Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide

Microsoft Office Project
Server 2003 Solution Planning

Guide
Microsoft Office Project
Server 2003 Solution Planning
Guide
4 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
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Published: April 10, 2005
Applies To: Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003,
Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003
Author: Roy Riley
Editors: Laura Graham, David Longmuir
Reviewed by: Project Product Planning
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide i
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Introduction .............................................................................. 1
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series..................................... 1
What Will You Learn from this Book? ....................................................................... 2
Who Should Read this Book?.................................................................................... 3
Revision History.......................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1 4
Overview of the EPM Solution...................................................... 4
Potential Benefits of the EPM Solution..................................................................... 5
Benefits for Executives ....................................................................................... 5
Benefits for Project Managers ........................................................................... 5
Benefits for Resource Managers ....................................................................... 6
Benefits for Team Members............................................................................... 6
Benefits for Administrators ................................................................................ 7
Components of an EPM Solution .............................................................................. 7
Best Practices for an EPM Solution Deployment ..................................................... 8
Chapter 2 10
Defining a Vision for Your EPM Solution Deployment ....................10
Foundation for the EPM Solution Vision .................................................................10
Creating Your EPM Solution Vision .........................................................................11
Identifying Business Needs and Opportunities...............................................12
Learning about EPM Solution Features and Capabilities...............................12
Assessing Organizational Readiness...............................................................12
Process.......................................................................................................13
People ........................................................................................................13
Organizational Goals .................................................................................13
Technology .................................................................................................14
Chapter 3 15
Learning About EPM Solution Capabilities ................................. 15
Project Management ...............................................................................................16
Note For more information about these features, see Chapter 5, Project
Server 2003 Features, later in this guide. ......................................................19
ii Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
Project Portfolio Management ................................................................................ 19

Resource Management ........................................................................................... 20
Reporting and Analysis ............................................................................................ 21
Reporting........................................................................................................... 21
Task-Level Reporting ................................................................................. 21
Project-Level Reporting ............................................................................. 21
Portfolio-Level Reporting ........................................................................... 22
Analysis ............................................................................................................. 22
Historical Analysis...................................................................................... 22
Status Analysis........................................................................................... 23
Forward-Looking Indicator Analysis .......................................................... 23
Trend Analysis............................................................................................ 23
Budgeting and Cost Tracking .................................................................................. 24
Communication, Collaboration, and Workflow....................................................... 24
Chapter 4 26
Establishing Organizational Readiness ...................................... 26
Obtaining Executive Sponsorship ........................................................................... 27
Ensuring Participation ............................................................................................. 28
Assessing Project Management Process Maturity................................................. 28
Maturity Level 1: Ad Hoc .................................................................................. 29
Maturity Level 2: Repeatable Processes......................................................... 30
Maturity Level 3: Defined Processes ............................................................... 30
Maturity Level 4 – Managed Processes .......................................................... 31
Maturity Level 5 – Optimized and Continually Improving Processes............. 31
Establishing a Project Management Culture.......................................................... 31
Establishing a Communication Plan ....................................................................... 32
Establishing a Training Plan .................................................................................... 32
Planning for Rollout of Microsoft EPM Software Tools .......................................... 33
Planning Your EPM Solution Adoption .................................................................... 33
EPM Solution Adoption Roadmap.................................................................... 33
Iterative Adoption Strategy............................................................................... 34
Chapter 5 36
Project Server 2003 Features.................................................... 36
Active Directory Synchronization............................................................................. 37
Administrative Projects............................................................................................ 38
Build Team ............................................................................................................... 39
Enterprise Calendars ............................................................................................... 40
Enterprise Custom Fields ........................................................................................ 41
Enterprise Global Template..................................................................................... 42
Enterprise Outline Codes......................................................................................... 42
Enterprise Resource Pool ........................................................................................ 43
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide iii
Portfolio Analyzer .....................................................................................................43

Portfolio Modeler .....................................................................................................44
Project Center ..........................................................................................................45
Resource Breakdown Structure ..............................................................................45
Resource Center ......................................................................................................45
Status Reports .........................................................................................................46
Timesheets...............................................................................................................46
Windows SharePoint Services.................................................................................46
Appendix A 49
Additional Resources ............................................................... 49
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series...................................49
Project Server-Related Web Sites ...........................................................................50
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 1
Introduction
The Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide is designed to help your
organization successfully adopt a Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management
(EPM) Solution. A critical step in a successful adoption is to create a clear vision for how
your organization will plan, deploy, and use the EPM solution. Many organizations do not
achieve the results they expect because they fail to create a vision.
This guide introduces the Microsoft EPM Solution, discusses the components, elements,
and capabilities of EPM, and provides the necessary information to begin creating an EPM
vision for your organization.
Further, this guide introduces many of the software-based features used in a Microsoft
EPM Solution, and is designed to help you to make decisions about mapping them to
specific implementation needs.
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Planning Guide
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series

The Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books series documents the Microsoft
Office Enterprise Project Management Solution and provides a detailed reference for all
phases of deploying Project Server 2003, including planning, installation, configuration, and
administration. Each book is designed to stand alone and can be referred to on an as-
needed basis. You can also read these books in the order listed below for a complete guide
to deploying Project Server 2003:
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=33654
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Configuration Planning Guide
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=20235
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Disaster Recovery Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide
This includes the following resources:

• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide: Single Server Deployment
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide: Small-Scale Deployment
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide: Medium-Scale Deployment
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Application Configuration Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Administrator’s Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Security Group Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Portfolio Managers Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Project Managers Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Resource Managers Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Team Leads Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Team Members Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Executives Guide
A key part of deploying Project Server 2003 as part of a Microsoft Office EPM Solution is
proper planning. These books will help your organization plan for deployment by
explaining Project Server 2003 in detail, highlighting the questions you should ask
throughout the planning phase, and providing a reference for the requirements during each
phase of deployment. These books are not intended to be a substitute for proper planning
within your organization as to what your EPM Solution should be. The Microsoft Office
Project Server 2003 Online Books series will help you succeed in deploying your
organization’s project management solution.
What Will You Learn from this Book?

This guide will discuss the many interdependent factors involved in creating a vision for,
and then successfully adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution. This guide will help you
understand these factors, why they are important, how they fit together, and how they
might affect your organization; it will illustrate the ways these factors feed into—and are
then affected by— your EPM vision. This guide also includes information about the
requirements for the Project Server 2003 features that you can enable as part of your
solution.
Who Should Read this Book?

In the planning stage, it is important to bring together representatives from the business
and IT sides of the organization to understand the requirements from several angles. This
guide is designed to benefit the following professionals:
Business Decision Makers
The persons responsible for deciding whether or not to implement EPM should first
understand each of the factors involved in a successful implementation.
Business Analysts
The business analyst looks at how your organization manages project-based work. It is
important to understand various business processes and how they might be improved.
Project Management Office
The members of the Project Management Office (PMO), or persons within the
organization who primarily govern project management issues, play a key role in a
successful adoption.
IT Department
Deploying and maintaining the technology requires IT knowledge in several key areas
and technologies, including Windows® Server operating systems, Internet Information
Services (IIS), SQL Server™, networking, security, capacity, and extranets.
Revision History
The following table provides the revision history for this document.
Date Revision
March 30, 2005 • Initial publication.
1
Overview of the EPM Solution
The discipline of project management is becoming increasingly important in today’s
competitive business environment. Many types of organizations now rely on project
management software for tracking a variety of different types of work, from manufacturing
and construction, to IT system deployments, non-production-related initiatives, and other
schedule-based activities, such as mergers and acquisitions. Business success or failure is
based in part on the ability of an organization to develop a coherent project management
solution that enables it to manage multiple projects while tracking and managing resource
allocations, budgets, schedules, and status. The project management solution, then, is a
means for you to gain relevant insight into your business. This insight can help identify
resource and budget issues and provide early detection of project-related problems. The
Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution is designed to help
your organization to achieve business success by enabling you to implement a project
management solution that works for your business needs.
The Microsoft EPM solution integrates your people, processes, organizational goals, and
business needs with the software tools in Microsoft Office Project Server 2003. Project
Server 2003 combines with Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, Microsoft Office
Project Web Access 2003, and other Microsoft server applications and technologies to
provide a server-based project management toolset. This guide introduces the Microsoft
EPM Solution and provides the information that you need to better understand its features
and components and how they can be mapped to the capabilities of your organization. This
ultimately leads to creating a vision for adopting an EPM Solution tailored to your
business.
Potential Benefits of the EPM Solution

