The overview about some challenges in construction industry.
How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft Project Online
How to enable team involvement and Boost collaboration.
How to make smarter decisions using the Business intelligent tools.
Digital collaboration with Microsoft 365 as extension of Drupal
How can technology helps in overcoming the Project Management Challenges
1. How can technology helps in overcoming
Project Management Challenges
By: Monzer Osama Alshaikh
Chief Information Officer
Almasarat Arraedah for Management and IT Consulting
2. Monzer Osama Alshaikh
Msis, PMP, MCT, MVP
• Certified consultant in information technology and project management
• Holding annual award “Microsoft Most Valuable Professional”.
• Microsoft Certified Training Consultant
• Trainer and speaker in the field of administration and ERP systems.
Email: Consult@MonzerOsama.com Consult@MonzerOsama.com
Blog: www.MonzerOsama.com
Mobile: 0501826235
3. Agenda:
• The overview about some Project Management challenges in
construction industry.
• How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft Project Online
• How to enable team involvement and Boost collaboration.
• How to make smarter decisions using the Business intelligent tools.
• Case study 1 & 2
• Q&A
5. Overview about some Project Management Challenges in the
Construction Industry
1. Coordination in pre construction phase
2. The hidden of most technical details
3. The gap between the planed and actual cost
4. Improper Risk Management
5. Ambiguous Contingency Plans
6. The team collaboration and lack of communication
7. Scope Changes
8. Project and tasks tracking
9. The Project reports.
10. Project Document Management
6. How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft Project Online
Project Online is a flexible online solution for project portfolio management (PPM)
and everyday work.
Project Online provides powerful project management capabilities for planning,
prioritizing, and managing projects and project portfolio investments from almost
anywhere on almost any device.
Project Online can be used by administrators, portfolio managers and viewers,
project and resource managers, and team leads and members.
How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft
Project Online
What is Project Online?
7. How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft Project Online
Update tasks
Team members can update tasks from any device.
Submit timesheets
Capture project and non-project time spent for payroll, invoicing & other business purposes.
Collaborate
Team members can share documents and use Skype for Business to communicate on a project.
SharePoint task sync
Synchronize your projects with SharePoint task lists.
Project planning and scheduling
Includes familiar scheduling tools like Gantt charts and built-in customizable templates to get you
started.
Project Online Feature
8. How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft Project Online
Reporting and business intelligence
Track and monitor project health including everything from burndown charts to financials.
Publish projects to the cloud
Save your projects to the cloud for ease of access across devices and seamless collaboration
with your team.
Manage project resources
Assign resources to project tasks and use resource engagements to request and lock in
resources
Portfolio selection and optimization
Model different portfolio scenarios to determine the best strategic path by weighing project
proposals against strategic business drivers.
Project Online Feature
9. How to Improve project outcomes using Microsoft Project Online
Demand management
Capture and evaluate project ideas from anywhere in the organization through a
standardized process.
Plan and manage enterprise resources
View and compare how resources are used across projects to optimize assignments.
Out-of-the-box portfolio reports
Aggregate project data to gain insights across portfolios.
Project Online Feature
10. Benefits Help ensure products are delivered on-time Reduce scheduling conflicts Increase production efficiencies
Build and edit schedules,
and identify
inefficiencies throughout
product lifecycle
Build Schedules
View timelines,
deadlines and resource
tasks in single location,
and address potential
risks
Manage Task & Risks
Assess resources
and build teams that
align with product
requirements
Build Teams
Enable instant team
collaboration and
communication on any
device
Collaborate
Lync
Build and manage teams,
and enable collaboration
PPM — Teams, Schedules and Collaboration
15. Benefits Gain visibility across resources Enhance collaboration Reduce subjective resource planning
Build teams comprising
internal and external
resources that align to
project requirements
Build Teams
Assess resources, both
human and material,
against project
requirements
Assess Resources
Share suggested resource
assignments with executive
team for funding allocation
based on budgets
Allocate Funding
Assess resources and
build teams
Resource Management
16. Benefits Improve PMO efficiencies Reduce scheduling conflicts Improve project success rate
Define resource KPIs and
develop progress reports
for executive team review
Assign tasks and monitor
resource activities in real-
time
View competing projects to
understand resource
priorities and deadlines
Real-Time Monitoring Custom InsightsProject Comparisons
Manage resources
throughout project
Resource Management
17. Benefits Anticipate changes in project expenses Deliver profitable, on-time projects Reduce IT burden
Surface data from various financial
systems
Lines of Business IntegrationBudget to Cost Comparison
Establish project baselines, and
compare budgeted vs. actual material
and labor costs
Track project
performance across
financial systems
Operational Cost Management
18. Capture project data in
central repository for
portfolio analysis
Access reports and other
project data from
multiple devices
Translate data into
highly visual reports and
dashboards for executive
analysis
Centralized Project Data Reports and Dashboards Devices Access
Benefits Improve data organization, analysis Reduce subject decision-making Enable access to data
Create and share
cost reports
Operational Cost Management
19. Natural language query capabilities in Power BI deliver self-
service analytics solution for the PMO and executive teams.
