seven ways ppm will change your application development organization
Table of Contents Executive Summary...3 1. Make Demands Less Demanding... 4 Capture 100% of resource demand... 4 Field and route all types of requests according to business criteria...5 2. Get Your Resources in Balance...5 Gain a holistic view of the entire resource pool...5 Quickly find appropriate, available resources... 6 3. See the Whole Picture... 6 draw resource, financial, and project data into an integrated framework... 6 Prioritize and select the best investments...7 4. Shift Resources and Projects More Intelligently...7 Evaluate the impact of portfolio decisions...7 5. Manage/Monitor Projects in Real Time...7 Monitor Performance in real time...7 support all project management styles... 8 6. Cut Spending on Maintenance Work... 8 Tackle the application portfolio management (APM) challenge... 8 shed light on duplication and complexity... 9 make lifecycle decisions based on actual cost and resource data... 9 7. Understand the Dollars and Cents...10 manage investments for maximum return...10 realize lifecycle benefits...10 Summary... 11
Executive Summary Gartner lists IT Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) as one of the hottest application areas in the market today. In fact, Gartner is predicting double-digit growth over the next three years (Source: Gartner Project & Portfolio Management Summit, 2007). Why? Because growing organizations searching for ways to gain a competitive edge are recognizing the breakthrough value PPM brings to the table. For application development organizations, the complete visibility PPM brings to projects and strategic plans is invaluable. With the data you need at your fingertips, you have the ability to make better-informed decisions faster so your organization can keep moving forward strategically while maintaining day-to-day requirements. The result is better alignment between business and application development and the ability to focus resources on strategic projects that drive the greatest business value.
This paper explains the seven key ways that an effective PPM solution can change your application development organization for competitive advantage. The right PPM solution will enable you to: 1. Make Demands Less Demanding Capture 100% of resource demand Projects represent just one of the competing demands for your resources. However, demand takes many forms, including large investment requests, simple project requests and service maintenance requests all vying for the same resources. In fact, most of an organization s capacity is consumed by maintenance and ongoing support activity but these requests typically fly below management radar due to their small size and urgency. An effective PPM solution allows you to capture and facilitate the flow of this activity, creating visibility so that management will understand for the first time what it truly costs to keep the lights on. Using PPM to capture, classify, and evaluate all sources of demand enables you to appropriately prioritize work and allocate resources to the highest value opportunities. In addition, PPM solutions enable you to analyze demand flow and categorize and chart requests of all sizes to uncover demand patterns and improve performance. Serena Mariner, a full-featured PPM solution, provides efficient workflows to route requests through a defined approval process.
Field and Route All Types of Requests According to Business Criteria With PPM, response time is accelerated. The notification and workflow capability of PPM solutions direct the traffic, automatically shuttling requests both large and small appropriately through a defined approval process. Configurable business rules are used for screening, routing the highest priority demand to the right people, notifying staff immediately of new assignments, and automatically adding assignments to timesheets. Small requests can be routed directly to the people doing the work, while large investment decisions can be supported by driving a standard business case development process. Tracking the demand for resources over time facilitates better forecasting and resource planning so you can optimize staffing. 2. Get Your Resources in Balance Gain a holistic view of the entire resource pool Effective resource management leads to fewer bottlenecks, better forecasting of demand and faster response to changing priorities. PPM solutions link capacity planning, resource allocation, utilization, task assignments, and skills, giving resource managers a holistic view of their entire resource pool. Graphical views show resource capacity compared to resource demand, enabling you to easily see where demand exceeds supply so you can quickly uncover potential bottlenecks and resolve them long before they occur. With PPM, resource allocations roll up to the portfolio level to ensure decisions are based on actual resource capacity, allowing you to accurately analyze the impact of proposed projects. Serena Mariner provides an intuitive, graphical Demand vs. Capacity View that quickly uncovers potential bottlenecks and aids in resource capacity planning
