Managing Projects and Portfolios with Microsoft PPM (Definitions)
- Project
A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. - Program
A group of related projects managed in a
coordinated way to obtain benefits and control that are otherwise unavailable
when managed individually.
- Portfolio
A collection of projects or programs and other work grouped
together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet strategic
business objectives.
- Project Management
A set of processes and procedures for a team to follow when
initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing a project to achieve
specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
- Portfolio Management
A set of the processes, methods, and technologies used by
project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze, select,
prioritize, and manage projects based on a number of key characteristics, such
as cost, benefits, and alignment with corporate strategic objectives.
- Workflows
Workflows enforce your business processes and provide a
structured way for projects to move through phases and stages. You can set up a
workflow to do a variety of actions based on the user input for each stage,
including sending emails, assigning tasks, and waiting for specific project
actions.
- Master Projects and Subprojects
A master project is simply a project
that has other project(s) embedded in it.
A subproject, therefore, is a project that
is embedded in another project.
- Cross-Project Task
Dependencies
If your project has a task that depends on a task in another
project, use cross-project links to tie the task dates to one another. This
way, if the task that you are dependent upon slips, the new dates are reflected
in your own task.
- Enterprise Resource Pools
An Enterprise Resource Pool gives you the ability to assign
the same resources to more than one project or use shared resources in more
than one project. It holds all the information about each resource and is
managed through the Resource Center in the Microsoft PPM cloud service. From
there, you can add and modify resources in the Enterprise Resource Pool.
The benefit of an Enterprise Resource Pool is that all
information for your resources is captured in one place and is consistent
across all projects using the same pool.
- Resource Center
The Resource Center page in the Microsoft PPM cloud service
allows you to view resource availability, view resource assignments, add a
resource, filter for resources, and export data to a spreadsheet.
- Generic Resources
A generic resource is typically a resource named after a
role. Your system administrator should have already entered roles to the
Microsoft PPM cloud service for your company and created one generic resource
for each role. For example, there should be a generic resource created for the
role of project manager called “Project Manager.”
- Resource Engagements
Resource engagements are requests from a project manager to a
resource manager for a particular resource over a period of time. They help
align project managers and resource managers on the specific amount of work and
time period associated with a project.
- Committed vs. Proposed
Assignments
A resource can be committed if you
want to assign the resource to the project, or proposed if
you do not yet have authorization to assign the resource to the project.
- Resource Leveling
Resource leveling refers to identifying resources that
have too many hours assigned to them on a project and spreading the hours out
so that the resource only works available hours each day. You can level your
project resources in Microsoft Project, using the commands available in
the Level command group on the Resource tab.
- Baselines
A baseline is a specific measurement, calculation,
or point on some sort of scale that is used as a basis for comparison. A
baseline is made up of nearly 20 primary reference points across five
categories: start dates, finish dates, duration, work, and cost
estimates.
You can set up to 10 additional baselines to help measure changes in the schedule. For example, if your project has several phases, you can save a separate baseline at the end of each phase, to compare planned values against actual data.
- Assignment Owners
An assignment owner is the person responsible for
entering task status updates for an assignment.
- Status Managers
A status manager is the person who will receive the status
updates made for a task. The status manager is automatically set to the name of
the person who created the task, and in most cases it is the project manager.
However, there may be an instance where a different person needs to be assigned
as the status manager and receive status updates for a task. In this case,
another person from the enterprise can be assigned as the status manager.
- Task Progress
When work is being performed against the tasks in your
project, you need to capture your task progress in order to
keep the project plan up to date. When you update the progress on a task, the
amount of work completed and the associated costs may be automatically updated
(depending on the task’s settings).
- Methods for Tracking Tasks
In the Microsoft PPM cloud service, there are four tracking
methods available for updating tasks in a timesheet. The tracking method will
already be set for your organization based on company policy. You should be
aware of all the possible methods, as the tracking method will affect how you
approve timesheets submitted by your resources.
Percent of work complete: Resources
report the percent of work they have completed, ranging from 0 to 100 percent.
Actual work done and work remaining: Resources report the actual amount of work done
and the work remaining to be done on each task, in a unit of time (usually
hours).
Hours of work done per period: Resources report their hours worked on each task per period.
Free form: Resources
report their hours using any method that they choose.
- Cost-Related Views in the Microsoft PPM
Cloud Service
There are three cost-related views available:
The Assignments Cost view displays cost information
for all of the project tasks and their resource assignments in a simple table,
including the cost rate, the baseline cost, the cost variance, the actual cost,
and the remaining cost for each assignment.
The Resources Cost view displays the cost information
for all of the project resources in a simple table, including the cost rate,
the baseline cost, the cost variance, the actual cost, and the remaining cost
for each resource.
The Tasks Cost view displays the cost information for
all of the tasks in the project schedule in a simple table on the left,
including the fixed cost, fixed cost accrual type, total cost, baseline cost,
cost variance, actual cost, and remaining cost for each task. It also shows
each task in a Gantt Chart view on the right.
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