Screenshot from Power BI
Self-service reporting
20. Screenshot from Power BI
Visualization
Rich visual reporting capabilities in Power
BI help customers easily build and share
program and portfolio performance
dashboards.
21. Case Study 1
Phoenix, Arizona-based CORE Construction is
a nationally ranked commercial general
contractor with an unwavering commitment
to its core values: integrity, fairness,
continuous improvement, and results. BENEFITS
• Reduced costs
• Enhanced data accuracy with a dashboard
that publishes consistent, consolidated
project data
• Improved profit margins with better
decision making through access to project
schedule data
SITUATION
CORE Construction wanted to standardize on
a user-friendly tool to manage its
construction projects’ schedules, and
executive staff needed better insight into the
company’s $700 million project portfolio.
“With Microsoft Project Server 2013, we gain easy
access to consolidated, standardized, and accurate
project data. Now we can ensure that our projects
are completed on time and our customers are
satisfied.”
Dustin Burks,
Chief Information Officer, CORE Construction
22. Ministry of Health Saudi Arabia promotes the
health and well-being of citizens of Saudi
Arabia. The ministry also helps develop the
legislation regulating both the governmental
and private health sectors.
BENEFITS
• More effective communications for
faster decision making
• Improved productivity with mobile
access to project details
• Increased engagement and usage
with a simple, intuitive interface
SITUATION
The ministry’s project management office
implemented Microsoft Project to take
advantage of improvements in mobility.
“We have an enterprise view of all the projects; how
they are progressing, the current issues, the current
risks. The EPM also produces biweekly management
reports, with risk assessments and
recommendations.”
Abdullah Alsubaie,
PMO Officer, Ministry of Health Saudi Arabia
Case Study 2
“PMI’s Pulse of the Profession: The High Cost of Low Performance.” Project Management Institute. 2013. Hyperlink to PDF.
“Insights and Trends: Current Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Practices.” PricewaterhouseCoopers. 2012. Hyperlink to PDF.
Additional trends
Growth in U.S. oil and gas investment (more CAPEX, but less margin; capital efficiency is key)
Shift to unconventionals (more complex projects; transparency and governance key)
CFOs willing to take more prudent risks on their balance sheets (investors demanding better risk control; standardized processes are key)
Tweets sent globally per day, which indicate trends (explosion of connected everything; disciplined engagements key)
Screenshots of the following features, which are referenced in this scenario, can be found in the appendix: Task Inspector, Approval Center, Project Team Sites
Benefits
Help ensure on-time delivery by addressing unexpected changes, and resolving inefficient or overlapping schedules
Increase production efficiencies by reviewing and approving all tasks in single view
Improve product quality and time-to-market with team collaboration
Assess resources and build teams that align with product requirements
See section on resource management for more details.