Successfully adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution can potentially provide numerous benefits
to your organization:
• Visibility into and control over projects across the organization
• Improved efficiency
• Increased productivity
• Faster time to market
• Increased revenue
• Reduction in cancelled or unfinished projects
• Elimination of redundant projects
Realizing these benefits depends on several factors, including your organizational goals and
objectives, and what EPM capabilities you want to enable. Adopting a Microsoft EPM
Solution can also provide specific benefits for various job roles in an organization,
including executives, project managers, resource managers, team members, and
administrators.
Benefits for Executives

An EPM Solution can enable portfolio project management, a technique which business
owners, executives, and managers can use to view the collective status of projects within
the organization. By collecting individual projects into a portfolio, owners, executives, and
managers can view the status of their top initiatives, while also gaining insight into how
successfully projects are being executed and how effectively resources are being allocated.
This information can help people make strategic decisions about current and future
initiatives, as well as help people prioritize decisions across projects.
In order to realize the benefits of portfolio management, there are enabling processes that
must be in place. These processes are typically established by the project management
office (PMO) and vary between companies. The key point here is that if you want the
ability to view projects collectively in a way that yields relevant or comparative data, the
planning process should reflect this. At a minimum, project data should be centrally located
and processes to manage projects should be consistent, if not standardized.
Benefits for Project Managers

An EPM Solution provides the following benefits for project managers:
• A means to standardize project-related communication and status reporting in the
organization.
• A common set of tools, templates, and processes for managing projects including:
• Timesheets in Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003 that facilitate reporting.
• Documents, Issues, and Risks features enabled by integration with Microsoft
Windows® SharePoint® Services that facilitate project collaboration.
• Administrative Projects, Enterprise Resource Pool, and Enterprise Global
Template features of Project Server 2003 that enable project managers to view
resource availability and status information across projects so that they can more
accurately analyze data and more efficiently manage projects.
Note For more information about Project Server features, see Chapter 5, Project Server 2003
Features, later in this guide.
Benefits for Resource Managers

The Microsoft EPM solution provides features that enable resource managers to:
• View resource capacity and utilization information.
• Make resource allocation decisions based on a number of criteria, such as the priority
of the project and the location, skills, current allocations, and rates for their resources.
Depending on the organization, resource management might be a role filled by dedicated
Resource Managers, or a job function performed by project managers (and sometimes
both). Features such as the Enterprise Resource Pool, Enterprise Outline Codes, and Build
Team enable resource managers to ensure that projects are appropriately staffed and that
resources are appropriately allocated. Organizational processes must support these features
in order for resource managers to take full advantage of the resource management
capabilities that the EPM Solution provides.
Note For more information about the Enterprise Resource Pool, Enterprise Outline Codes, and
Build Team, see Chapter 5, Project Server 2003 Features, later in this guide.
Benefits for Team Members

The EPM Solution provides features that enable team members to:
• View task assignments.
• Communicate status.
• Collaborate on projects.
Team members are those individuals who are assigned and own tasks within a project.
Timesheets, status reports, the Outlook Add-in, and the Documents, Issues, and Risks
pages in Project Web Access help to improve team members’ efficiency in tracking and
reporting on assignments, status, and other project-related information. These features can
be introduced gradually into the organization as project management processes mature,
which can help to minimize the disruption of current work processes for team members.
Benefits for Administrators

The Microsoft EPM Solution is built upon a Windows-based platform that can be
integrated with an organization’s existing systems and line of business applications. This
enables IT professionals—such as systems administrators, network engineers, and database
administrators—to leverage their existing knowledge of and experience with server- and
Web-related technologies and applications when planning for the deployment,
administration, and maintenance of the software system components.
Note For information about planning your Project Server configuration, see the Microsoft Office
Project Server 2003 Configuration Planning Guide at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=20235.
Components of an EPM Solution

A Microsoft EPM Solution integrates your people, processes, and organizational goals with
software tools and technology. These components combine to create a framework by
which projects are planned, managed, tracked, and completed. Moreover, EPM can provide
valuable insight into and across projects. When EPM components are aligned and balanced
with business objectives, your organization can optimize the benefits of adopting a
Microsoft EPM solution.
Components of an EPM Solution

Microsoft EPM is not primarily a technology project; that is, it is not synonymous with
installing Project Server 2003. To enable your organization to derive the greatest value
from Microsoft EPM, you must assess your current situation, understand the elements and
capabilities of EPM, and then tailor a solution to address specific business objectives.
Therefore, Microsoft EPM transcends the traditional desktop application deployment to
encompass numerous facets of an organization. In addition to planning for hardware
sizing, capacity, and other IT-related issues, organizations must plan their project
management strategy and identify the features and solutions that are required to meet the
business needs of the organization. This begins by creating a vision and understanding that
organizational and process changes can naturally result from successfully adopting EPM.
The Microsoft EPM Solution might require cultural changes within your organization; the
way your company manages project-based work might evolve as a result of adopting an
EPM solution.
To take advantage of all of the capabilities that the EPM Solution provides, a successful
adoption of an EPM Solution requires a thoughtful, methodical approach. To realize the
numerous benefits of a Microsoft EPM solution requires thorough vision, long-term
executive sponsorship, company-wide participation, and procuring input from and setting
expectations for all user groups. Moreover, successfully adopting Microsoft EPM involves
assessing your organization’s project management culture and process maturity, and clearly
mapping and articulating business goals and objectives.
One way to your improve your chances for successfully adopting Microsoft EPM is to
engage a Microsoft Certified Partner who specializes in this area. You will typically derive
maximum benefit from this partnership when the partner can work with key personnel in
your organization early in the planning process. In addition to being a technical expert, a
Certified Partner is experienced in the start-to-finish process of adopting an EPM
solution. A Certified Partner can help you to do the following:
• Assess business processes and analyze gaps.
• Document and prioritize organizational goals and business objectives.
• Map goals and objectives to functional and technical requirements.
• Accelerate the transition from planning to adoption.
It is important to plan for the growth and maturity of your organization in regard to
managing projects. Effective planning prior to deployment will help ensure that existing
processes are not disrupted when you begin your deployment process.
Best Practices for an EPM Solution Deployment

Successfully adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution requires a methodology and an approach
that includes a balanced development of the EPM components. Because technology is only
one component of the EPM Solution, you must also ensure that people and processes in
your organization are aligned to support your organization’s EPM goals. Thorough and
diligent planning is critical to the success of your EPM Solution initiative, and it is
important to ensure that sufficient organizational planning takes place prior to the
deployment of the technology. The following are some best practices for deploying an
EPM Solution:
• Identify the organizational need for EPM, including the specific business problems to
be solved or opportunities to address.
• Obtain executive buy-in and sponsorship.
• Partner with an EPM consultant.
• Understand the capabilities of the EPM Solution.
• Define an overarching vision for your EPM Solution.
• Measure the readiness of your organization before you begin your deployment process.
• Identify and clearly articulate the business objectives for your EPM Solution
deployment.
• Involve all stakeholders in the planning process.
• Commit to changing the project management culture of your organization.
• Commit to proactively improving the project management processes in your
organization.
• Implement a change strategy.
• Implement your EPM Solution in stages.
• Provide timely training to all user groups.
2
Defining a Vision for Your EPM
Solution Deployment
Defining a vision for your Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
Solution is a critical first step in your deployment planning process. Defining a vision for
your EPM Solution involves identifying and prioritizing your goals—that is, the business
problems that you want to solve and the opportunities that you want to take advantage of
by using an enterprise project management system.
After you identify your goals and business needs, you must identify which EPM Solution
capabilities and features can help you to meet your goals. You must also evaluate your
organizational readiness. After you establish your vision, you then create a plan for
implementing EPM Solution features in your environment. Realizing your EPM Solution
vision might require an iterative deployment process by which new features and capabilities
are introduced in scheduled phases. Therefore, it is helpful to create a roadmap that
identifies the steps required to achieve your vision.
This chapter introduces the concept of a vision for an EPM Solution implementation and
describes the components of that vision. It then provides a high-level overview of the EPM
Solution implementation process.
Foundation for the EPM Solution Vision

Before you create your EPM Solution vision, it is important to establish a foundation for
the vision. The foundation for the vision is commitment. Commitment is necessary as you
define, refine, and implement your vision. Because adopting the Microsoft Office EPM
Solution is a long-term process that can drive organizational and process changes,
executives and stakeholders must be prepared to commit to the project long-term to ensure
the successful implementation of an EPM initiative. Commitment to the project and its
goals is necessary at the outset and during each phase of vision, planning, and
implementation. This commitment must encompass such issues as funding and resources.
More importantly, it must encompass communication about necessary cultural changes.
Being committed to adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution is only effective when that
commitment is broadly communicated within your organization. Because adopting
Microsoft EPM affects everyone in the organization, all stakeholders should strive to
understand the business reasons for adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution, and to
understand how they must contribute to ensure a successful adoption. Clearly
communicating your commitment to adopting EPM can accelerate this process and help
mitigate resistance to change. Communication should continue throughout the planning
and implementation phases to help ensure a successful adoption.
Creating Your EPM Solution Vision

