The Project Management Practice Inc. will actively assist your organization in successfully optimizing your implementation of Microsoft’s Enterprise Project Management Solution — Microsoft Office Project 2003 System.  Drawing on our extensive knowledge of Microsoft’s Enterprise Project Management solution, we will assist with:

1. Requirements Definition – To ensure that the EPM initiative creates a business-driven solution, the team determines the needs of each key stakeholder, sponsor, and end user. The needs defined during this step will be instrumental in the evolution of more detailed requirements gathered and analyzed in the next phase. These needs are recorded in the Business Requirements document.

2. Mapping Business Processes to Project Server Functionality - The business process requirements define which processes and standards the organization requires staff to follow so that the organization can accomplish its project management goals. Organizations will vary in their process maturity, ranging from an ability to replicate processes across the organization and through time, to having no standards at all. It is important to understand where the organization lies along this maturity continuum, as this will determine initiative strategy (a decision to phase in processes), feature implementation, and training requirements. The EPM team develops a high-level inventory of these processes.
    

3. Architect design and system Installation - The architecture design specification describes the hardware and software configuration that must be deployed to support the EPM solution over a designated time period. To develop this specification, the EPM team must understand the components of Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and how they integrate, understand how different environments affect a Project Server deployment, collect and analyze the organization’s project-related information, and then determine the configuration that best suits the organization’s EPM goals.
    

4. Develop Configuration Settings Specification — The purpose of this phase is to determine your organization’s EPM standards. Specific configuration items are:
   • Define corporate calendar settings — determine the calendar settings that are the basis for resource calendars, used to schedule project work
   • Define enterprise custom codes — determine the company-wide custom codes, both resource and project that need to be created to store information that is not part of the default system
   • Identify user roles — determine the roles of the system users, as they will appear in Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and Microsoft Project Web Access. These are the groups used for security purposes
   • Define resource settings — determine the resource-related configuration settings. This includes use of generic resources, skill-based resource planning and the use of the Resource Substitution Wizard
   • Define view customization — determine how to best modify the system’s default views to meet the client’s project and resource management information needs
   • Define standard notifications — decide what kind of automatic notifications need to be included in the system
   • Define Windows SharePoint Services customization — define how Windows SharePoint Services will be used to support document, issues and risk management. Includes how the document libraries will be utilized, issues and risks customized
   • Analyze and define the computing environment – including defining IIS settings, evaluating Office 2003 requirements, defining and establishing MS SQL Server settings and permissions, defining client requirements, and identifying software and hardware upgrade requirements.

5. Pilot System Implementation — the purpose of this phase is to create a pilot environment. Project Management Practice Inc. recommends the following specific activities/processes be involved in the pilot: 
• Install Server – based on Architecture design specification
• Develop prototype (POC) — configure the system and customize it, as defined by the architecture and configuration setting specifications
• Demonstrate and review prototype — migrate custom settings and templates to server
• Refine prototype — based on the feedback from the review session, refine and/or revise the prototype
• Reset database and load pilot group information into system — load the pilot group’s selected projects and related resources into the *** EPM database
• Train the pilot group — conduct a 3-day training session for the pilot group to make them familiar with the EPM solution and specific business processes that map to functionality.
• Pilot operation for two reporting cycles — operate the pilot system and evaluate performance for at least a minimum of two reporting cycles. The length of each reporting cycle is determined during the development of the configuration settings specification
• Refine system based on feedback from the pilot group — refine the system based on the pilot.

6. Deploy - The Deployment and Release Management Approach describes the methods used to change processes, methods, and tools while releasing the business processes and Microsoft Office Project 2003 technology into production.
   • The EPM team produces a Deployment Plan document that establishes how each iteration cycle (proof of concept, limited production pilot, and so on) will be deployed.
   • The Deployment Plan document describes:
   • Delivery of Microsoft Office Project 2003 technology training to affected groups throughout the organization
   • Delivery of training for changed business processes to be used by all organizations
   • Steps that will be taken to modify individual user computer desktop environments
   • How each deployment will be evaluated for a period of business reporting cycles

7. Operational Hand-off - The operations team will ultimately inherit daily, weekly, and monthly operational responsibilities for the EPM systems. This hand-off should occur through a formal operations transfer in which the EPM team releases control to the permanent operations support team.

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