EPM Live Overviewdownload.microsoft.com/.../EPM_Live_White_Paper.pdf · 2018-10-16 · EPM Live...

EPM Live Overview

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Table of Contents

Solutions for Everyone ..................................................................................................... 6

Portfolio Visibility for Business Intelligence ................................................................. 7

Control Schedules and Tasks Across Your Organization ........................................... 8

Manage Resources Across the Enterprise Effectively .............................................. 10

Effectively Communicate and Share Task Information ............................................. 13

Understand and Control Project Budgets and Finances ........................................... 15

Manage and Track All Work Demands on Your Organization ................................... 16

Manage Documents and Help Ensure Content Integrity ........................................... 18

Standardize and Automate Your Business Processes .............................................. 20

Improve Visibility and Insight to Enhance Decision-making .................................... 21

Leverage Pre-built Project & Work Workspaces to Get You Started Today ........... 24

Start Online Today and Bring Your Solution Onsite At Any Time ............................ 25

More Information ............................................................................................................. 25


EPM Live provides Microsoft SharePoint Project Management solutions for everyone in an organization, from teams that want to work within individual Workgroups, to organizations that want to utilize Enterprise tools. EPM Live has evolved the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server stack to a more comprehensive and integrated Enterprise Project/Work Management system. Building on the familiar tools that many people already know, the EPM Live solution includes web parts, Microsoft Project Add-ins, SharePoint Features, SharePoint Applications, and Industry Best Practices & Process templates. These features are designed to work together to help you address your Enterprise Project/Work Management needs. The diagram below shows how the links between EPM Live and Microsoft applications are strengthened to offer you enhanced SharePoint Work Management functionality.

EPM Live delivers SharePoint-based Enterprise Project/Work Management (EPM) tools such as: SharePoint templates, web parts, and applications that empower teams to work more effectively together. EPM Live utilizes a centralized pre-built SharePoint solution enabling teams to publish and share Microsoft Project schedules, documents, identify issues, risks, manage action items, and create dynamic reports for informed decision making on all business and project critical activities. Every organization has projects and each workgroup has vastly different project management requirements, capabilities, and processes for managing projects. Some workgroups require complex enterprise tools to manage large strategic projects and initiatives while others prefer a more simplified approach by centralizing project schedules, tasks, issues and documents. The main objective for all that has embarked on enterprise wide project management initiatives has been to find the right balance between enterprise standards and workgroup requirements. EPM Live combines the flexibility of Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 with Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Portfolio Server 2007 enterprise features to meet the needs of everyone across all levels of the organizations in a single solution.


Highly customizable SharePoint templates let workgroups configure their sites to meet their specific needs. Scalable feature set lets you deploy the right solution with the appropriate level of capabilities to the right workgroup. Enterprise roll-ups and top-level project portfolio dashboards give stakeholders visibility across all projects and workgroup sites. This powerful solution provides a scalable and versatile platform so that every level of the organization is effective. EPM Live is a perfect fit for any organization in need of a Microsoft based Project Management solution that will satisfy the unique needs of every workgroup.

Work environments today are more dynamic than ever. With tightening budgets, organizations need to do more with less and manage all work more effectively. Productivity and efficiency are essential to surviving the current economic climate. EPM Live gives you the ability to manage all your project work with one solution in a familiar Microsoft environment. EPM Live takes a unique approach to managing a project; applying proven project management principles to all the work around a project. Too often, there are real gaps between the information that a project manager has access to and what team members and stakeholders can tangibly grasp. By centralizing all information regarding a project in one location, project teams can have a powerful insight into the real health of a project. Built on a Microsoft SharePoint platform, EPM Live gives the ability to manage all work with one solution by leveraging what you already own, in a familiar Microsoft environment.


Solutions for Everyone Organizations often overcomplicate their Project Management initiatives by introducing tools that offer more capabilities and command more change than what organizations today are prepared to support. At EPM Live, we take a more simplified approach to Project Management. Our mission is to help organizations at any level achieve higher levels of project effectiveness by providing a broad range of EPM solutions tailored to meet specific business needs whether it’s online or onsite. Whether you need the advanced EPM capabilities of Microsoft Office Project Server or looking for something lighter weight to help you successfully gain the acceptance and support of a full EPM deployment, we have the solution for you.