Creating an EPM Solution vision involves the following steps:
• Identifying and prioritizing business needs and opportunities.
• Learning about EPM Solution features and capabilities and mapping these to
organizational needs.
• Assessing organizational readiness.
These steps are interdependent. It is necessary to understand the capabilities of the EPM
Solution technologies to define the business needs and opportunities that you want to
meet. It is also necessary to define the EPM Solution features that you want to implement
in the context of the business needs and priorities for your organization. Your business
goals and the features that you plan to enable must be based on the organizational
readiness of your organization.
Creating an EPM Solution vision

Identifying Business Needs and Opportunities

As part of creating your EPM Solution vision, you must identify the specific business
problems and opportunities that an EPM Solution adoption can help you to address. You
must have a clear business justification for your EPM Solution deployment in order to
achieve measurable benefits. Because an EPM Solution adoption requires consensus and
commitment within the organization in order to be successful, all participants and
stakeholders must understand and agree with the business justification that you define.
Most organizations can identify general business needs, for example, faster time to market
and better insight and control over the work that takes place. It is important to identify
your needs as specifically as possible. If your organization needs better insight into several
specific areas of the business, each specific problem should be identified separately. After
you identify multiple business needs and opportunities, the next step is to prioritize them,
because it will be difficult to address all of your goals immediately.
Learning about EPM Solution Features and Capabilities

Before you can define a vision for your Microsoft EPM Solution adoption, you need to
understand the range of features and capabilities that an EPM Solution can provide and
identify those that can help you to meet your business needs. The features and capabilities
that you want to implement in your organization have a direct impact on the length and
complexity of your deployment process. Depending on your current state of organizational
readiness, you might need to apply a phased approach by which you enable specific
features and capabilities only after your organization achieves a level of maturity wherein
additional capabilities can be supported.
Assessing Organizational Readiness

Some EPM Solution capabilities might not be available to you until your organization
achieves a certain level of project management process maturity. Identifying business needs
and opportunities involves not only establishing short-term and long-term goals for your
EPM Solution adoption but also determining which features and capabilities you can
implement at a specific time, or in a specific phase, based on the assessment of your
organizational readiness.
Some systems and processes must be in place before you can implement features of the
EPM Solution in your organization to address the business needs that you define. The
measure of organizational readiness for your organization is based on your assessment of
the following areas:
• Process
• People
• Organizational goals
• Technology
The overall vision that you define for your EPM Solution deployment is based on the
current state of organizational readiness and the steps that are necessary for you achieve
short-term and long-term goals for your organization. Organizational readiness continues
to evolve and develop over the EPM Solution deployment lifecycle, so it is important to
reevaluate the status of your organization regularly.
Process
For your EPM Solution deployment to be successful, you must have processes in place that
support an enterprise project management system. Assessing your process readiness
involves the following:
• Identifying your current project management process maturity level.
• Determining what communication processes your organization uses.
• Identifying the processes that are in place for ensuring executive sponsorship and
participant involvement.
People
A successful EPM Solution deployment requires full participation from executives,
stakeholders, and participants. This participation begins with communication. Assessing the
readiness of people in your organization involves determining what types of
communication processes are in place, whether participants are involved in and supportive
of the initiative, and whether they understand the changes to the project management
culture of the organization that must take place. Participants must understand the roles and
responsibilities that will be required of them when the system is implemented. They must
also have the opportunity for ongoing professional development and training to support
them in their roles.
Organizational Goals
A successful EPM Solution deployment is based on clearly defined goals. Before you begin
to implement an enterprise project management system in your environment, ensure that
you have clearly established and communicated the short-term and long-term goals for
your deployment. As part of your organizational goals readiness assessment, determine
whether and how well the goals for your deployment are defined and articulated. Note that
defining the goals and for an EPM Solution deployment is often the responsibility of a
project management office (PMO) or other central authority. This central authority must
have a clearly defined role and structure.
Technology
The features and capabilities that an EPM Solution deployment provides are enabled by
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and the Microsoft EPM Solution infrastructure. It is
important to ensure that your system is configured to support the Project Server features
that you plan to enable. Although configuration planning is the responsibility of your
organization’s IT department, the status of your current configuration is also an element of
organizational readiness that you must assess. You might need to upgrade or add new
hardware to your system before you can enable EPM Solution features. Note that as your
project management process maturity level increases and you begin to take advantage of
additional EPM Solution features, you will need to reevaluate your current and future
configuration needs.
3
Learning About EPM Solution
Capabilities
Organizations deploy a Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
Solution for a variety of business reasons. It is important to identify the business needs that
your EPM Solution deployment is designed to meet early in your planning process so that
you can make effective decisions about which features you will enable. The business needs
that you define for your EPM Solution deployment identify what you expect to achieve
based on the desired level of project management process maturity that you define for your
organization.
In order to identify the goal for your EPM Solution deployment, it is helpful to understand
the range of capabilities that the EPM Solution provides. An EPM Solution deployment
can enable you to achieve any or all of the following solutions for your organization:
• Project management
• Project portfolio management
• Resource management
• Reporting and analysis
• Budgeting and cost tracking
• Communication, collaboration, and workflow
Enabling these capabilities will require different levels of project management maturity and
sophistication in your organization.
Capabilities that the EPM Solution provides

The following sections each describe a business solution that an EPM Solution can provide
and the Project Server features that are associated with that solution.
Project Management
A Microsoft EPM Solution deployment can help you to increase your level of project
management process maturity by introducing centralized data storage and project
management tools. This is the most basic capability that an EPM Solution provides. EPM
Solution project management features enable organizations to progress from an ad hoc
level of project management—at which project managers store files locally and might use a
variety of different types of tools—to a level at which common processes are defined for
all projects across the organization.
At this first level of EPM Solution capability, project managers and resource managers in
your organization use Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 for scheduling, and team
members use Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003 for status reporting. Project files
are stored in the Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 database so that all users in the
organization have central access to project-related data. This might require a gradual
evolution of your processes so that current productivity is not disrupted. You might first
centralize tools and data storage in your organization, and then implement new project
management processes gradually to your project teams.
Consider the following example of ad hoc project management. Laura is a project manager
who is responsible for completing a project and tracking project status. She is using
Microsoft Excel to track the milestones for the project, and stores the .xls files on her local
computer. Whenever new information about task status or project dates is available, she
updates the spreadsheets. She meets weekly with the two team members on the project
team to discuss project status, and also maintains ad hoc communication by e-mail.
Ad hoc project management communication.

The ad hoc method works reasonably well for a single project, but what happens if Laura’s
level of responsibility increases and she is required to manage five different projects by
using the same method? The system now becomes difficult for her to manage. Other
project managers in the organization are using similarly independent methods to track and
complete their projects. Productivity and project success is low, and executives in the
organization have little insight into the status of projects.
Laura’s organization implements an EPM Solution but does not want to disrupt current
work processes. As a first step, Laura imports her schedules from Excel to Project
Professional without changing her project management and communication processes.
Rather than tracking individual files on her local computer, she publishes individual
projects to the Project Server database, along with the schedules for other project managers
in the organization.
Centrally locating project data

In the next step, project management processes are standardized across the organization.
Standard templates, practices, processes, and reporting methods are developed and project
managers apply them to current and new projects. A central authority, such as a project
management office (PMO), works closely with project managers and team members to
ensure that the standards that are developed are reasonable and effective.
The standardization process requires a cultural change in the organization and the
participation of all participants, from executives and stakeholders to individual team
members. As the organization increases in maturity, all projects can be strategically
managed as part of a portfolio.
Central project data and enhanced communication

Lack of participation at any stage of maturity limits the success of the EPM Solution
deployment.
You can enable basic project management capabilities by using the following features of
Project Server 2003:
• Project Center
• Status reports
• Resource Center (Timesheet summary)
Note For more information about these features, see Chapter 5, Project Server 2003 Features,
later in this guide.
Project Portfolio Management

The next level of project management process maturity, project portfolio management
(PPM), involves strategically aligning individual projects with the business objectives of the
organization. The EPM Solution provides you with the ability to collect individual projects
into a portfolio that provides information about organizational initiatives to executives and
senior management. Whereas project management capabilities enable you to track the
progress of individual projects, PPM enables you to track progress across projects,
providing more strategic decision–making.
Project portfolio management.

