Microsoft Office Project Server is a powerful application that many EPM Live customers are leveraging to centralize and manage their project schedules. It has a robust database back-end that allows for storing enterprise resources, field attributes, field calculations, and more. However, many of our customers are looking to leverage their investment and extend their EPM solution to manage more than just the tasks and schedules of their projects and programs. They also want to deploy Project Server throughout more of their organization.
By connecting EPM Live to the Project Server platform, our customers leverage all the features of Project Server and tie it together nicely with a flexible SharePoint solution that enables them to manage their entire project. Project Managers (or Schedulers) can still use Microsoft Project Professional without any new training or change to their process. Timesheets and Enterprise Resources can be utilized without any impact to the end users. The only difference is a positive one; EPM Live enables organizations to extend the solution to reach a broader audience and meet the needs of the entire project team.
For example, project teams need to begin collaborating on a project far in advance of creating a schedule. By connecting EPM Live to Project Server, the project team is naturally guided through the project lifecycle. Create workgroups upon project initiation, or even project requests, to begin collaborating with the team immediately. Eliminate disparate systems and manage your entire project within one SharePoint platform. Create your schedule as the project progresses with seamless integration with the Project Server platform.
In addition, different types of departments may manage their projects with varying methodologies. Using the flexible site templates with EPM Live, we’ve seen organizations extend the use of Project Server to enterprise wide deployments. For example, IT Development may use SCRUM methodology whereas the Program Office uses PMBOK. We’ve seen enterprise deployments fail time and again when attempting to force everyone to use the same project management process or methodology.
Lastly, EPM Live allows you to truly understand and manage all the work around a project. Project Server does a great job with visibility to schedules and tasks. Leverage that capability, but connect Project Server to EPM Live and now organizations can manage all the activities around managing a project. Team members can easily view and update all their activities across projects within one view. Functional managers finally have the visibility to what their resources are working on- all activities, not just the tasks within the schedule. Keep in mind, you can still take advantage of the Timesheets feature within Project Server to capture actual hours.
In conclusion, there are many benefits to connecting EPM Live to your Project Server deployment. Extend the capabilities of Project Server and meet the demands of a larger enterprise audience. To learn more about how to get more out of your Project Server deployment with EPM Live, Contact Us.
by mmanimtim