Portfolio Visibility for Business Intelligence EPM Live helps managers keep projects and resources aligned with corporate strategy and vision. Top level executive portfolio dashboards, KPI’s, and real time performance reports allow you to monitor projects and initiatives at each phase of their lifecycles and assess investment results based on overall portfolio objectives. Organizations today strive to do more with less. Portfolio Managers and Executives make every effort to optimize their entire work portfolio from business case generation and approval, to prioritization, selection, dependencies, portfolio risks, and tracking. Choosing the right work is an obvious goal, but how do you make the tough choices. Without the right tools and methodology, managers struggle to balance considerations of risk, cost, and value to business, return on investment, and optimal capacity utilization for portfolio investments.

• Project Request/Demand Management Demand takes many forms, including large investment requests, simple project requests, and service maintenance requests — all vying for the same resources. Once you have visibility into all demand, you can classify, evaluate, and appropriately prioritize work to allocate resources to the highest value opportunities.

• Gain Portfolio Visibility With visibility into real-time project investment status, it is possible to monitor progress in terms of actuals and forecasted on key dimensions such as cost, schedules, benefits, and risk and communicate status to all stakeholders.


• Prioritization & Optimization EPM Live integrates with Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 to give executives the best practice techniques to automatically derive prioritization scores and develop intuitive charts to help you effectively evaluate the competing investments from varying angles.

Control Schedules and Tasks Across Your Organization Managers must depend on sound project management practices to see a project through to a successful deliverable. Project schedule development is one of the primary processes associated with overall project planning. Effective project scheduling is a critical factor in the success or failure of a particular project and project managers are usually responsible for managing a variety of project schedules and timelines. EPM Live’s scheduling toolset is powered by Microsoft Office Project to effectively plan, manage, and track your schedule. However, because not all projects or project managers require the same scheduling methods, users can also leverage a lightweight, free form, scheduling toolset with the web based EPM Live Work Planner. It is inevitable that projects will develop discrepancies between the planned and actual performance. It is almost certain that the project will not go according to the plan. In order to prevent total chaos


from occurring, a process for continual control and monitoring must be implemented from the outset of the project. The flexible scheduling functionality of EPM Live’s Work Planner alone or integrated with Microsoft Office Project enables managers to allocate resources by name, skill or group and then track the effort against any work item. Understand at a glance the true impacts of schedule change and delay by using EPM Live Work Planner to track and manage your schedule.

• Manage Simple to Complex Task Schedules

Set realistic expectations with project teams, management, and customers using Office Project to build simple to complex task schedules. Understand the schedule with features such as Task Drivers for tracing the source of issues, Multiple Level Undo for testing scenarios, and Visual Cell Highlighting for automatically shading the tasks affected by a change.

• Share Microsoft Project Schedules with Team Members

Publish Microsoft Project’s project and task information to SharePoint through Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 for easy access by Team Members. Furthermore, EPM Live allows you to specify which fields are published to SharePoint and which fields in SharePoint are updatable by Team Members.


• Build Work Plans Using EPM Live’s Work Planner

Create clear uncomplicated project plans online in SharePoint using EPM Live’s Work Planner.

• View Schedules and Milestones Online

Share milestones and schedules to keep the team informed of major events and deliverables

Manage Resources Across the Enterprise Effectively EPM Live gives you complete visibility into work commitments, demand vs. capacity and resource capabilities so you can create top level resource plans that align strategic recruiting and outsourcing with long-term business objectives. Employees are the most valuable asset and the biggest expense for most organizations. The ability to deploy employees effectively against often conflicting projects and other work priorities enables organizations to optimize their return on human resource investments. In order to maximize both task throughput and company morale, resource and project managers need an efficient system to place the appropriate staff on the right teams at the right time.


EPM Live provides visibility into resource demands across the organization so functional managers can make staffing decisions to support corporate goals and objectives. Understand which projects and types of work are consuming your most valuable resources and effectively realign your staffing plan based on changing priorities and budgets. Get the most from your most valuable resources and quickly correct critical path tasks that are overdue by assigning resources based on skill requirements and level of proficiency.

• Gain Greater Control of Project Resources With Office Project, you can easily assign resources to tasks and adjust their assignments to resolve conflicts over allocations.

• Resource Planning Across All Work By combining resource workload on both project and non-project work in a single dynamic view gives resource managers the true picture on resource loading.

• Resource Capacity Planning Provide your team with an easy way to create resource plans and view resource capacity constraints across all work within the organization.


Connecting Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 to EPM Live can provide more advanced Resource Management capabilities to help you build long term staffing strategies. A central enterprise pool allows you to manage resource calendars, availability, and skill set. Integration with EPM live and Microsoft Office Project Server gives users the following resource management capabilities:

• Skill Based Resourcing With the Build Team from Enterprise feature, project managers can quickly and easily staff their projects based on the availability of resources; the match between resource skills and the skill requirements of the project.