You can use project portfolio management to select, prioritize, and analyze existing and
future projects. You can use portfolio information to determine the value of a project
relative to the overall goals of the organization.
For project portfolio management to be successful, project management, resource
management, reporting, and organizational processes must be well established. For
example, strategic decisions cannot be made about the value of a project if the strategic
goals of the organization are not clearly articulated and understood. Similarly, if processes
have not evolved to allow individual projects to be managed in a standard way, or if the
team members are not fully participating in the EPM Solution initiative, accurate analysis of
project portfolio data is not possible.
You can enable project portfolio management capabilities by using the following features
of Project Server 2003:
• Manage Administrative Projects
• Enterprise Custom Fields
• Enterprise Global Template
• Enterprise Outline Codes
• Portfolio Analyzer
• Project Center
• Status Reports
• Resource Center (Timesheet summary view)
• Portfolio Modeler
Resource Management
The Microsoft EPM Solution provides organizations with the ability to optimize resource
allocations across projects and project portfolios. Resource management begins at the most
basic level with the assignment of team members to project tasks, and evolves in
complexity as your organization’s project management processes mature. More advanced
resource management practices enable you to view current capacity and allocations across
projects in your organization for all resources.
You can enable resource management capabilities by using the following features of Project
Server 2003:
• Synchronization with Active Directory® directory service
• Manage Administrative Projects
• Build Team
• Enterprise Calendars
• Enterprise Custom Fields
• Enterprise Global Template
• Enterprise Resource Pool
• Portfolio Modeler
• Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS)
• Resource Center (Timesheet summary view)
Reporting and Analysis

Reporting and analysis is an advanced level of EPM Solution deployment maturity.
Although reporting and analysis capabilities are often a priority for executives and business
decision-makers, it is not possible to achieve this level of sophistication until your
organization’s project management processes are fully mature. Your portfolio management
and resource management practices must be stable and well established. It is also important
to clearly define the types of data that you want to collect and analyze to ensure that you
are analyzing meaningful data that will assist you in making effective business decisions.
You do not need to enable any specific features of Project Server 2003 to use reporting and
analysis. This information is generated from project portfolios and resource management
data.
Reporting
Strategic business decisions are based on timely and meaningful information. You must
define what types of information are meaningful for your organization. This involves
deciding what and how much reporting data to collect, and from whom. Because different
user roles in your organization require different types and quantities of reporting
information, it is useful to define the data that is meaningful for various user roles, such as
executives, resource managers, and project managers. In all cases, it is important to ensure
that the reporting data that you request is aligned with your overall business objectives.
Successful data reporting requires standard processes and an established communication
system. Reporting data is collected at the task level, the project level, and the portfolio
level.
Task-Level Reporting
Task-level reporting is information provided by team members on the status of tasks
assigned to them in current projects. How team members report task status varies for
different organizations; for example, an organization might require that team members
report actual hours worked or percentage complete for a task. Successful task-level
reporting requires that task assignments be clearly scoped. Information provided at the task
level is based directly on the project schedule.
Project-Level Reporting
Project-level reporting is information provided by project managers about the status of
projects that they are managing. Accurate task-level reporting makes a variety of
information about project status available to project managers, including any of the
following:
• Critical path
• Project budget
• Progress against dates
• Project actuals
• Risks
• Resource over-allocations
Depending on the needs of your organization, project managers might provide reporting
information on any of these information types. The accuracy of project-level reporting is
based on the accuracy of reporting at the task level. For this reason, it is important that all
team members working on a project provide consistent and accurate task-level reporting
information.
Portfolio-Level Reporting
Portfolio-level reporting is information about the status of a collection of projects. The
type of data collected at the portfolio level should map closely to data collected at the
project level. Portfolio reporting requires consistent task-level reporting across all projects
in the portfolio. For this reason it is important that all project managers and team members
provide accurate reporting information. If data reporting is inaccurate or incomplete, your
organization cannot rely on portfolio-level reporting information to make strategic business
decisions.
Analysis
You can generate and analyze reports based on reporting information that is available in
your organization. These analyses will enable you to make business decisions that are based
on real data. For this reason, it is important to carefully define the types of reporting data
that you collect.
You can use reporting information to perform any of the following types of analyses:
• Historical analysis
• Status analysis
• Forward-looking indicator analysis
• Trend analysis
Historical Analysis
You can use historical analyses to evaluate the success of completed projects. Historical
analyses can help you answer the following questions:
• Were projects completed on time?
• If the project was completed on time, did this require any changes to project scope or
quality?
• If the project was not completed on time, what factors contributed to the delay?
• Were projects completed within budget?
• How well were resources utilized?
This historical information can help you to better plan for current and future projects to
ensure a higher rate of success.
Status Analysis
You can use status analyses to evaluate the status of current projects. This type of analysis
can help you answer the following questions:
• How are updates affecting projects?
• Are all necessary status updates submitted?
• Is work progressing as planned?
• Have any issues or risks been identified?
This status information can help you to make adjustments to current projects as necessary
to help you to meet your business objectives.
Forward-Looking Indicator Analysis

Forward-looking indicator analyses enable you to apply current reporting data to future
projects. Whereas it is difficult to rely completely on past data for future projects, this type
of analysis can help you to answer the following questions:
• Will projects be completed on time?
• Will projects be over or under budget?
• Will resources be properly allocated?
• How will a change in scope affect milestones?
• What happens to the project schedule if a resource is lost?
You can use this type of analysis to plan for future projects based on information learned
from similar projects completed in the past. This type of analysis can also help you to plan
better for unexpected contingencies.
Trend Analysis
You can use trend analyses to make projections about future performance in your
organization based on trends that you identify in baseline and historical data. This type of
analysis assumes that all future projects will be executed with the same level of efficiency
that is applied to current projects. However, it is important to keep in mind that your
organizational processes will continue to mature over time, and therefore trend analysis
information might only be partially relevant. You can use trend analyses for long-range
planning of strategic initiatives in your organization.
Budgeting and Cost Tracking

As your EPM Solution deployment matures, you can apply budgeting and cost tracking
functionality. When you can accurately budget and track project-related costs, you are in a
better position to control your organization’s financial resources and minimize unnecessary
expenditures. Budgeting and cost tracking can be applied both within a project portfolio
and across portfolios. Complete, consistent, and accurate data is critical to successful
budgeting and cost tracking; most organization do not begin to use this level of
functionality until they have achieved advanced levels of project management process
maturity.
You do not need to enable any specific features of Project Server 2003 to use budgeting
and cost tracking. This information is generated from project portfolios and resource
management data.
Communication, Collaboration, and Workflow

Communication, collaboration, and workflow are essential to the success of your projects
and to enabling you to meet organizational goals and objectives. These elements are
required for organizations at all levels of project management maturity and require the
direct involvement and participation of all team members and stakeholders in your
organization. An organization cannot achieve success at any level of an EPM Solution
deployment without effective communication, collaboration, and workflow processes.
Communication is the ongoing interaction between stakeholders and team members that
enables the successful execution of projects. Collaboration is enabled by the centralization
of project and resource information that an EPM Solution deployment provides. This helps
streamline knowledge sharing across the organization. Workflow refers to structured
processes that enable participants to work more effectively within and across projects.
All of these elements enable information to be more effectively disseminated, shared,
discussed, and acted upon. They occur on multiple levels and across numerous roles,
including:
• Team members
• Project managers
• Resource managers
• Executives
• Partners
• Customers
Most organizations have at least some communication, collaboration, and workflow
processes in place at any level of project management process maturity. For example,
project managers might use e-mail to communicate with team members and reports or
presentations to communicate with executives and stakeholders. As your organization
achieves more advanced levels of project management process maturity, its
communication, collaboration, and workflow processes will mature and increase in
efficiency and effectiveness.
Communication, collaboration, and workflow features are enabled in part by the
integration of Windows SharePoint® Services with Project Server 2003.
Note For more information about Windows SharePoint Servers features of Project Server 2003,
see the section Windows SharePoint Services in Chapter 5, Project Server 2003 Features, later in
this guide.
4
Establishing Organizational
Readiness
Implementing a Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution in
your organization involves more than installing software and configuring servers. A
Microsoft EPM Solution is a coordinated organizational approach intended to improve
business performance. Driven by the goals and objectives you identify, Microsoft EPM can
be thought of as a change initiative that integrates your people, processes, and
organizational goals with software and technology.
The components of a Microsoft EPM Solution

The technology component of the solution—the servers and software—can be installed
and deployed within a matter of days, or weeks. The other components, those dealing
primarily with people and processes, are often overlooked. How successfully you
implement a Microsoft EPM Solution partly depends upon your company’s continued
ability to develop these interrelated components, individually and collectively. No amount
of money will enable you to purchase pre-implemented business processes or a mature
project management culture. Therefore, it is important to consider the following high-level
steps as part of establishing organizational readiness for your EPM Solution adoption:
• Obtain executive sponsorship.
• Ensure participation.
• Assess your current and target levels of project management maturity.