Quickly find appropriate, available resources PPM solutions provide a complete view of your organization s resource structure so you can anticipate demand for resources, allocate the right resources to the right projects based on skill and availability, and monitor utilization. The best resources for the job are recommended based on roles, availability, and the priority of all other assigned work. This allows you to easily balance internal and external staffing requirements including offshore, near shore, etc. PPM solutions with total-time reporting capabilities enable team members to accurately account for 100% of time worked on all project and non-project activities, enabling you to understand and manage 100% of resource activity. 3. See the Whole Picture Draw resource, financial, and project data into an integrated framework The right PPM solution can make creating portfolios with many different types of investments an intuitive and effortless process. PPM solutions enable you to capture all the competing sources of demand, roll them up into a summarized view, and compare to total capacity. Flexible PPM solutions allow you to enter resource and budget requirements by month, quarter, or year and through simple categorization and analysis, they can highlight the difference between operation and development spending, helping you to strike the right balance. In addition, comprehensive analysis and charting tools enable portfolio managers to quickly identify duplicate and off-strategy investments to reduce costs and save money. Portfolio Analysts can use Serena Mariner to track the health and status of the entire IT portfolio
Prioritize and Select the Best Investments When demand exceeds supply, organizations need a portfolio approach to help them select the best mix of investments. The right PPM solution means portfolio analysts can spend less time gathering data and more time analyzing the portfolio. Analytical tools enable you to easily identify the right mix of investments for today and have the flexibility to revisit your decisions to ensure past investments are still appropriate for the portfolio. Approval workflows streamline execution and collaboration while clear audit trails ensure decisions can always be tracked back to their source. Although many solutions rely on third-party reporting or business intelligence tools for analysis, PPM solutions that run in real time and include native capabilities allow you to quickly drill down from all query results and charts to detailed, up-to-date portfolio information, compressing analysis time from days to minutes. Solutions that allow shared access to a central repository eliminate the keepers of the data syndrome and allow users to conduct their own analysis. In addition, shared visibility via a central repository means past project data, templates, and best practices can be used to create more accurate estimates and forecasts. 4. Shift Resources and Projects More Intelligently Evaluate the impact of portfolio decisions Understanding the sequencing of investments is crucial to maintaining an achievable portfolio. PPM solutions with time-phased financial rollups enable you to see instantly whether you have the staff and budget needed to take on that new investment and, more importantly, the ability to investigate the alternatives. The best solutions offer easy-to-use What if and scenario planning capabilities and enable you to save results to compare with other scenarios, plans, baselines and actual results. Summaries of key metrics from project, resource, and financial management capabilities give you advanced warning and the ability to drilldown to the necessary details for immediate course correction, enabling you to manage by exception. 5. Manage/Monitor Projects in Real Time Monitor Performance in Real Time Typical operations reports provide a picture of where you were six to eight weeks ago that s an eternity in today s volatile business environment. PPM solutions with built-in timesheet capabilities enable you to get real-time analysis of actual project hours and costs. Performance indicators and variance calculations can alert managers to potential problems early, while there is still time for correction. Management can assess and address project risk at the portfolio level while integrated issue and risk management tools help project teams manage risk at the project level. Threaded discussions provide a standardized approach for documenting, assessing, resolving, and escalating issues and risks. PPM solutions with native document management capabilities ensure that key project and program information becomes part of the permanent record without the need to purchase another third-party solution. Through increased visibility at all stages and more consistent execution of standard project management processes, effective PPM solutions enable you to enhance on-time, on-budget project delivery.
Serena Mariner offers Drag-and drop Gantt views, enabling you to create and maintain project plans in a 100% HTML web interface. Support all Project Management Styles The best PPM solutions provide an extremely flexible project management framework that supports a wide range of approaches and support for all project management styles. For smaller, lower risk projects, back of the envelope planning can be used where only high-level phases and resources need to be defined. For projects that are higher risk or more complex, robust yet straightforward project and task management capabilities are needed. For project managers who are more comfortable using Microsoft Project, finding a PPM solution with complete bidirectional integration with Microsoft Project is important. Solutions with this level of flexibility ensure broad acceptance, which is critical for complete data capture and dependable rollups. 6. Cut Spending on Maintenance Work Tackle the Application Portfolio Management (APM) challenge The typical IT organization expends as much as 80% of its human and capital resources maintaining an ever growing inventory of applications and supporting infrastructure. Born of autonomous business-unit-level decision making and mergers and acquisitions, many IT organizations manage multiple ERP applications, knowledge management systems, and BI and reporting tools. All are maintained and periodically upgraded, leading to costly duplication and unnecessary complexity in IT operations. Left unchecked, the demands on the IT organization to simply maintain its existing inventory of applications threatens to consume the capacity to deliver new projects. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by the BPM Forum, many large organizations estimate that the cost of supporting redundant applications consumes more than 20% of the IT budget.
