In the last post (Manage Single Projects is as Simple as 1, 2, 3) I drafted a simple process to manage single projects. In that post I described the rationale and the intent of the simple (very first draft!) model. I will not repeat all of that here but suffice it to say that customers are asking for a really simple project management process - so simple it is obvious to non project management trained people - so simple it is as obvious as 1, 2, 3.
I did try to write the model so it was a very generic process and tool agnostic - but I failed! In the end it seemed to make more sense to write the model assuming that SharePoint was being used to manage the project artifacts and collaborations. There are lots of generic models but not that many (if any) that talk about the process of managing projects with SharePoint.
There is also the consideration of the size of the SharePoint community. As most of the readers will know there are two main versions of SharePoint - the free one (Windows SharePoint Services v3 or WSS for short) and the paid one (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or MOSS for short). The last set of public numbers I saw explained that MOSS revenue had now exceeded $1Bn per year and the number of organizations that had bought MOSS was in excess of 17,000 and that the number of user licenses sold was in excess of 100 million. That last number (100million users of the paid version of SharePoint - MOSS) is staggering when you consider that there are about 500 million licensed users of Office (as far as I know). MOSS by all accounts is the fastest growing server product Microsoft has ever marketed. I have not seen recent data for the number of organizations who have deployed the free version of SharePoint - WSS - but one would imagine that they'd have to be somewhere between 5x and 10x (at a guess) of the number of organizations who have the paid version - MOSS. That would put the number of organizations with WSS deployed at somewhere between 85,000 and 170,000. I guess we could justify a simple project model that assumes SharePoint!
The last post gave draft 1 of the model for managing single projects. This post extends the draft the model to include a simple process for managing many projects.
A piece of the draft model is then as follows:
- Manage Single Projects
- Manage Many Projects
1.Setup and maintain a projects structure
1.Define and document the overall projects and portfolio hierarchy (on PowerPoint or Visio perhaps)
2.Setup the initial projects structure
3.Maintain the projects structure
2.Manage across projects
1.Check and understand the progress of the many projects
2.Identify, manage and resolve any escalated exceptions (e.g. issues and project change requests)
3.Report to appropriate cross-project stakeholders
3.Manage the pipeline of new project requests
- Evolve Project Management
As you can (hopefully) see the objective is to make the process/steps of project management as simple as possible.
Download ...
... you can download the draft at Manage Single and Many Projects - Simple as 1, 2, 3
In the post that follow I will add the "Evolve Project Management" processes and I am sure I will improve on the "Manage Single and Multiple Projects" started here!