• Establish a communication plan.
• Establish a project management culture.
• Establish a training plan for individuals in your organization.
• Plan for the software and technology rollout.
The following table details which components of the EPM Solution are affected by each
of these high-level steps.
Step Process People Organization Technology

Obtain executive sponsorship x x
Ensure participation x x
Assess project management x x x

process maturity
Establish project management x x

culture
Establish communication plan x x x
Establish training plan x x
Plan rollout of Microsoft EPM x

software tools
Notice that most steps actually affect more than one EPM component. This is because of
the integrated and interconnected nature of an EPM initiative. Notice also that only one of
the steps listed is a technology consideration. This shows that although Project Server 2003
is an important part of an overall implementation, deploying Project Server 2003 does not
by itself make a successful EPM initiative.
Obtaining Executive Sponsorship

Adopting an EPM Solution involves changes at the organizational level and therefore
requires executive sponsorship and support. Ensure that key business decision makers and
executive stakeholders agree to provide long-term support of the project before you begin
your deployment process.
The executive sponsor must ensure that the EPM Solution deployment is aligned with the
overall business strategy of the organization and that it represents an effective approach to
addressing business problems and managing new opportunities. He or she must also
communicate the business value of the enterprise project management system to

employees who will be expected to participate in the process and who might have to make
significant changes to current work processes. In addition, because an EPM Solution
deployment is a long-term commitment, executive stakeholders must ensure that the EPM
Solution deployment initiative has continuing financial support.
Ensuring Participation
Because the implementation of an EPM solution can potentially change processes, tools,
and methods, it should not be a surprise to your employees. Therefore, ensure that
stakeholders and individuals in your organization who will use or be affected by the EPM
Solution are involved in the planning process. Microsoft EPM should be thought of as a
solution that your organization—that is, your people—will adopt and use with increasing
efficiency and effectiveness. It should not be thought of simply as something that will be
installed, yet many organizations make this mistake to varying degrees. The development of
or changes to processes and organizational goals, necessitates the participation of
stakeholders and key individuals within the organization. Those individuals must
understand the value of the EPM solution and be able to provide feedback on the
processes that will be required for it to be successful. Additionally, if participants are
involved in the planning effort, they are more likely to comply with necessary changes to
their work processes to ensure the success of the EPM Solution initiative.
Ongoing participation in established project management processes is critical to the success
of your EPM Solution adoption. Lack of compliance can limit your ability to increase the
level of project management maturity and to establish a mature project management culture
for your organization.
Assessing Project Management Process Maturity

Assessing your organization’s process maturity is one way to accelerate your Microsoft
EPM adoption. Project management process maturity is a model that enables you to
measure the maturity of your current project management processes, that is, how well
defined, standardized, and repeatable they are across the organization. This model also
enables you to identify processes to create, improve, or replace in order to meet your EPM
Solution objectives.
In many ways, your organization’s process maturity dictates the EPM capabilities you can
successfully implement and type of solution you can adopt. If EPM is a change initiative,
assessing process maturity helps pinpoint where changes may be necessary, and to what
degrees. Mapping your current level of process maturity to your EPM Solution objectives,
can help you identify and achieve your target maturity level more quickly and more
effectively.
Several different versions of the project management process maturity model are available,
and they all share a common five-tiered scale of measurement that ranges from little to no
project management processes, to a sophisticated and continually improving set of
established project management practices.
Progressing through the levels of project management process maturity

Organizations can advance from one level to another by developing their people,
processes, organizational goals, or technology. With each level of maturity that you achieve
in your organization, additional EPM Solution capabilities become available.
Assess your current level of project management process maturity; this becomes the
baseline for your EPM Solution vision, and helps you understand what features are
currently available to you. Identify the level of process maturity that you need to achieve,
based on the EPM capabilities that you eventually want to adopt in your organization. That
becomes the process maturity target for your EPM Solution vision. It is important to
recognize that the level of maturity your company requires is uniquely a function of
addressing your EPM solution objectives. Most organizations operate between levels one
and two. The needs of your organization and the requirements of your EPM vision dictate
the level of process maturity necessary to adopt your EPM solution.
Maturity Level 1: Ad Hoc

The first level of project management process maturity is ad hoc project management.
Organizations that are operating at this level have defined few, if any, processes for
initiating or completing projects. Some individual project managers might successfully
manage similar types of projects, but their processes are not documented, communicated
to, nor standardized across teams within the organization. Although some specific
individuals might manage their projects successfully, other project managers in the
organization cannot benefit from their experience.
For organizations that are using ad hoc project management, tracking the project schedule
is the responsibility of the project manager only, and project managers might use a variety
of different scheduling tools. Project management tools are not standardized across the
organization. Other project teams might or might not be aware of projects in other areas of
the organization, and it is possible that efforts are duplicated across the organization.
Management is aware only of critical initiatives and major milestones, and does not have
ready access to information about all current projects within the organization.
Communication to management about the status of projects is informal.
The results that an organization can achieve with this level of project management maturity
are unpredictable. Failure is likely, and time and resources are often not efficiently used.
Maturity Level 2: Repeatable Processes

At the second level of project management process maturity, organizations use
repeatable—albeit informal and incomplete—processes. With this level of maturity, project
management processes might be repeatable at the project-team level, though this becomes
difficult if individual projects are too dissimilar. Even if processes can be repeated at some
level on individual teams, there is no methodology in place to capture or disseminate
lessons learned. Problems with management processes might be identified, and solutions
discussed, but this work is typically informal and largely undocumented.
Because processes are not shared with other project teams across the organization,
reporting at this level is inconsistent and is more a function of a project manager’s
experience and savvy. Owners and executives are left with an incomplete view of initiatives
across the organization. Though processes remain inconsistent company-wide, the
implementation of repeatable processes by individual project teams can reduce the overall
number of late, over-budget, or failed projects.
Maturity Level 3: Defined Processes

At the third level of project management process maturity, organizations use defined
processes more extensively. At this stage of maturity, enterprise project management is
possible. Project teams might document management processes, albeit informally, and
introduce process improvements; the sharing of best practices becomes a cross-team
function. This leads to a better definition of management processes, which can engender
more consistent and repeatable processes.
Individual projects within organizations at this level of maturity are based on templates,
and contain the same or similar elements across project teams. This low-level
standardization allows for more consistent status reporting and analysis. Managers, owners,
and executives can view more reliable information about the status of key initiatives and
some project portfolios; this insight can translate into better, more strategic decision
making.
Resource management is more sophisticated, and resource managers can balance resource
allocations across projects.
Organizations at this level of project management process maturity begin to achieve
predictable results with improving consistency.
Maturity Level 4 – Managed Processes

At the fourth level of project management process maturity, organizations use managed
and repeatable processes. Project management processes are standardized, measured, and
controlled by a central Project Management Office (PMO); well-defined and integrated
processes are applied to all projects in the organization. Process improvement has become
formalized, which yields well-documented lessons learned and widely-shared best practices.
At this level of maturity, organizations realize the strategic alignment of their business goals
and objectives with Microsoft EPM Solution capabilities.
Organizations at this level of project management process maturity achieve predictable and
repeatable results.
Maturity Level 5 – Optimized and Continually Improving

Processes
At the fifth level of project management process maturity, processes are optimized and
continually improving; attention to improving processes is formal and ongoing. The
processes by which projects are initiated, managed, and completed are precisely defined,
standardized, and centralized. All types of reporting, analysis, and forecasting are rigorously
applied. This is the most sophisticated level of project management process maturity.
Organizations at this level of maturity are positioned to realize full value from adopting the
Microsoft EPM Solution, the features and capabilities of which are clearly understood and
precisely mapped to the needs and strategic objectives of the organization.
Establishing a Project Management Culture

Project-based organizations, such as manufacturing or construction companies, have an
established project management culture that enables them to complete projects efficiently
and with clear roles and expectations. For organizations that are not traditionally project-
based, an EPM Solution deployment requires changes to the project management culture
of the organization. Therefore, as part of your planning process, it is important to assess
the current project management culture in your organization and develop a strategy for
change.
Your assessment and strategy for change should include your considering and ensuring the
following:
• Project management is an established discipline in your organization, and the role of a
project manager is clearly defined. If users in your organization currently perform
project management tasks informally, make project management a formal job function.
• Roles in your organization align with managing, tracking, and executing on project-
based work.
• Project management processes and technologies are consistent across the organization.
This might require the creation of a central authority, such as a PMO. A PMO is
responsible for establishing and maintaining project management standards and
expectations for the organization. Moreover, a PMO plays a role in assessing the overall
project management culture and driving necessary cultural change.
It might be difficult for some users to adjust to cultural changes within the organization. Be
sure to identify and communicate the changes that each user role can expect to see in the
new project management environment. Setting clear expectations, encouraging open dialog,
and providing training to users can help to ensure that establishing a project management
culture occurs smoothly.
Establishing a Communication Plan