Build and edit schedules, and identify inefficiencies throughout product lifecycle
The Microsoft PPM Solution further simplifies managing and controlling schedules with improved analysis and visual tools, so that managers can focus on deliverables and spend less time manipulating the schedule. One of those tools is the Task Inspector, which helps managers proactively highlight an issue, quickly identify the root cause, and resolve the problem immediately. This tool guides the occasional product manager by visually identifying scheduling concerns and recommending scheduling efficiencies. Similar to the spelling checker in Word, Task Inspector highlights issues using wavy red underlines beneath start or end date fields. A red underline denotes a potential scheduling problem — for example, an underlying task exceeds the duration of a summary task — and a green wavy underline indicates that the schedule can be optimized — for example, a task has slack time and could potentially start earlier in the schedule. Managers can choose to ignore these warnings or choose from a number of repair options listed in Task Inspector.
View timelines, deadlines and resource tasks in single location, and address potential issues
Your organization needs flexible methods for users to submit time and provide real-time task updates. Project Online and Project Server offer tools for managing and communicating resource assignments and effectively gathering task updates from team member entries. Team members can receive and view their assignments through the web-based Tasks View, an e-mail notification, or as an Outlook task grouped by product. The Tasks View displays product and non-product work assigned to individuals. Users can also view tasks assigned to other resources and provide updates, such as contractors or team resource assignments, for their products. In addition, connectivity with Exchange helps ensure that team members can receive and make updates to product tasks in Outlook or in Outlook Web App (without requiring an Outlook add-in) on your PC, smartphone, or tablet.
Many organizations have different control and oversight requirements for timesheets and task status updates. To help PMOs select the level of review and control they want, Project Online and Project Server offer configurable approval workflows. A dedicated Approval Center simplifies the review of timesheet, task updates, and administrative time request approvals. Utilizing the same intuitive interface as Tasks View, the Approval Center offers options to group, sort, and filter tasks, helping you streamline approval activities.
Enable instant team collaboration and communication on any device
Project Online and Project Server leverage Project Team Sites, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), and social computing capabilities to provide teams with a collaborative workspace — a product site — that contains product-related artifacts and helps teams communicate, share information, better manage your product pipeline and more effectively measure your team's ideas throughout the product lifecycle. With each product, you can utilize a product site template in SharePoint that includes documents, tasks and calendars specifically geared towards working on simple products. The social capabilities of SharePoint work with your product site or “My Site,” to facilitate discussions and information sharing so you can get products and everyday work done. The default product site includes the following components:
Documents: A central location for storing and managing product documents throughout the product lifecycle.
Project site template: Each template includes documents, tasks, and calendars specifically geared towards working on simple products.
Issues and Risks Log: A central location for effectively identifying and managing issues and risks. This promotes use of standard processes for definition, impact assessment, escalation, and resolution.
Deliverables: Product managers can publish deliverables to the collaborative product site so that other managers can be aware of key dates and establish a soft dependency for their own plans. If the deliverable dates change, affected managers receive automatic notifications the next time they open their product.
Team Calendar: The product manager can visually communicate key meetings and recurring governance events, such as a weekly team meeting, to the product team.
Announcements: An easy way to broadcast information to the product team.
Team Discussions: Team members can openly communicate and debate topics within the product site. Project maintains the discussion threads, making them viewable to the product team and stakeholders.
Yammer: Yammer is a social network, available by SharePoint integration, that connects people, conversations, and data across business applications. Team members can collaborate on documents, share knowledge, and improve overall internal communications.
Organizations can also use Lync to enable real-time communication and collaboration among employees. Without leaving Project, employees can search for and instantly connect with available colleagues by audio, video or chat. Employees can use Project Web App to connect with colleagues from any device. Project’s integration with Lync helps employees get the information they need when they need it, and communicate important information to their teams in real-time.
The Office 365 Project Time Reporter iOS app announced last fall is now available in the Apple Store. This app enables team members to submit timesheets and report progress on tasks tracked in Project Online.
With the Office 365 Project Time Reporter on your iPhone, you can add new assignments or non-project work to your timesheet or create new personal tasks in the Timesheet view. Timesheets can be saved, allowing you to return later and send in for approval. You can also keep track of your current or overdue tasks in the Tasks view, filter and sort tasks to find the right ones, and submit status updates.
Want to learn more? Read “Getting started with Office 365 Project Time Reporter” for more information.
Android and Windows Phone versions of the app will also be coming to the Google Play Store and Windows Store soon.
