPM capabilities lead to greater ROI’. The organizations with established PPM processes at the enterprise level are in a better state to make more informed and data-driven decisions on regular basis. No doubt, the glamorous results of PPM practices establishment require time, niche skill set and organization wide adoption and support. Here’s a quick checklist that might come handy when establishing PPM practices in your organization: Get the top leaders involved in identifying the critical needs and issues of the organization, and then design the processes that will best meet those needs. Plan to execute the whole process in phases and decide outcome for each phase, so the effectiveness at each phase can be evaluated. Keep the end users well informed about the PPM establishment and list the changes that can impact the process/way of their work. Select appropriate PPM Methodology that works the best and is easy to adapt to your organization culture. Decide project prioritization with top leaders and PMOs. Ensure that the PPM establishment plan does not include several changes at one time, which may lead to complexity and people tend to ignore them. Decide the channels for process implementation (training/hands-on/ stand up discussion, etc.,) in advance as required at each stage. Document the identified processes. Leverage the best from existing organizational processes and business scenarios, which are relevant to PPM. For example – Elements of processes for planning and cost estimating, project management, risk management, and resource management may need to be refined, expanded, or better coordinated instead of defining them from scratch. These points are an initial homework for the organizations planning for PPM establishment and use. Once this is done, you should select the appropriate PPM software/tool. You may have PMOs in your organization to drive this or you may hire an external consultant to drive the whole process for you. Now, to select the appropriate technology/tool, you must make sure of the following: The solution is scalable to all PPM scenarios regardless of your needs, so you can scale your implementation in future as needed. The solution follows the standards of Project Portfolio Management and at the same time should have the capability to be customized for specific needs as every organization has different standards and processes. You compare the feature and pricing offered by different software/tools. Select an on-cloud solution which is scalable as you use it, and will required less maintenance with minimum infrastructure; unless your organization is a big fan of on-premise solution.
Get the most out of MS Project Online with rich Power BI
“Our biggest issue is extracting value from our data to make informed decisions.” This is what we have heard from many project managers, and a similar issue you might have come across at some point of your project management lifecycle. Project managers, today, need better insights into their resources to make the best decision and to keep projects on track. However, it has been found that typically a program manager spends over 25% of their time on administrative tasks in Project Management, as stated by Forrester. This is because, with the growing data size, the complexity of managing data is also increasing at a fast rate. Data expansion from various sources – Big Data, Social Media or Enterprise data such as CRM, ERP, and Project data – further adds to data complexity. This data expansion coupled with data complexity challenges project managers and PMOs to create an up-to-date project report or portfolio report. To list a few, project managers are facing the following challenges with PPM (Project Portfolio Management) reporting: Project portfolio reports lack a holistic view. Project reports are static. Interactive visualization takes longer development time and needs specialized data query skills. Deploying and maintaining project reports cause administrative overhead. It’s time to take control of your data at every level! With interactive reports and dashboards, Power BI can be a boon to your project reporting, enabling operational value. With enhanced visibility and insight, Power BI allows making informed decisions at all management levels right from the executives, project managers, PMOs, to resource allocation managers. Let’s have a look at how you can achieve the most out of your Project Online with rich Power BI. See live project data with interactive dashboards – Want to see the important aspects of your project at a glance? You can create personalized dashboards to view and monitor each of your project metric such as project by department, cost and work burn down, project health KPIs and many more in the form of tiles. It gives you a consolidated view of both on-premises and cloud data in a single pane of glass. To get a more personalized experience, you can even move, delete, resize, link or rename the tiles on your dashboard. Search or query with intuitive natural language – One of the unique features of Power BI is Natural Query Language (NQL). This is basically – you type your project data questions into the QA box and Power BI gives you the real-time data in the form of charts and graphs. Take an example, “Project cost above $50k”. So, you see it’s just simple English language! This way it helps you to reduce the time and complexity involved in project data gathering. Package and share your work – Do you share project reports via email to your team on a regular basis? Instead, try creating your project reports in Power BI and publish them as a content pack to your team. Not only reports, you can also, package your dashboards, Excel workbooks, and datasets and share them with your colleagues. All the features of Power BI are leveraged in content packs, including interactive data exploration, visuals, Q&A, data integration, data refresh, and more. In addition, you can also share live reports and dashboards using Power BI on your mobile devices on the go. Get a multi-perspective view of your project reports – Today, organizations demand project reporting that supports deep data insights and creative visuals for a quick glance on the project status. With advanced reporting in Microsoft Power BI, you can fully leverage all your project management investments. Power BI reporting can be used with both Project Online and Project Online. You create diverse categories of reporting such as Portfolio report, project health report, yearly investment report, resource allocation report, and many more with your Project Online data. Interact with your project data to find business insights – With frequent updates, Power BI is continually adding new visuals on a regular basis, enabling to have a centric visualization tool for all stakeholders including executives, PMOs, and PMs. With Power BI visualization, your organization can leverage the power of Microsoft Project to automate business processes, capture data from various LOBs, and define the relevant mapping between LOB data and project entities through customizations. Interested to quick-start your business intelligence reports and dashboards, contact us now.