It is important to establish a clear two-way communication plan during the planning phase
of your EPM Solution deployment. Communicating strategic plans for an EPM Solution
initiative can help to ensure that participants are involved early on and will comply with the
processes that are to be implemented in the organization. Executive sponsors should
communicate the business need for the EPM Solution deployment. Participants and team
members should also have a clear communication path by which to provide input into
systems and processes from the user perspective.
If communication channels are not well established at the beginning of the EPM Solution
deployment initiative, it will be more difficult to establish executive sponsorship and
participant involvement during the planning and execution phases. This can limit the
success of your deployment. After you deploy your EPM Solution, communication
channels must continue to function effectively so that processes can be developed and
refined over time.
Establishing a Training Plan

Prior to rolling out your EPM Solution, it is important to ensure that you provide training
to all participants. Users must be familiar with the new software and processes, and must
clearly understand their roles, so that your EPM Solution deployment creates the least
possible amount of disruption to current work productivity. Many organizations neglect to

provide adequate training. This can diminish the efficiency and speed at which the
organization can advance its project management process maturity level and successfully
adopt EPM Solution features.
Training should also be ongoing throughout the lifecycle of your EPM Solution
deployment. As your organization advances in its maturity level, user roles and the project
management culture of your organization will continue to evolve. Committing to ongoing
training and support for EPM Solution participants in your organization will facilitate
growth and ensure that changes are integrated smoothly and do not have a negative impact
on your current rate of productivity.
Planning for Rollout of Microsoft EPM Software Tools

It is important to ensure that your system is configured to support the Project Server
features that you plan to enable. Although configuration planning is the responsibility of
your organization’s IT department, the status of your current configuration is also an
element of organizational readiness that you must assess. You might need to upgrade or
add new hardware to your system before you can enable EPM Solution features. Note that
as your project management process maturity level increases and you begin to take
advantage of additional EPM Solution features, you might need to reevaluate your current
and future configuration needs. For information about planning your Project Server
configuration, see the Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Configuration Planning Guide at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=20235.
Planning Your EPM Solution Adoption

After you establish commitment, identify your business needs and the EPM Solution
features that you want to enable, and assess your organizational readiness, you can begin to
plan your EPM Solution deployment. The EPM Solution deployment process consists of
creating a vision for your deployment, planning your deployment, and implementing EPM
Solution technologies in your system. Because you cannot enable all of the EPM Solution
features and capabilities until your project management processes mature, deploying the
Microsoft EPM Solution requires an iterative strategy, whereby new features are introduced
in phases after you achieve the required level of organizational readiness.
EPM Solution Adoption Roadmap

The EPM Solution adoption process involves three stages: creating a vision, planning the
EPM Solution deployment, and then implementing the software in your system. During the
planning phase, you can establish the processes that will be required for your EPM
Solution implementation. The following figure illustrates the roadmap for deploying a
Microsoft EPM Solution in your environment.
EPM Solution deployment roadmap

After you create your vision for your EPM Solution deployment, you can begin to plan
your deployment by defining the deployment lifecycle for the EPM initiative, assessing
potential risks to the deployment, establishing a change-track strategy, and assembling an
implementation team. The planning phase does not end when the implementation phase
begins. Because the EPM Solution is typically introduced in phases as an organization
matures, the planning process is ongoing throughout the deployment lifecycle.
Iterative Adoption Strategy

Adopting Microsoft EPM in phases can better position your organization to address
business objectives long term. This is largely because of the complex, interdependent
nature of EPM solution components. Implementing EPM iteratively enables you to
introduce EPM components into your organization incrementally, and enable additional
EPM Solution features as your level of process maturity and organizational readiness
evolves. A phased approach can enable your people to grow more comfortable with new
tools and processes in a manageable timeframe, rather than having to learn everything at
once. With each phase, the complexity of your solution increases. The following figure
illustrates the iterative strategy for adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution.
EPM Solution iterative adoption strategy

It is recommended that you revisit your EPM solution vision and implementation plan at
each phase. This enables you to measure the implementation against objectives and to
reassess the whether the objectives are realistic. Revisiting your planning information is
different from tracking the progress of the initiative. It gives you the opportunity to ensure
that the planned objectives are properly scoped for your organization.
Revisiting the initial vision at each phase of deployment enables you to continue to refine
your vision as your organization evolves. It also enables you to map your process maturity
and organizational readiness to your implementation phases and objectives, as illustrated in
the following figure.
Phases of EPM Solution implementation

5
Project Server 2003 Features
The capabilities that a Microsoft® Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution
provides are enabled by features of Microsoft Office Project Server 2003. This chapter
provides an overview of the Project Server features that you can use to meet your business
objectives for your EPM Solution deployment, including the requirements for enabling
each feature in your environment and—where applicable—feature interdependencies. The
following table lists the Project Server features that enable EPM Solution capabilities and
indicates the business solution or solutions with which each feature is associated.
Feature Project Portfolio Resource Budgeting Reporting &
Mgmt. Mgmt. Mgmt Analysis
Active Directory® x
synchronization
Administrative Projects x x x
Build Team x
Enterprise Calendars x
Enterprise Custom Fields x
Enterprise Global x
Template
Enterprise Outline Codes x
Enterprise Resource Pool x

Portfolio Analyzer x x
Portfolio Modeler x x
Project Center x x
RBS x
Resource Center x
Status Reports x x
Timesheets x x x x x
Microsoft Windows® x x x x
SharePoint® Services
Active Directory Synchronization

Active Directory directory service is a standard Microsoft Windows Server feature that you
can enable after you install Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server™ 2003. Project
Server 2003 enables you to synchronize security groups in Active Directory with Project
Server security groups, or to populate the Enterprise Resource Pool with users that belong
to a mapped group in Active Directory. If your organization can take advantage of Active
Directory, you can use Active Directory synchronization to simplify the Project Server
security and resource management.
Note Project Server 2003 only supports one-way synchronization from Active Directory to Project
Server 2003. Changes to Project Server security groups or the Enterprise Resource Pool cannot be
replicated back to Active Directory.
The Active Directory Connector in Project Server 2003 facilitates the synchronization of
users and groups from Active Directory to Project Server 2003 so long as the computers
running Active Directory and Project Server 2003 are located in trusted domains. This
component makes calls to the Project Data Service (PDS) so that Active Directory data is
written to the Enterprise Resource Pool and to security group membership information in
the Project Server database.
When the Enterprise Resource Pool and Project Server security groups are configured to
be synchronized with a security group or groups in Active Directory, you can automate
some of the most important steps in the process of creating users and associating users
with security groups in Project Server 2003.
When used with Project Server 2003, Active Directory provides a central service for
administrators to organize enterprise resources and Project Server users. Active Directory
synchronization provides time-saving benefits for administrators who manage user

