Aaron Smith, editor of Projects@Work, looks at Gartner’s new report on the state of the PPM market.

While most enterprise software markets receded during the global economic crisis, the project and portfolio management (PPM) market has shown “marked resilience,” according to Gartner’s “2011 MarketScope for PPM Applications” — formerly known as the "Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management.”

“Demand for PPM applications has not wavered, but, rather, increased exponentially during the past 10 years,” writes Gartner research analyst Daniel Stang in the report released June 13. “Deep maturity is making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between competing products on feature/function alone. For buyers, this means that many of the typical PPM features and functions you would require when selecting a PPM system for the first time are likely to be in many of the products you evaluate.”

Many points of differentiation remain, however, including “the speed of deployment, the cost of the system in relation to number of end users, the amount of complexity within the system, the integration bridges available to third-party systems and products, and the deployment options and corresponding pricing models available from the vendor.”

The MarketScope report evaluated 30 PPM vendors across a broad range of criteria, including: customer experience, product strategy, product functionality, business model, innovation, market understanding and market responsiveness. The report rated vendors on a scale from strong negative to strong positive.

Read the rest of Aaron's article here.

Estimation can be one of the most difficult parts of a project. Important questions must be asked in order to form the right figures and plans. How long will the project take? How many resources will it consume? Consultants may also ask the following question: What is the appropriate amount to bid on this project? These questions are not easy to answer at the outset when one generally has only a vague idea of what will be required throughout the project.

The good news is that there is a fairly simple way to improve project estimation and, consequently, the bidding process. Most people do not realize that the requirements creation process can lend insight into the length and scope of a project. Let me give you an example of how this method works and then explain how you can implement it within your own company.

The Story

Back in 1992, I was working for a consulting company named The Kernel Group (TKG). During this time, I was put in charge of porting Tivoli’s software from Sun’s Solaris operating system to IBM’s AIX operating system. The project was to be done under a fixed bid, and consequently, we at TKG knew that estimating the effort required to port the code was of paramount importance.

I looked at the code with a coworker of mine, and he came to the conclusion that if Tivoli didn't make the project hard for us in some unspecified way, we could port the million or so lines of code in about a weekend. I told him that he was nuts - that it would take at least a week, maybe even two. We jointly decided that we probably ought to call it three weeks just to be safe. We also decided, rather smugly, not to report our padding of the schedule to evil upper management.

As a result, evil upper management drastically expanded the project bid to $325,000, and my coworker and I thought that this was a ridiculously high price. We believed that we were gouging the customer and that they would never accept it.

Yet they did accept it, and once the project began, we proceeded to discover how truly terrible we as software engineers were at the task of project estimation. To make a long story short, the porting schedule expanded to exceed our original estimate and we consumed not only all of the $325,000, but a whole lot more on top of it.

The Formula

Read the rest of this article at The International Community of Project Managers

To certify or not to certify…that seems to be the question. Many job postings for project managers request or even require the project management professional (PMP) certification – the industry standard as offered through the Project Management Institute (PMI). But do organizations need it? Are PMs better for it? Does it guarantee PM or project success? Will our customers care? Is the certification cost to the organization for certifying existing project managers worth the investment? Will the ROI be there or be enough to justify the initial expense?

The certified PMO

A project management office (PMO) full of certified project managers sounds great, right? It sounds like your organization is cutting edge. It sounds like your organization will be bulletproof, ready to take on the project management world and overcome the usual 50+% project failure rate, right?

Not so fast. While a PMO full of PMP certified project managers might mean that everyone speaks the same PM language, it certainly is no guarantee of project success. It may help, or it may mean that you just spent a lot of money putting a ring in the pig’s snout.

Reasons to certify

Certainly there are several reasons to consider certification of your current project managers and requiring it of all incoming project managers. You may be focusing your new business on government contracting and those contracts may require the certification. That’s a very good reason.

You may want a common language and understanding among your project managers. That can be a very good reason if it’s used wisely. Yes, your customers will get a standard brand – returning customers will see the same thing on future projects no matter which project manager is assigned to run the engagement. Think of it like eating at a chain restaurant like Macaroni Grill vs. eating at a one-off place like Joe’s Italian Eatery. One will be consistent no matter what city you’re in. The other, well, you won’t find anything exactly like it again.