Ready to install the Office 365 Project Time Reporter iOS app? Download it from the Apple Store to get started!
Key concept: Office 365 enables rich in-context social conversations.
Talking Points: With Office 365, customers can add a social conversation feed to their team sites. Teams can also opt to replace the native social feed in SharePoint sites with Yammer.
Key concept: Office 365 enables co-authoring.
Talking Points: All Projects require authoring documents. For example – a requirements document. With Office 365, you can co-author documents. This saves tremendous amount of time and effort that would have otherwise spent in controlling versions, keeping track of changes and back and forth communications.
Key concept: Office 365 enables file sharing.
Talking Points: For any project to be successful, it is key to ensure that project teams can share documents with each other. We do that with OneDrive for Business. It is available for Windows, Android as well as iOS Platforms. You can control access. You can give edit or view rights.
Screenshots of the following features, which are referenced in this scenario, can be found in the appendix: Resource Center, Resource Assignments
Benefits
Increase visibility and gain control over resource availability, capability, location and cost
Help ensure projects are delivered on-time and within budget requirements
Enhance collaboration and communication with SharePoint and Lync interoperability
Meet strategic business objectives by assigning the right resources to the right project activities
Improve project success rate with data-driven resource planning
Assess resources, both human and material, against project requirements
Project provides a centralized location for all of your resources and related information, improving and simplifying resource management. Offering enhanced visibility and control, the Resource Center view helps your PMOs and resource managers quickly assess overall capacity and better understand employee skills and availability. With the Resource Center view, administrators can capture all named resources in a single location and standardize the collection of associated metadata. The metadata represents discrete resource properties — skills, a resource’s level in the resource breakdown structure, geographic location, and billing rates — that managers can effectively use to tap the resource pool. In addition to people, Project supports the management of consumable resources such as concrete and lumber. Organizations can also create and manage data for inanimate resources such as machinery, hardware, and facilities. Managers can apply multiple rate tables to these resources to model purchasing versus rental scenarios, helping deliver better cost management (see “Operational cost management” section for more details). Project also integrates with lines of business applications so that you can gather up-to-date resource information from the chosen system of record.
Share suggested resource assignments with executive team for funding allocation based on budgets
Project’s seamless integration with SharePoint and Lync allows organizations to coordinate project activities and collaborate in real-time without having to switch between applications. With SharePoint, organizations can store, manage and edit documents, like suggested resource plans and project budgets. SharePoint also offers rich social capabilities, like Community Sites and Community Portal, that allow employees to share and discuss knowledge with executives. Finally, organizations can enable real-time communication and collaboration among employees with Lync. Without leaving Project, employees can search for and instantly connect with available colleagues to discuss project activities, resource assignments, the budget and more.
Build teams comprising internal and external resources that align to project requirements.
With Project, project managers can use the Resource Assignments and Build Team views to create filters to search for the right people based on geography, skill, or other variables. They can then add resources, both internal and external, to their project and specify whether the booking is a proposal or commitment.
Screenshots of the following features, which are referenced in this scenario, can be found in the appendix: Team Planner, Project Center
Benefits
Improve PMO efficiency with single view for all projects and project variables (e.g., resources, tasks, etc.)
Reduce scheduling conflicts
Improve project success rate with flexible, real-time management capabilities
Assign tasks and monitor resource activities in real-time, and View competing projects to understand resource priorities and deadlines
Project Professional offers a resource-centric view, called Team Planner, that helps managers visually manage project-level resource assignments. Team Planner gives managers a complete picture of all assignments for a project. In addition, managers can intuitively drag and drop tasks between resources. With the easy-to-use interface in Team Planner, managers can quickly identify unassigned tasks, find resources that have availability, and easily move tasks to the appropriate person. This resource-centric tool visually highlights resource over-allocation, and gives managers the option to a) manually resolve scheduling conflicts or b) rely on Project Professional’s automatic levelling capabilities to fix the issue. The Team Planner also visually highlights resources assigned to another project, enabling the project manager to drill into the competing project to receive a better understanding of the impact on the resource’s time. The Team Planner view also provides mouse-triggered, context-sensitive dialog boxes that display useful information about tasks, including start and end dates, work remaining, and percent complete. With Project Pro for Office 365, managers can see what their teams are doing even when they are managing everyday work or ad hoc projects in SharePoint Online.