• Resource Workload and Availability The Resource Center enables users to view, modify, and analyze resource information across projects and workgroups. Graphical displays of resource availability give immediate insight into overall team capacity so you can manage your portfolio with current information about your team’s availability. On the same page, you can view details about individual resource availability and task assignment by time-period.


Effectively Communicate and Share Task Information Many projects fail because of lack of communication amongst the project team. Increase your chances of success by keeping your teams informed. Sharing all work assignments, priorities, and critical dates with an effective and easy to use collaboration tool increases communication and productivity across your project. EPM Live leverages familiar technology, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Project as its core platform; if you are using either of these products today there is virtually little to no ramp up time for your team.

• Updating Your Task Status on All Work Assigned To You

Update and manage all the work assigned to a team member from a single view.

• Create New Work Items From a Single View

From a single view, team members can create new tasks, issues, risks, changes, actions, and more.

• Sign Up for Task Status Alert Emails

Gain a better understanding of your current workload and stay on top of your assignments by signing up for daily emails that outline your Overdue Tasks, Upcoming Tasks, Active Risks, and Active Issues.


• Outlook Integration

Users can leverage existing knowledge of desktop applications to view and update the status of their individual project assignments.

• Timesheets

Leverage Microsoft Office Project Server timesheets to build a body of knowledge of best practices for standard project tasks across the enterprise. Additionally, track resource costs and project expenses to improve cost estimation, scoping, and budgeting. Easy to use timesheets enable organizations to track time on work. Timesheets support accounting rules, fiscal periods, financial audits, and prior-period adjustments. It also includes timesheet approval and lock features. Full integration with project task assignments makes it simple to record time worked to specific projects and tasks.


Understand and Control Project Budgets and Finances The primary challenge of managing projects is to achieve project goals and objectives while adhering to the classic project constraints of scope, schedule, and budget. Use EPM Live to track and analyze costs to gain a better understanding of the impact of changes using financial controls and rich analytics. EPM Live allows users to create and manage project budgets using Microsoft Office Project and/or simple EPM Live SharePoint Grids. Assign cost resources to tasks or at the project or program level to easily track other direct costs and expenses. EPM Live enhancements to predefined fields, such as cost codes, enable Project to support the integration of EPM Live Projects with accounting systems.

• Gain Greater Control of Finances

With Office Project, you can control finances by assigning budgets to projects and programs. Use Cost and Labor Resources to manage planned and actual cost for tasks and/or projects.

• Manage Budget and Cost Using Dynamic Web Grids

Project Managers can publish Microsoft Office Project financial summary information to a centralized Microsoft Office SharePoint workspace enabling managers, executives, and stakeholders to view the financial status of their projects


Manage and Track All Work Demands on Your Organization All projects are challenged by “other work” that is not captured in the project schedule. This work can create hidden risks and issues associated with your project. A risk is: Any event or situation that can negatively affect a project, if it occurs. In contrast, issues are events that are already happening. Risks can become issues if they are not addressed effectively. By actively identifying, analyzing, and addressing your project issues and risks, you can help guide your project to a successful conclusion. In order to rapidly address risks, project managers must have visibility into all work associated with their project. EPM Live allows managers and project teams to identify, create, and monitor their traditional schedules as well as all other types of work that impact the schedule and performance of their project. Risks and issues are centralized online, giving the team access to this information and the ability to quickly identify all risks. This added insight and visibility, improves the probability that risks will be resolved before becoming serious issues. Assign risks and issues to the appropriate team members and ensure they are mitigated or resolved.

• Issue Management

Manage a set of issues or problems and assign, prioritize, and track the progress of issues from start to finish.


• Risk Management

Quickly capture, assign, and prioritize risks. Early risk mitigation with increased project success.

• Change Management

Document and communicate project changes to make sure the whole team is on the same page.

• Action Planning

Track and communicate Action Items to ensure the whole team is on the same page.


• Other Work Applications

Easily create custom work applications without having to use a developer. (i.e., Bug Tracking, Defect Tracking, Work Orders, and other work processes)

Manage Documents and Help Ensure Content Integrity Many projects have a huge volume of unstructured content that often exists in a state of unmanaged chaos. This prevents projects from properly applying these valuable assets for better knowledge sharing, improved customer communications, and increased project efficiencies. Decrease project management risk and costs by taking advantage of EPM Live’s integrated document management solution, based on Microsoft Office SharePoint, which allows organizations easily manage and collaborate on project-related artifacts. Organize and classify documents within centralized document libraries that leverage features such as version control, workflow, document attributes, and security.