accounts. For example:
• When a new person is hired by an organization, he or she is added automatically to the
Enterprise Resource Pool. This can save many hours of managing new users and
searching for new people to add to projects.
• When a person leaves the organization, he or she is deactivated automatically in the
Project Server database.
Note Deactivating a user does not delete the user from the Project Server database. A
record of that user’s work on project tasks, including any actual work hours, is retained
after deactivation.
• If a person’s name changes or any other key attributes about the person change, this
change is automatically applied to the Project Server database and appears in any other
projects to which the person is assigned.
Using the Active Directory synchronization feature in Project Server 2003 requires the
following:
• Active Directory–based Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 domain
structure
• Project Server 2003 running in enterprise mode
• The use of the Enterprise Resource Pool
Administrative Projects
Organizations depend on having a comprehensive view of all hours reported, not just the
hours reported against actual work assignments. The Manage Administrative Projects
feature of Project Server 2003 provides a convenient way to track non-working time and
non-project time outside of projects that are used to track progress on assignments. By
effectively using administrative projects, you can prevent the reporting of non-project time
and non-working time in actual projects. Project managers and team members use
assignments in administrative projects in the same way that they use assignments in any
other project. Administrative projects differ from regular projects only in that the process
to create them is different, and that tasks in administrative projects always default to a fixed
duration.
When you use administrative projects, resources can report non-project time and non-
working time directly in a timesheet in Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003. Types
of non-project time and non-working time include vacation, sick leave, meetings, and
training. Project Server 2003 includes one administrative project enterprise template:
Administrative Time. This project is stored in the Project Server database and is only
available to Project Professional users who are connected to Project Server 2003. (You
must use Project Professional to create an administrative project, but you do not need to
use it to enter time against a task in an administrative project.) You can also create your
own administrative projects.
Administrative projects have the following characteristics. They:
• Cannot be associated with a Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services site. You
cannot associate documents, issues, and risks with an administrative project.
• Can only be created by users who are assigned Create Administrative Projects
permissions.
• Always use the Hours of work per day timesheet tracking setting to save hours,
regardless of the tracking method that you use for projects in your organization.
• Can be customized to meet the unique non-project time and non-working time periods
required by your organization.
• Measure durations as fixed, in days, and not as effort-driven.
• Can only be saved as administrative projects when they are based on the
Administrative Time enterprise template or when they are specified as an
administrative project when you initially save them by using the Administrative
project option in the Save to Project Server dialog box.
• Display non-project time and non-working time at the bottom of a resource’s
timesheet in Project Web Access. (Team members can belong to more than one
administrative project.)
• Are not available for use with Portfolio Modeler.
• Affect resource allocation and scheduling in other projects after you accept the task
update and publish the changes.
The following are the requirements for using administrative projects:
• Because administrative projects are based on enterprise templates, Project Server 2003
must be running in enterprise mode.
• In order for users to create administrative projects, they must be assigned the Create
Administrative Projects global permission.
• You must enable the New and Changed assignments option on the Collaborate
tab in the Options dialog box when you use administrative templates.
Build Team
Build Team is a Project Server 2003 feature that enables project managers and resource
managers to add resources to a project, including replacing resources in a project and
substituting generic resources with resources from the Enterprise Resource Pool.
The Build Team feature supports the matching of resources from the Enterprise Resource
Pool with characteristics specified in the project for the type of resource, the required skill
level, and other qualifiers. It includes a Match feature that is designed to take advantage of
Enterprise Resource Outline Codes, including Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS), and
uses Enterprise Resource Outline Codes marked with Use this code for matching
generic resources to match all resources in the Enterprise Resource Pool with the
resource in the project for which you are trying to find a match.
Users of Build Team must be granted the following permissions:
• Assign Resources To obtain the list of resources from which you can add resources
to project teams. This permission determines the resources available in the list itself.
• Build Team on Project To determine the list of projects to which the user is
allowed to add resources. This permission determines the projects available to which
resources can be assigned.
• See Enterprise Resource Data To enable viewing of resources and resource data.
• Assign Resource to Project Team To use Project Professional to assign resources
to projects.
• Build Team on New Project To add resources to a project that has not been saved
to Project Server.
Enterprise Calendars
Enterprise Calendars are the primary scheduling mechanism used to determine working
time for all projects, tasks, and resources. Project Server 2003 includes four types of
Enterprise Calendars:
• Base A base calendar is used for two purposes, either directly as a task or project
calendar or as a template for resource calendars. The Standard Enterprise Calendar is
the only base calendar type that is included in the Enterprise Global Template by
default. The Standard Enterprise Calendar is the default calendar for projects and
resources; it is based on a traditional Monday-Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. work
schedule with a one-hour break in the middle of the schedule.
• Project A project calendar is the base calendar used to designate the default work
schedule for all tasks in a project.
• Resource A resource calendar is used to reflect specific working hours, vacations,
leaves of absence, and planned personal time for individual resources. A resource
calendar can be based on any base calendar, but the default is the Standard Enterprise
Calendar. Individual resource calendars for enterprise resources are stored with other
resource information in the Enterprise Resource Pool.
• Task A task calendar is useful for situations in which you want to schedule a task
outside of the normal working times defined by a project calendar or resource calendar.
You can select any base calendar to be a task calendar.
Note Enterprise Calendars can only be modified by users who have permissions to check
out the Enterprise Global Template.
Enterprise Custom Fields

Enterprise Custom Fields are custom fields that are unique to the Enterprise Global
Template. They can only be created for and assigned to projects that are saved to the
Project Server database from Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003. You can use
Enterprise Custom Fields to help to establish consistency across all of your organization’s
projects and ensure that fields and associated lookup tables are used in the same way for all
projects, tasks, resources, and assignments.
Enterprise Custom Fields can include custom formulas and can allow the use of value lists
and graphical indicators. By using Enterprise Custom Fields effectively, you can help to
customize Project Server 2003 to fit the unique needs of your organization. When you use
Enterprise Custom Fields, all users in your organization have access to a standard set of
fields, which enables operations to be applied in the same way across entire sets of projects.
For example, you can:
• Customize project management to reflect your organization’s structure and processes.
All users in your organization can have access to a standard set of fields, enabling the
same operations to be completed across entire sets of projects.
• Store organizational-level settings in the Enterprise Global Template., including
definitions and lookup tables, but not the values assigned to a task, resource, or
project.
• Set Enterprise Custom Fields as required fields so that users are prompted to enter
information in that field before saving.
The following are the requirements for using Enterprise Custom Fields:
• Project Server 2003 must be running in enterprise mode.
• You must use the Enterprise Global Template.
• Users of this feature must have permissions to use Project Professional.
• Users of this feature must have permissions to check out and save the Enterprise
Global Template from the Project Server database.
Enterprise Global Template

The Enterprise Global Template is a collection of default settings—such as views, tables,
and fields—which is stored in the Project Server database. This feature is used to enforce
standardization across all projects in the organization. The Enterprise Global Template
only exists in the Project Server database; every time a Project Professional user connects
to the computer running Project Server 2003, the current settings in the Enterprise Global
Template are updated on the client computer.
The Enterprise Global Template can be manually updated and modified by using Project
Professional (and programmatically by using the Project Data Service). Any user of Project
Professional who has permission to check out the Enterprise Global Template from the
Project Server database can customize the template for the organization, including working
with Enterprise Calendars, Enterprise Outline Codes, and Enterprise Custom Fields.
Customizing the Enterprise Global Template is one way to ensure that your EPM Solution
best meets the unique project management needs and requirements for your organization.
To use the Enterprise Global Template, users of Project Professional must be granted one
or more of the following permissions:
• Read Enterprise Global To load the Enterprise Global Template. If the Enterprise
Global Template is not loaded, Project Professional will not be able to connect to
Project Server.
• Save Enterprise Global To check out and save changes to the Enterprise Global
Template. This permission enables the Open Enterprise Global link in the Tools,
Enterprise Options menu in Project Professional and is only granted to users who
belong to the Portfolio Managers and Administrators security groups by default.
• Backup Global To create offline backups of the Enterprise Global Template which
can later be restored (saved to Project Server). This permission enables the Backup
Enterprise Global and Restore Enterprise Global links that are found in the Tools,
Enterprise Options menu in Project Professional. This permission is only granted to
users who belong to the Administrators security group by default.
Enterprise Outline Codes

Enterprise Outline Codes are custom tags for projects, tasks, and resources that share a set
of defined traits. You can use Enterprise Outline Codes to help define hierarchical
relationships among resources and projects in your organization. Enterprise Outline Codes
enable you to provide an additional set of task-, project-, and resource-related data that can
be customized to reflect your organization’s unique requirements.
Well-defined Enterprise Outline Codes enable you to enforce standardization in your
organization and provide the foundation for comprehensive reporting of your unique
project-related data. You can use Enterprise Outline Codes to group projects, tasks, and
resources in a variety of ways, as well as display summary information about a grouping of
data.
Project Server includes 90 Enterprise Outline Codes:
• 30 Enterprise Task Outline Codes
• 30 Enterprise Resource Outline Codes, including Resource Breakdown Structure
(Enterprise Resource Outline Code 30) and multi-value outline codes (Enterprise
Resource Outline Codes 20-29)
• 30 Enterprise Project Outline Codes
Defining an appropriate set of custom Enterprise Outline Codes (especially Project or
Resource) is an important step in planning your EPM Solution. If you do not correctly
define your Enterprise Outline Codes, your project management system might not
adequately meet the needs of your organization.
Note Only users who have permission to check out and edit the Enterprise Global Template can
create, modify, or delete Enterprise Outline Codes.
Enterprise Resource Pool

