Strict quantification of value provided by some software solution is very difficult. That’s especially true in the case of software which is supposed to increase value of project management discipline whose benefits are itself difficult to quantify. Difficulty to quantify doesn’t imply that such value doesn’t exist. It only means that we need to add an extra effort to recognize it. The purpose of this presentation is to make that extra effort and, by examining different attributes like; industry, character and size of projects, maturity of the organization – recognize patterns that lead to value realization. The key Project Server capabilities will be discussed in context of how they provide value in specific usage scenarios. As always, realized value have to be contrasted with required investment so we will estimate the cost of EPM implementation in on-premise and cloud model. The target audience for the presentation are all of you who believe that projects could and should be better managed in your organizations, and you have a vote on decision on using software for such an improvement. Igor Slišković

1. Project Server – Who Can Benefit
From It And How?
IGOR SLIŠKOVIĆ, PROTERON CONSULTING
SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013
ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

2. sponsors

3. About The Presentation - Thesis
• EPM solution can show positive ROI
• The source of value will differ from organization to organization.
• Yet there are clear conditions which, if satisfied, ensure EPM
system value realization.
• We would like to discuss those.

4. The Scale of ROI Approaches
This presentation
Calculate but with sanity check
EPM Improves
employee productivity
and projects success
rate
EPM provides ROI of
275% with payback
period of 13 months
assuming Level 2 PM
maturity of the
organization, …

5. „Excel” ROI approach
List all the
areas of
improvement
Estimate
current effort,
cost and risk
Estimate
potential
improvement
• Guess
• Survey
Calculate
benefits
• ROI
• Payback period
• Logic
• We don’t need to find exact value of improvement. It’s enough to find
credible/believable assumptions
• Exact math we do with assumptions serves the purpose of giving the
reader necessary confidence

6. Areas Of Improvements
15
%
10
%
10
%
10
%
25
%

7. Improvements Quantification
Number of Project users
30
Organization size
1000
Average annual cost per employee
40.000 $

8. Costs
PRICE
YEARLY COST (3 year
horizon)
LICENSES
14.000 USD
Project Online
33 USD per user per month
Project Online With Project Pro
58 USD per user per month
SERVICES
12.000 USD
Implementation Cost
20k USD (one time)
Support
5k USD per year
TOTAL
Investment in internal change
management
26.000 USD
??
Total Number of Project users
30
Number of Project Pro users
5

9. Challenge
• Company with 30 PMs and delivery resources would deliver 23M USD worth of projects a year
• Cost for tool and training is 25k USD
Would you bet your own 25k USD in
exchange for savings that tool might
produce?

10. Source Of Improvements
Benefit
Synchronizing
Projects With
Highest Impact
Providing
Estimation Tools
And Best Practice
Methodologies
Providing
Workflow And
Visibility Into
Project
Performance
Providing
Portfolio
Reporting And
Analyses
Aligning Projects
With Resources
Capacity
Aligning Projects
To Strategic
Goals
Feature
Team Planner
View
Centralized
Resources with
Role and Skills
Portfolio Analyses
Resource Plan
Assigning The
Right Skills To
The Right
Projects
Resource
Levelling
Demand
Management with
Templates and
Workflow
Capturing
Planned And
Active Projects
Providing
Automated
Report
Generation And
Analysis
Rich Reporting
Centralized
Projects
Simple and
Process Driven
Status and Time
Reporting
Project Pro
Schedule
Development!

11. WOULD THIS HELP?

12. Black Swan
• The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a
metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has
a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the
fact with the benefit of hindsight.
• The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
We don’t want to exhaust
ourselves in saving worthless
minutes while missing major
opportunities or risks!
Source:

13. What Does A Manager Do?
• A manager makes decisions and sees them through!
• What do you need to make good decisions?
•
•
•
•
•
Experience
Intuition
Guts
Data
Luck
The main value of EPM system is:
• Fresh, accurate and relevant data that can be used to make short term
steering
• Historical data that shows trends (or lack of those)
In other words – give a tool to a few the most expensive resources instead of
many with small impact.

14. Influence Of Company Type

15. Services Company
• Projects are delivered for external customer  project have a
clear price, cost and profitability attached.
• Demand for resources comes from
• External billable projects
• External non-billable projects and engagements
• Internal projects
Want to have a tight
control of those by
many dimensions
• The ultimate goal is to have the supply of projects that exactly
matches the full capacity  Resource Management is the most
important capability
• Typically, you don’t skip the sale because resources are
overloaded  portfolio selection is not that important in it’s
basic form

16. You don’t waist time in questioning the
value of PM tools for Services company.
It’s there! Use it!
Level of usage in Microsoft partner
companies (with licenses on hand)
shows that, considering
implementation, maintenance and
organizational change perspectives –
EPM is worth using
Idemo delat!

17. Non Services Company
• Demand for projects and resources comes from business units
• Constant change in demand and project priorities is a business
fact
• Agendas other than company interest might drive the project
selection and priorities
• Effects of poor project management are not visible in a short
term
• Project resources worth managing are mostly located in IT (at
least in Financial and Telecom sector)
• There is no implementation if resource department’s management
doesn’t support it
• Business units are not interested in resource management!
Tracking costs, collaboration and transparency are typically
their main drivers.

18. The Discipline
• The same question asked by every customer – “How can we make
sure employees will feed the system?”
• Organization that doesn’t have a lever to make employees do their
job is not likely to have potential of making changes based on EPM
system so it cannot benefit from it
• Team member’s responsibility is not only to do the job but also to
provide necessary data for others to do theirs
• What can be done to address the “discipline issue”?
•
•
•
•
Compliance reporting
Data quality role
Employee’s individual targets
Make the system as usable as possible (“are you telling me that there is an
issue with entering 10 numbers per week in your Outlook calendar?”)
• Project assistant role
• Make EPM system data the source of other system/process dependency (e.g.
invoicing)

19. Scope Of Implementation
• Must cover all capabilities with
appropriate depth
• It’s impossible to manage resources
without a level of certainty in demand
• For managing the demand there must
be a filter with criteria and decision
• It’s impossible to manage resource
supply without planning and tracking
work done
• It’s impossible to track status without
planning and tracking work done
• …
The worst possible approach is: “Let’s try it on one
project”
Standardize planning
Standardize Status Reporting
Provide Project Status
Implementation
Requirements
Manage Resources
Manage Demand
Select Based on objective
criteria and capacity
Manage Supply
Dilligent Planning and Tracking

20. The Planning And Tracking Process
• Proficiency in developing and maintaining Project Schedule is
essential yet typically very rare
• It’s difficult to get “experienced” project manager for a basic MS Project
training  It’s the single most important “soft” implementation blocker
• If you have PS-skilful project managers  agile implementation
possible (finally found opportunity to use that popular word!)
• Years of experience in managing individual projects provides
very little competence in organizing EPM environment  it will
not happen by itself and external help is necessary
• Pleas visit 10:15 session tomorrow “It’s Not A Bug. It’s A
Feature” for discussion on possible adoption blockers

21. questions?

22. thank you.
SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013
ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013