The Tasks View in Project provides an all-inclusive assignments destination for each team member. This helps simplify communication about resource assignments and ensure that team members are aware of their designated activities. Team members can use this view to provide time and status updates or to reassign tasks if they lack the bandwidth to complete them. Because Project connects with Exchange, team members can also receive and update their project assignments as tasks in Outlook, Outlook Web App, or by using a PC, smartphone, or tablet. Note: Project Pro for Office 365 offers limited functionality in this regards, in comparison to Project Server.
Notes: Team Planner is only available with Project Professional; it is not available with Project Standard or Project Pro for Office 365. Compared to Project Server, Project Pro for Office 365 has limited integration with Outlook, Outlook Web App, and across devices.
Define resource KPIs and develop progress reports for executive team review
See section on innovation management for details on Project Center view.
Benefits
Anticipate and address changes in project expenses
Deliver profitable, on-budget projects
Improve efficiency and reduce IT burden with seamless lines of business integration
Establish project baselines, and compare budgeted vs. actual material and labor costs
With the Budget Resources and Cost Resources features, project managers can approve project budgets and capture associated costs (e.g., equipment, materials, travel, training, contractor costs, etc.). These features help managers establish baselines for comparing and managing actual costs against budgets. Managers can then establish Earned Value Management (EVM) metrics to control changes, analyze project performance, and manage expectations. Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 includes calculations for standard EVM metrics, such as cost and schedule performance indices, based on planning and actual cost, in addition to schedule fields. These tools help organizations capture the original intent of project costs in a baseline and change them as required.
Surface data from various financial systems
Organizations need to be able to obtain accurate financial data from different lines of business systems. With the Project’s comprehensive application programming interface (API), organizations can automate the collection of financial data from lines of business applications to drive project accounting views and reports. In addition, organizations can take advantage of Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) partner add-in solutions that offer certified integration with familiar Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, such as those offered by SAP. The integration supports bi-directional data transfer, ensuring that project managers and financial analysts or accountants can effectively share data while working in their productivity tool of choice.
Note: All capabilities only available with Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365.
Benefits
Improve data organization and analysis without increasing the burden on IT
Reduce subjective decision-making with data-driven reports and dashboards
Enable project team members and executives to access vital project data from anywhere on any device
Capture project data in central repository for portfolio analysis
By standardizing the collection of data and performance metrics in a central repository, PMOs can more easily facilitate enterprise reporting. Project Online and Project Server include a variety of online views, such as Project Center, Resource Center, and Portfolio Analysis (see previous slides), in addition to powerful BI and reporting services to help organizations gain insight, visibility, and control across all project portfolios. Because Project is built on SharePoint, users can take advantage of almost all of the tools included in the Microsoft BI platform, such as Excel Services, Visio Services, Power Pivot for Excel, and more. On-premises versions of Project can also take advantage of Performance Point Services (PPS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).The flexible Microsoft BI solution provides nontechnical resources with familiar tools to easily create reports and configure powerful dashboards, while providing technical resources with more sophisticated capabilities to create complex views.
Translate data into highly visual reports and dashboards for executive analysis
Taking advantage of these powerful capabilities, managers can build project-level reports design dashboards to help ensure that executives have all the information they need to stay in control of funding decisions. Organizations can also find best-of-breed reports such as Burndown, Cashflow and Resource Overview in Project Pro for Office 365. You can share the reports through Office 365 apps in just a few clicks and print them in beautiful detail. What’s more, Project enables you to see summary dashboards, plans, and timelines in Project Web App (PWA), helping you glean insight and make better project decisions from anywhere on any device. To support performance tracking, users can define KPIs by using custom fields that provide an overview of financial performance, in addition to specific data at various phases of a project lifecycle.
Access reports and other project data from multiple devices
With Project Online and Project Web App (PWA), organizations can stay up-to-date in more places and on more devices, such as desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, than ever before. Built on SharePoint, PWA gives organizations the ability to post and share important project information, like reports and dashboards, in a single location that employees can access from anywhere at anytime.