The Enterprise Resource Pool is a central pool of resources that are stored in the Project
Server database. Using the Enterprise Resource Pool can enable your organization to
schedule resources across projects, identify conflicts between resource assignments in
different projects, and view how a resource’s time is allocated across projects. You can use
the Build Team from Enterprise feature in Project Professional to add resources in the
Enterprise Resource Pool to projects.
You can create the Enterprise Resource Pool by adding resources to the Enterprise
Resource Pool or by importing resources. The Enterprise Global Template must be
defined before you add resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool.
Portfolio Analyzer
Portfolio Analyzer is used to interpret data built in an online analytical processing (OLAP)
cube. When the cube is built, it reads heavily from the Project Server tables (MSP) and
writes to the Project View tables (MSP_VIEW). This activity is intense but short-lived.
Portfolio Analyzer itself causes a brief but heavy processing load on the server where it is
installed. The majority of the performance load, however, is absorbed on the client
computer.
Portfolio Analyzer takes advantage of Microsoft Office Web Components, which is a
collection of Microsoft ActiveX® components. Project Server 2003 uses two Office Web
Components (PivotTable and Chart) to access OLAP cube data stored in the Analysis
Services database (an Analysis Services database is created for each OLAP cube created in
Project Web Access). Users can interact with this data in Project Web Access and Project
Professional using fully interactive PivotTable and PivotChart reports. Users can sort, filter,
add, or modify data, expand and collapse details, and save their results for future reference.
To use Portfolio Analyzer, you must:
• Install and configure Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services (and apply
Service Pack 3a).
• Install the Office 2003 Office Web Controls in order to modify Portfolio Analyzer
views.
• Be granted the Manage Views permission to create Portfolio Analyzer views in Project
Web Access. In addition, Project Web Access and Project Professional users must be
added to the Cube Database role in Analysis Services for each Portfolio Analyzer view.
• Be granted the View Portfolio Analyzer permission to use Portfolio Analyzer from
Project Professional or Project Web Access.
Portfolio Modeler
Portfolio Modeler is a strategic planning tool that executives and project managers can use
to evaluate the capacity of the organization to take on new projects. Because Portfolio
Modeler provides detailed, high-level analyses, its results require careful interpretation. You
can use the modeling capabilities of the Portfolio Modeler feature to analyze projects in
order to do the following:
• Determine whether resources are being over-utilized or under-utilized.
• Determine whether it is possible to staff a new project.
• View the effects of strategic reprioritization.
The scheduling engine for Portfolio Modeler is always run on the computer running
Project Server 2003.
To use Portfolio Modeler, you must be granted the following permissions:
• See Enterprise Resource Data To view resource data in Portfolio Modeler.
• Open Project To open a project from the Project Server database and load it into
Portfolio Modeler.
• View Models To use Portfolio Modeler from Project Professional and Project Web
Access.
Project Center
Project Center in Project Web Access enables users to view portfolios of projects or
individual projects. Users can view either summary information about multiple projects or
detailed information about individual projects. They can also create to-do lists, which are
lists of tasks that are not associated with a project.
Resource Breakdown Structure

Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) is a predefined Enterprise Resource Outline Code in
the Enterprise Global Template that you can use to define the reporting relationships
among users and resources in your organization. Project Server 2003 uses the relationships
that are defined in RBS to simplify the management of access for users and groups. This is
an integral component of resource management and application security.
The following are the requirements for using RBS:
• Project Server 2003 must be running in enterprise mode.
• You must use the Enterprise Global Template.
• You must use Enterprise Outline Codes.
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003
• ASP.NET
• IIS 6.0
Resource Center
Resource Center in Project Web Access enables users to view, modify, and analyze
resource information across projects and assignments published to the Project Server
database. Viewing assignment information in Resource Center enables you to have access
to information about who is doing what in which project. Resource Center displays a list of
the resources in the Enterprise Resource Pool; permissions to view items in Resource
Center are granted by the Project Server administrator.
To use Resource Center, you must be granted the following permissions:
• See Enterprise Resource Data To enable viewing of resources and resource data.
• Edit Enterprise Resource Data To edit and save resources in the Enterprise
Resource Pool using Project Professional.
• See Resource Assignments in Assignment Views To view assignment details in
Assignment Views in Resource Center.
• View Assignments View To view resource assignments in Resource Center.
• View Resource Allocation To view resource availability in Project Web Access.
• View Resource Center To access Resource Center.

• New Resource To add new resources to the Project Server database directly in
Resource Center without creating them in Project Professional.
Status Reports
The Status Reports feature in Project Web Access enables project stakeholders to send
status reports to any individual involved with a project (so long as they are also Project
Web Access users) to provide information about the status of their tasks. Status reports
provide a simple method for team members to use to communicate descriptive information
about the status of or progress on specific assigned tasks or on an entire project. The Status
Reports feature enables you to automate the process of requesting and receiving status
information. Project managers can send team members status report requests and team
members can then respond to them by providing the information requested. Team
members can also initiate the submission of status reports.
Project managers can configure status reports so that they receive individual submissions
and a merged or compiled status report that consolidates responses into a single status
request. Users can manage status reports, including status report requests, from the Project
Web Access Status Reports page.
Timesheets
Timesheets provide a method for team members to view and work with assigned tasks, and
report task updates to project managers. Team members can use timesheets to quickly and
easily scan tasks to which they are assigned. If they are assigned to tasks in more than one
project, team members can view all of the tasks for all of the projects in their timesheets.
Windows SharePoint Services

Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services is a Web application that integrates with Project
Server 2003 to help facilitate collaboration capabilities. When Windows SharePoint Services
is configured for use with Project Server 2003, the following collaboration features are
enabled:
• Risks Risk management involves proactively identifying and tracking events and
conditions that have the potential to affect future planning for a project. Risks can be
rated by severity and assigned an estimate for how likely they are to occur.
• Issues Issues can be used to track work items that are not easily identified as
assignments or tasks within projects; project managers, resource managers, and team
leads can then determine whether the issues will have an effect on the project and
identify strategies to manage the issues before they become larger problems.
• Documents A document library provides a location for team members to collaborate
and share documents outside of a project. Document types that you can use in a
document library include Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003,
Microsoft Office Access 2003, and many other document types and formats. In
addition to project-specific document libraries, shared document libraries can be used
to store documents that are related to all projects in your organization.
• Project Workspace A Project Workspace can exist for each project saved to the
Project Server database. They can be automatically configured when the project is first
saved or manually created by a Project Server administrator. The Project Workspace
enables additional collaboration features (for example, announcements) by providing a
Web site for each project that makes the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services
available to a project team.
Appendices
A
Additional Resources
If you want to learn more about Microsoft® Office Project Server 2003, Microsoft Office
Project Web Access 2003, and Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, or how to use
these three applications as part of your organization’s Microsoft Office Enterprise Project
Management (EPM) Solution, please refer to the following online books and Web sites.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series

• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Configuration Planning Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Disaster Recovery Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide: Single Server Deployment
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide: Small-Scale Deployment
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Installation Guide: Medium-Scale Deployment
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Application Configuration Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Administrator’s Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Security Group Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Portfolio Managers Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Project Managers Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Resource Managers Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Team Leads Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Team Members Guide
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Executives Guide
Project Server-Related Web Sites

The following Web sites are also available:
• Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Software Development Kit
• Microsoft Office Online: http://www.office.microsoft.com
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Microsoft Office Project

Server 2003 Solution Planning

Project Portfolio Management ................................................................................ 19

Portfolio Analyzer .....................................................................................................43

Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series

This includes the following resources:

What Will You Learn from this Book?

Who Should Read this Book?

Potential Benefits of the EPM Solution

Benefits for Executives

Benefits for Project Managers

Benefits for Resource Managers

Benefits for Team Members

Benefits for Administrators

Components of an EPM Solution

Components of an EPM Solution

Best Practices for an EPM Solution Deployment

Foundation for the EPM Solution Vision

Creating Your EPM Solution Vision

Creating an EPM Solution vision

Identifying Business Needs and Opportunities

Learning about EPM Solution Features and Capabilities

Assessing Organizational Readiness

Capabilities that the EPM Solution provides

Ad hoc project management communication.

Centrally locating project data

Central project data and enhanced communication

Project Portfolio Management

Project portfolio management.

Reporting and Analysis

Forward-Looking Indicator Analysis

Budgeting and Cost Tracking

Communication, Collaboration, and Workflow

The components of a Microsoft EPM Solution

• Assess your current and target levels of project management maturity.

Step Process People Organization Technology

Assess project management x x x

Establish project management x x

Establish communication plan x x x

Establish training plan x x

Plan rollout of Microsoft EPM x

Obtaining Executive Sponsorship

communicate the business value of the enterprise project management system to

Assessing Project Management Process Maturity

Progressing through the levels of project management process maturity

Maturity Level 1: Ad Hoc

Maturity Level 2: Repeatable Processes

Maturity Level 3: Defined Processes

Maturity Level 4 – Managed Processes

Maturity Level 5 – Optimized and Continually Improving

Establishing a Project Management Culture

Establishing a Communication Plan

Establishing a Training Plan

possible amount of disruption to current work productivity. Many organizations neglect to

Planning for Rollout of Microsoft EPM Software Tools

Planning Your EPM Solution Adoption

EPM Solution Adoption Roadmap

EPM Solution deployment roadmap

Iterative Adoption Strategy

EPM Solution iterative adoption strategy

Phases of EPM Solution implementation

Enterprise Custom Fields x

Enterprise Outline Codes x