A final reason – and this may just be for show or vanity’s sake – is to be able to say you have a PMO full of certified PMs. That is a case-by-case call on what it’s worth to you. You aren’t doing it to acquire business so the monetary aspect may be of little or no consequence. It’s a want, not a need.

Cost of certification

The next thing to consider is the cost of certifying existing employees and hiring only PMPs going forward. This is a consideration in every case except something like the government contracting scenario where it’s absolutely necessary no matter the cost because it’s required for getting new business.

First, there’s the cost of testing. Currently the fee is $555 for non-members of PMI and $405 for PMI members. And if you’re going to require certification, you should probably buy memberships for the entire group. Let’s say you’ve got 15 PMs in your PMO. A one-year PMI membership is $129. That’s $1,935 in memberships. The tests will cost another $6,075 for a total of $8,010 if everyone passes, and then a recurring $1,935 each year to renew PMI memberships. Over the course of say, five years, that’s a total investment of $15,750, assuming your PMO does not grow in size during that five-year period.

New hires are another consideration. Since the requirements to take the exam and actually pass the test are not that high – essentially two solid years of PM experience and a 61% passing grade on the exam – it doesn’t mean you’re forced to hire the most experienced personnel. Given that, salaries aren’t likely to be any higher unless you’re looking for lots of experience AND a PMP certification.

Summary

The final decision to require certification is obviously up to each organization and may be based on business need or just pure want. The cost is not exorbitant to the corporation, but it is definitely a long-term investment that needs to be considered. However, since the requirements are low for taking and passing the exam, PMO directors and company executives must not be blind to the fact that PMP certification doesn’t guarantee PM or project success. Unless there is a true business case for the PMP certification need, experience and proven past PM success should always be the greater deciding factor when building a successful project management infrastructure.

About the Author:
Brad Egeland is an IT/Project Management consultant, business strategist, and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. He has been highly recognized for his ability to work with C-level business leaders in both startups and established organizations to create best practice processes for business management and project management and has overseen the creation and execution of multiple project management offices. He is a married, father of 7 living in Las Vegas, NV. He can be reached at brad at bradegeland.com or you can visit his website at www.bradegeland.com.

Though many businesses use project management software, a common sentiment exists that successful project managers often achieve results in spite of their software tools, rather than because of them. Others believe that project management software is not particularly effective at boosting productivity, citing the large amounts of money spent every year on software that quickly begins to gather dust on some forgotten shelf. In fact, there is well known dispute as to “what exactly is project management software?”

These individuals (whoever they may be) are only partially correct. Project management software, like any tool, must be used effectively by the user. A hammer, regardless of the quality, will not drive a nail by itself. Further, some project management tools are vastly superior to others, either because they are streamlined for a PM job or simply allow for a greater range of processes and data collection. Now let’s be clear, I have always said, “A fool with a tool, is still just a fool.” And on a more positive note, there are extremely successful PMs I know who have managed projects using Microsoft Excel®.

The important thing to remember here is that, for a project manager, something like 80% of the job is communication. For this reason, the primary functionality a project manager looks for in his or her software is seamless integration of data to facilitate rapid feedback and response – or more succinctly, they need timely and accurate information. A manager who can quickly identify if a project is running as scheduled or if an employee is keeping up with necessary and assigned tasks will have the strong advantage of adapting to issues as they arise (and we all know that “Murphy” visits all projects!). Speed and accuracy of information is critical to maintaining this advantage.

Another problem area is when project management software applications go too far in making predictions, suggestions or presenting a myriad of unnecessary options and thereby creating a unique set of problems. Though these suggestions may be valid and the options may provide much more flexibility, it can often result in the project manager becoming at best, confused and at worst, completely sidetracked in the software, even losing sight of the original project requirements. Again, effective project management software will provide the tools for data collection, analysis and distribution. It will not attempt to take over those tasks completely or make “guesses” as to the best course of action where human input is critical. If the software was that good – we would not need to train project managers – right?

Another issue that arises in the use of project management software is the ambiguity of the information presented. For example, even if the software presents the seemingly simple prediction that a project will take 100 hours to complete, difficulties can arise in the interpretation of this information. A novice project manager might be unable to see the other aspects of this task and the issues that might arise. Will these 100 hours be spread over a period of days? Weeks? Longer? And further, how will the human element of the team affect this estimate? Every time an employee takes time off, calls in sick, or falls behind in their assigned task, this estimate will need to be altered. Project management software that is powerful enough to account for delays by tracking these human elements and showing remaining work or effort can greatly increase the effectiveness of a project manager’s resource and schedule management, regardless of skill level.

