Microsoft Project Server 2010 for Enterprise Project Management was developed for project managers / planners who will be utilizing Microsoft Project Professional 2010 in conjunction with Microsoft Project Server 2010 to build and maintain project schedules in an enterprise wide project planning and management process. The book is divided into the following Chapters:
• Enterprise Project Planning and Management presents a nontechnical appreciation / overview of Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010 working together to provide organizations with an EPM (Enterprise Project Management) solution.
• Project Initiation and Schedule Management covers the initiation actions provided by Project Professional 2010 to start the process of creating successful project schedules.
• Project Schedule Development presents a comprehensive approach to the development of a project schedules using Project Professional 2010 combined with Project Server 2010.
• Communicating Results with Project Professional 2010 covers the capabilities that Project Professional 2010 provides project managers to understand their schedules. While Project Server 2010 provides extensive project-related information to authorized Project Web App (PWA) users, project managers need to use the capabilities of Project Professional 2010 to fully understand their schedules.
• Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) covers the capabilities that reside in Project Server 2010 for unified Project and Portfolio Management: the creation and management of project schedules / proposals using Project Server 2010’s out-of-the-box Workflow capability, plus Portfolio Analysis. This Chapter is NOT a “how-to” on either Workflow or Portfolio Analysis; instead it is aimed at making project managers aware of the terms and terminology and most importantly the capabilities that exist in Project Server 2010 out-of-the-box. This Chapter also clearly outlines the differences between Project Professional 2010 and PWA for project schedule initiation, development and management.
• PWA for Analyzing and Communicating Results presents the capabilities of Project Web App (PWA) to communicate both project and resource information. From a project managers perspective they need to recognize three very important aspects about communicating results with PWA:
o That the over whelming majority of the process of communicating project results with team members and other project / portfolio stakeholders will be accomplished via PWA.
o That the PWA views are standardized for all projects and all resources.
o And finally which PWA users can access which project and / or resource views — what data — is controlled by the Project Server 2010 administrator(s) not by the project manager.
This Chapter also covers the Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities of Project Server 2010. This is a very powerful part of Project Server for communicating information on all or a subset of the organization’s projects / proposals.
• Artifact Management focuses on the use of Project Sites — specialized SharePoint sites — to facilitate collaboration and communication within project teams and between teams and other stakeholders. Specifically it covers the storage and management of the documents associated with a project plus the issues, the risks and the deliverables. It also covers the use of Project Sites for Team Discussions. Collectively these items are typically referred to as the project’s artifacts.
• Tracking Progress and Reporting Status covers time and task status reporting by team members. The role of the project manager in using this progress data from the team members to actually update the project schedules is also covered. The last part of this Chapter covers all aspects of Project Server 2010’s Status Reports capabilities.
• Program Management (Master Projects) defines how to create masters projects which are the foundation for programs in Project Server 2010. It covers Cross Project Linking as well as a detailed comparison with project Deliverables. This Chapter also covers Project Professional 2010 — Project Server 2010’s budgeting — for cost, work and material — capabilities.
To significantly enhance the learning experience readers of the book can get access to a fully configured Cloud-based Project Server 2010 instance hosted by BeMo – Project Intelligence (www.bemopro.com), in fact it is the same image that was used during the writing of the book. The BeMo Content Pack provides:
• Eight (8) users with active login ids — one Executive, one Portfolio Manager, three Project Managers, two Team Members PLUS Jan Kotas who is a Project Server Administrator, Project Manager, Team Member and a Portfolio Manager.
• An Enterprise Resource Pool (ERP) of 120 work, material and cost resources.
• The out-of-the-box Project Server 2010 Enterprise Custom fields PLUS 13 more project and task fields / codes including two calculated fields — Status: Cost Variance and Status: Work Variance, with the results being displayed graphically.
• The out-of-the-box Workflow adjusted so that both workflow controlled proposals and non-workflow controlled projects have to provide the same Project / Proposal details.
• There are 11 Enterprise Project Types (EPT) nine of which can be utilized from Project Web App (PWA).
• A complete Project Portfolio Management (PPM) strategy that is linked to the Sample Workflow.
• A total of 29 Project / Proposal schedules ranging from a few high-tasks to ones that have almost 200 tasks.
• There are two complete Programs — the Warehouse Program has a master project schedule plus three inserted projects and the IT Upgrade Program that has a master project schedule and two inserted projects. Both programs include complete program and project Cost and Work Budgets.
• The out-of-the-box Business Intelligence (BI) has been extended to include a large number of custom reports that use both the Reporting database and an OLAP database.
Readers of the book can get access to the BeMo Content Pack on a monthly basis as an addition to their BeMo Cloud offering with a Project Professional connection subscription. The Content Pack comes with an 80 page Guide.
To assist the readers of this book the Content Pack includes a comprehensive set of labs tied directly to the chapters in the book. The Lab manual is actually stored inside the Content Pack, details are in the book.