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Project Portfolio Management: Creating project management excellence
Project managers are the link between programmers and designers and between sales and customers. As such, project managers have to understand the importance of efficient, automated business processes and be comfortable dealing with people.
At Germany-based global IT services and consulting company T-Systems, we take project management seriously. That's why we have a dedicated project management committee and 1,700 full-time project managers.
When our 10-year-old project management platform needed to be upgraded, we took that seriously too and built a new project portfolio management (PPM) platform to integrate workflows from across the business. Our new platform, called ProjectNow, is built on Project Portfolio Management within ServiceNow® IT Business Management.
A global view into project management
The new platform’s impact has been revolutionary. ProjectNow creates, for the first time, a single view of all project activity, providing real-time updates on project status and flagging delays or pain points.
We now have the power to observe and control projects centrally—be they airports in South America or auto plants in the US. We can see at quick glance which projects are in trouble, at risk, or on track. We can also create daily or weekly status reports and conduct consistent quality management checks. We have the entire portfolio in front of us.
Within three months of launch, the platform was host to 170 projects with 800 users. Today, all new projects run on ProjectNow, and all long-term projects on the old platform will be migrated to ProjectNow. Projects run individually on the old platform will be introduced in project portfolios.
Our project management community has been involved throughout the migration, and early feedback has been excellent. However, the next challenge is to decide how best to make consistent use of the different features and functionality within the Now Platform®. Flexibility is great, but we’re conscious that flexibility can sometimes be the enemy of standardization.
Support for an agile environment
The engagement will take T-Systems’ project management to a new level, where the business will be better able to leverage data, plot trends, and identify best practices. There’s also a roadmap toward a mobile version.
The platform sets in place the agile approach demanded by the organization. It promises to connect project management to other parts of the business—integration with SharePoint for project deliverables and SAP for project financials is planned, enabling project managers to understand the wider impact.
In that regard, ProjectNow is not just better for project management; it’s better for everyone. The goal is an end-to-end integration of all aspects of a project, with plans to integrate our SAP systems and Jira software development processes with ProjectNow.
We see this as a strategic investment in ServiceNow. Other solution providers came with history or expertise, but none came with the breadth of scope of ServiceNow. The ability to combine different elements of the business is a huge advantage to us.
Learn more about how T-Systems delivers customer value using ServiceNow PPM and IT Service Management (ITSM).
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