IT Project Performance Management

Why Transparency is important in IT Projects

The project landscape of many companies is becoming increasingly confusing. Important resources are repeatedly double-scheduled and, despite a high workload, deadlines and other commitments to the customer often cannot be realised.

The reasons are complex. Often it is due to inadequately defined project scope, lack of communication between business departments and management, lack of risk identification, unrealistic schedules and budgets, lack of change/control processes, inadequate quality control, and lack of resources.

Decisions often have to be made on a very low level of information. There is a lack of centralized data availability, relevant information is not available to all project stakeholders, and the process is insufficiently defined. Many companies have neither established mechanisms nor solutions to create the necessary transparency. The current economic conditions are forcing companies to go along with this process of change, considering efficient cost management.

Serviceware provides transparency from project to portfolio. It is not about looking deeper into individual projects, it is about focusing on the entire project landscape and managing it successfully.

Manage your IT Projects successfully with Serviceware Performance

Companies must always keep both effectiveness and efficiency in mind when managing their IT projects. Hence, the two key questions are:

The project portfolio is built by the projects that are already running and the upcoming projects awaiting a decision. It also is the interface of those two core questions.

Serviceware Performance ensures maximized transparency in your company. Your IT department is always in control of all planning and reporting processes for the IT projects. All the facts are available to make better strategic decisions, provide optimal support to the business departments and optimize IT costs in the long term.

In Serviceware Performance, you are able to control the implementation of your IT strategy. This allows a close integration with business strategy and operational planning and budgeting. Uniform, cross-departmental reporting improves the transparency of your IT projects in order to react to rapidly changing conditions in time. Control-relevant IT key figures enable a close link between control and reporting variables.

The following solutions modules are included in Serviceware Performance:

Project Portfolio Management

The project portfolio contains the total sum of all current and future projects of a company.Portfolio management is the active arrangement of the portfolio by adding and eliminating projects. Portfolio analysis supports portfolio management by providing all relevant facts as a basis for decision-making. Potential future portfolios can be simulated and their impact on future earnings and resource utilization analyzed. Therefore Portfolio Management is an important link to the modules described in the further sections.

Project Scoring

Project scoring is a sub-area of project portfolio management. The project scoring method intends to compare different project alternatives as objectively as possible with the help of defined criteria. The aim is to find a balanced project or product portfolio in terms of opportunities and risks that promises the best possible success for the company. In addition to ongoing projects, projects awaiting a decision can also be included in the portfolio. This makes it possible to analyze the impact of project decisions on the future portfolio.

Project Cost Planning and Reporting

Project cost management is usually organized similarly to classic cost center accounting. On the one hand there are cost types (e.g. personnel costs, travel costs, material costs, etc.), on the other hand the project and in some cases additionally the cost center. Project cost management includes both planning and actual/plan comparison. In addition to the initial planning, regular revisions will also be necessary for the costs.

Project Status and Schedule Reporting

In order to manage projects efficiently throughout their duration and to always have an overview of all projects, continuous and seamless project reporting is helpful. Target/actual comparisons, evaluation of consequences, action planning and regular monitoring of implementation are intended to ensure that the project goals are achieved. The focus is on the achievement of the project objectives, the planned completion dates and the project costs.

Resource and Capacity Management

Resource management is about allocating the available resources as optimally as possible to the projects and thus making the best possible use of the available employees. The focus is on deciding which projects can be completed in the planned time with the existing resources. A decisive factor in the conception of resource planning is the level of detail in these dimensions. Too little detail leads to inaccurate planning, too much detail leads to a reduction in planning quality. Whereas capacity management is about building up the necessary capacities in the long term to achieve the strategic innovation goals and to take account of changes in the innovation process with sufficient lead time.

Business Case Management and IT Projects

The business case is an economic evaluation of the planned IT solution in terms of costs, benefits and risks. The business case covers the necessary investments and expenditures. Historization in a central database allows the assumptions in the business case to be continuously refined over time or replaced by facts. At the same time, it enables comparison with earlier versions, especially the version at the time the project started.

Your Advantages at a Glance

• You connect the project, finance and strategy worlds and make the success of your project performance measurable through key figures.
• You ensure that IT projects are comparable and traceable.
• Whether controller, executive or IT - you are always aware of the status of the entire IT project portfolio.
• You bundle all information in one system and create a transparent, reliable basis for fact-based decisions.
• You can classify IT projects according to criteria you define and, for example, differentiate between must and can projects.
• You document experiences and use this knowledge to execute IT projects even more professionally and promisingly.