• Version Control

Track several versions of documents and revert back to previous versions if needed.


• Check in/out

Checking documents in and out allows users to obtain exclusive write access to documents, eliminating the need to merge changes from multiple authors.

• Workflow

Create simple to complex workflows for processes within your SharePoint EPM Live environment.


• Full Text Indexing and Searching

Increase productivity and reduce information overload by providing employees and partners the ability to find relevant content in a wide range of repositories and formats. With actionable search results that respect security permissions, go beyond documents and across repositories to unlock information within your organization.

Standardize and Automate Your Business Processes Increase productivity and reduce information overload by providing employees and partners the ability to find relevant content in a wide range of repositories and formats. With actionable search results that respect security permissions, go beyond documents and across repositories to unlock information within your organization. Every business is filled with numerous processes whether it’s project initiation, risk management, resource staffing requests/assignment, or processing a supplier request. It can oftentimes become burdensome and inefficient for resources to remember the exact process, track progress, and manually move items along. EPM Live leverages the Microsoft Office SharePoint workflow features to enable businesses to define multiple workflows to standardize, communicate, and enforce the business processes across the organization.

• Workflow Governance

Design workflows to automate business processes in your enterprise — such as document review, approval, and archiving, among others. Or you can quickly create workflows just to take care of routine processes on your team site, such as sending notifications or creating tasks.


• Record a version history

Text for the Version section – Track and report on when an item or file was changed and who changed it. For example, if someone changes the % Complete of a Task Center item, that information appears in the version history.

Improve Visibility and Insight to Enhance Decision-making Take advantage of your data investment by making timely, informed decisions. EPM Live provides a number of out of the box reports to get you the information you need quickly. Because all of your project data is stored in SharePoint, you can use any number of reporting solutions, including SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Microsoft Office 2007.

• View Your Rolled Up Portfolio KPI Dashboard

EPM Live comes pre-configured with several reporting Web Parts and Dashboards including the ability to roll up project and task information from sub sites.


• Generate Reports Using Microsoft Office Excel

Export SharePoint List data to Microsoft Excel to gain access to pivoting and charting functionality within a few clicks of the mouse.

• Create Custom Reports and Applications Using Microsoft Office Access

Create your own Reporting database using Microsoft Office Access that already has several built in data access points with SharePoint.


• Report Center

EPM Live's Report Center offers a way to centrally manage and distribute reports of all types.

• View Reports Using SQL Reporting Services

Develop highly customizable and scalable reports using the powerful SSRS.

• View Reports Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Excel Services

Excel Services is part of a collection of Office SharePoint Server features collectively called Business Intelligence that an individual, a team, or an entire enterprise can use. These features are designed to work together and support quick, robust development of customized decision-making tools that can access a variety of data sources — often without the use of code.


Leverage Pre-built Project & Work Workspaces to Get You Started Today EPM Live provides SharePoint site templates tailored to address the needs and requirements of Enterprise Project Management, Operational Management and specific processes in organizations of any size. These templates are packed with rich web parts, views, and reports to help any organization ramp up immediately. The EPM Live templates are a perfect starting point for any organization embarking on a SharePoint based EPM solution. Start with a feature-packed EPM Live template and build richer capabilities as your needs change.

• Flexible Site Configuration

EPM Live allows for the flexibility SharePoint Project and Program Management hierarchy. This flexibility allows organizations to meet the unique requirements for the varying workgroups across the organization. For example, some workgroups may need to store a collection of project workspaces that make up a program.

• Solution Templates

EPM Live provides prebuilt project workspace templates to help get project teams up and running quickly. PMI (PMBOK), Agile (SCRUM), MSF, IT Management, Professional Services, Product Development, Project Management Office, Facilities Management, Construction, and more.


Start Online Today and Bring Your Solution Onsite At Any Time

• Online EPM Live’s online service reduces risk and saves you costly and lengthy IT deployments. A subscription to the EPM Live online service includes EPM Live's Project Publisher and EPM Live Server. Experience the EPM Live difference with a highly optimized infrastructure that provides greater uptime, system performance, and stability.

• Onsite Get more from your existing SharePoint deployments. If you already own Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and/or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), you can deploy EPM Live onsite.

More Information

• Website www.epmlive.com • Email [email protected] • Phone (866) 391-3700

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