Shed light on duplication and complexity Most governance and portfolio management processes focus entirely on the selection of new business applications and the projects required to deliver them. Effective PPM solutions can extend the boundaries of the IT governance process to include the final products of IT the deployed applications. By bringing to light the sheer number of applications in the current portfolio, IT organizations can begin to reduce duplication and complexity. Top down portfolio analysis capabilities allow you to quickly identify opportunities to rationalize the application portfolio without getting bogged down in project details. By identifying the mix between project and non-project ( keep the lights on ) activities, effective PPM solutions can increase resource capacity for new projects by helping IT shift resources to projects that drive incremental business value. Costs can be reduced as much as 20% by identifying and eliminating redundant and obsolete applications. Serena Mariner includes a Portfolio Analyzer that captures key information about each application in the portfolio. Make lifecycle decisions based on actual cost and resource data For effective decision-making, applications must be ranked or categorized along a number of dimensions including business unit alignment, application characteristics, lifecycle, usage, performance, and technical/architectural compliance. Total costs, risks, and benefits must be summarized so you have the necessary data to manage total cost of ownership (TCO) and support decisions to replace, retire, or further invest in applications across the enterprise. PPM solutions provide you with complete information at your fingertips so you can create an optimal portfolio of applications that minimizes ongoing support and maintenance costs and frees up resources for other important business objectives.
7. Understand the Dollars and Cents Manage Investments for Maximum Return Financial management is a critical component of selecting the right investments. PPM solutions provide a consistent method for modeling and monitoring key financial indicators. Effective solutions capture costs and benefits over the entire lifecycle of each investment from concept, through development and launch, and on through the maintenance and retirement phases. Time-phased financial rollups allow you to model and track the financial implications of project starts, stops, and delays, and easily adjust your fiscal or accounting calendars. Total costs (CapEx and OpEx) for investments in the portfolio are summarized, allowing you to shift between standard and fiscal calendars to understand budget impacts and improve financial performance. Project costs and schedule data are updated continuously, providing timelier and better forecasts that align with accounting periods. PPM solutions also model and monitor key performance indicators (ROI, NPV, IRR and TCO) to continuously measure plan versus actual and actual versus baseline. Early indicators that projects are off course are highlighted, enabling you to correct small issues before they become big ones. Realize Lifecycle Benefits Accurate benefits estimates are tough to come by. Too often complex spreadsheets used to justify new investments boast incredible returns that never seem to materialize. With a PPM solution, you can create centrally located financial models, using a consistent model that ensures estimated benefits can be captured and ultimately measured against actual returns. Standard Business Cases Views enable you to more effectively compare different types of investments, rolling up total costs and benefits across the portfolio. Time-phased costs, benefits, and other metrics can be rolled up at every level, providing accurate summary information based on highly detailed data. Effective PPM solutions also capture benefits once a project has been deployed and allow you to track them back to the original business case for better accountability. Serena Mariner offers standard Business Cases Views that enable comparison of investments, summarizing costs and benefits across the portfolio. 10
Summary It s easy to understand why PPM has become one of today s hottest application areas. For an application development organization, having easy access to critical project data means you can make fast, well-informed decisions that drive your business forward. Effective PPM solutions offer an added level of visibility that is vitally needed to ensure on time, on budget, and on value applications. As a leading comprehensive PPM solution, Serena Mariner offers the full-featured capabilities that are necessary to deliver the greatest value. The seven benefits described in this paper explain why organizations of all types around the world are using Serena Mariner to save money and gain a competitive advantage. Go to www./mariner for more information on the power of Serena Mariner. ABOUT SERENA Serena Software, the Change Governance leader, helps more than 15,000 organizations around the world including 96 of the Fortune 100 and 90 of the Global 100 turn change into a business advantage. Serena is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific. CONTACT Learn more about the enterprise-wide power of Serena Mariner by visiting www./mariner or contacting one of our sales representatives in your area. Serena Worldwide Headquarters Serena Software, Inc. Corporate Offices 2755 Campus Drive Third Floor San Mateo, California 94403-2538 United States 800.457.3736 T 650.522.6699 F info@ Serena European Headquarters Serena Software Europe Ltd. Abbey View Everard Close St. Albans Hertfordshire AL1 2PS United Kingdom +44 (0)800.328.0243 T +44 (0)1727.869.804 F ukinfo@ Serena Asia Pacific Headquarters 360 Orchard Road #12-10 International Building Singapore 238869 +65 6834.9880 T +65 6836.3119 F apinfo@ Copyright 2007 Serena Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Serena and Mariner are registered trademarks of Serena Software. Change Governance is a trademark of Serena Software, Inc. All other product or company names are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners. WP_Apr07