The lack of software integration is yet another difficulty that can frustrate even the most skilled and efficient project manager. Regardless of the proficiency of individual software applications at completing a given task, failure to integrate with common or existing data from organizational systems can create a nightmare scenario in which the data compiled in a project management program cannot be done in real time. It is not enough for software to allow for the option of integrating with other well-known programs, it must do so well, and with the expectation that the data collected in that program will be used in other capacities.

Project managers that encounter software that allows for the honest, useful, and seamless collection and integration of information will find they have a powerful tool that allows them to accurately predict and produce results with regularity. While software should not be expected to replace effective management or decision making, it can insure that time is being spent in an optimally efficient manner.

And time, after all, is money.

About the Author:
Bruce McGraw is Sr PM, Technologist, and the COO of Cognitive Technologies, a woman-owned consulting firm specializing in project management, collaborative processes, and organizational effectiveness. Bruce has the privilege of overseeing all technology and large-scale projects and the establishment of enterprise program management offices for client organizations. Bruce holds an MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland's University College and a BS in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina. Bruce is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and is an active member of the Project Management Institute. He is also a certified Microsoft Technology Specialist and advises clients on harnessing the new technologies for improving organizational outcomes.

Project budget status is something that should be reviewed regularly, forecasted weekly, and distributed to all key players on the project. If key project personnel aren’t aware of the status of the project financials throughout the engagement, it’s much harder to hold them accountable for what they’re spending on the project. Subsequently, it’s harder to get their help in keeping the project budget on track.

So, given that it’s the customer’s money you’re spending on the project, you’d assume that they always want to know the budget status, right? Well, not always. I’ve had at least three projects in my long history where the customer really didn’t want to have anything to do with budget status and reporting. Whether it was sort of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation, or ‘what I don’t know won’t hurt me’, or ‘I don’t want this information in the hands of my team so we’ll keep it quiet’, I’m not exactly certain – each gave differing reasons for refusing ongoing knowledge of the budget status. The most recent example was a multi-million dollar software implementation for a large industrial equipment supplier. The project sponsor – who was mainly a figurehead on the project – wanted the info periodically, but didn’t want anyone else to have it. It was a frustrating situation for me as the project manager – feeling secretive is not a situation that I like to be in with anyone on the customer’s team.

As the project manager, what do you do in these types of situations? What if things start to go poorly and corrective action needs to be taken to salvage the project budget? Then you’re working with a customer who will be surprised or stunned by this information. They won’t likely be your allies in fixing the situation because they haven’t been following it like you have – they’re outsiders up to this point as compared to the project manager. I guess no knowledge = no responsibility…but really?

When I was in this situation, I followed these three steps:

1) As requested, I created two different versions of the status report – one with the budget info that went to my team and one without the budget info that went to the customer team.

2) I made sure that senior management had my status report – including detail on the project financials – each and every week. If it appeared that there was going to be a budget issue, I let them know as proactively and as far in advance as possible. If the customer won’t be my ally on the budget, then the next best thing is the PMO director, the VPs, and/or the CEO of my organization.

3) I closely managed the budget, especially on these three engagements (although it is my practice to do so anyway). I believe this allowed me to take early and successful corrective action. On two of these projects, the budget did start to become ‘unhealthy’ and I initiated discussions with the customer project sponsor to alert them of the fact. It wasn’t the same as openly discussing it as a status item during the weekly customer call, but it was helpful….albeit awkward.

Summary

The takeaway is this: the budget is everyone’s business. Do what you can as the project manager to discuss the project budget up front at kickoff time and let everyone know that you intend to openly manage it and discuss it with the customer on a weekly basis. If you get pushback, then stress its importance while trying to understand the reasoning for the pushback. Educating everyone on tight project financial management may get you over the hump with the customer.

About the Author:
Brad Egeland is an IT/Project Management consultant, business strategist, and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. He has been highly recognized for his ability to work with C-level business leaders in both startups and established organizations to create best practice processes for business management and project management and has overseen the creation and execution of multiple project management offices. He is a married, father of 7 living in Las Vegas, NV. He can be reached at brad at bradegeland.com or you can visit his website at www.bradegeland.com.