There is one application that has made the most impact for Concurrency's Milwaukee and Chicago area customers. Since 2003 Concurrency has planned or implemented nearly twenty SharePoint-based Project Portfolio Management (PPM) systems.
SharePoint already contains the tools you need to run a successful project or manage a portfolio. Tools such as electronic forms, lists, calendars, document libraries, and templates are available and easy to use. These tools can be organized into SharePoint Sites - a place where your team can work together. These tools can then be automated using workflow techniques.
Editor's Note: Check out Concurrency's PPM Solution at http://www.concurrency.com/PPM
What makes up an ideal SharePoint Project Portfolio Management System?
- Easily collect project requests via electronic forms
- Route these requests to an appropriate manager for approval
- Provide a flexible process for analyzing, estimating, and approving new projects.
- Give your team a dedicated web site to work on each project. The SharePoint site is created based on the size and type of project, and comes stocked with project essentials – planning documents, calendars, task lists, and other SharePoint tools. Best of all, you can customize these sites.
- Project status reports are filled out electronically. Details on project progress, estimates, areas of concern, and overall health are reported in Portfolio Management dashboards and reports. Alerts and workflows can notify project stakeholders.
- Support Microsoft Project. Project tasks and resource assignments can be synchronized between SharePoint and Microsoft Project. Your team can view and update tasks and the schedule wherever it makes sense – even right in SharePoint.
- Major Project events, such as change requests or project closure, are handled by automatic SharePoint workflows which collect and route key information.
- Portfolio Management dashboards show active projects, portfolio details, and even Business Intelligence data collected from all projects. With all estimation detail, schedules, and forecasts in a common context, nearly any report can be created, viewed, and even emailed automatically on a schedule you select.
Whether a small organization being first introduced …or a large organization well versed in the concepts of formal project and portfolio management, we believe SharePoint, leveraging Concurrency’s PPM template and workflow solutions, is the most flexible and useful platform upon which to organize and manage your projects.
These tools can help you rapidly introduce or enhance
practical project and portfolio management techniques throughout your organization without extensive training and without purchasing new hardware or licensing new software. Best of all, this solution let’s your organization tools and skills it already has: Microsoft Office and a Web Browser.
Let’s face it, most organizations in today’s business environment cannot bear the cost and tedium necessary to implement any of the monolithic PPM solutions on the market today. Concurrency’s PPM Tools provide you a practical collection of light-weight portfolio and project management capabilities tailored to meet the specific collaboration, workflow and reporting requirements of your organization. The tools are built right into SharePoint and Microsoft Office and are very easy to use. Best of all, your people are already familiar with the platform …no expensive training or software licensing is required!
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="350" caption="Concurrency's SharePoint-based Project Portfolio Management System"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_913" align="alignleft" width="350" caption="InfoPath forms are used to capture and analyze project requests"]
[/caption]