Business Management Software Partnering With Project Management
Better decision making is produced when all of the stakeholders from team members and project managers to executive management make determinations from a broader and more comprehensive context. The perspectives are then based on points of view that engage individual efforts as well as the business as a whole. This is made possible with the connection that a project manager makes with business management software.
Business management software contains valuable corporate intelligence on costs, resources, issues, risks, schedules and earned value down to the project level. This data can be rolled up to the program, cost center, business unit or other macro level. This functionality facilitates partnering between project managers and business analysts that evaluate the information from different perspectives.
Project Management and Business Management Software
Through the application project managers can view their work at an individual level and concurrently evaluate the impact of their project on the business as a whole. They can see how their resource usage affects other business units, how their expenditures or income sources impact the corporate bottom line and so on. With these insights the project management community can better partner with other components of the business.
The Experienced Project Manager and Business Management Software
Experienced project managers recognize that their work does not exist in a vacuum. They know that their work has to be justified in the context of the business’ bottom line. Partnering is not an option it is a requirement. Veteran project managers are always conscious of how their projects fit into the corporate vision. They have an understanding of impacts: Resource, cost, schedule, risk and issue effects on the project and on the business. Project managers continually leverage business management software to partner their efforts with that of the corporation as a whole.
This partnering benefits both the business and the projects being sponsored. Further, the partnering allows for better decision making because all the stakeholders from team members and project managers to executive management make determinations from a broader and more comprehensive context. The perspectives are now based on points of view that engage individual efforts as well as the business as a whole.
When there are new projects or initiatives the insights based on this partnering facilitate in depth requirements gathering. The elicitation of requirements can now include the output of the business management software. Examples of this include the following: Securing resource requirements but with advance knowledge of certain impacts, obtaining cost requirements but with a prior understanding of some effects that can preface the question set.
Partnering not only makes business and project sense but creates the foundation for new organizational structures. A good example of this is how project management offices (PMO) oftentimes becomes a critical part of a company linking project managers with executive management. This type of application is precisely the type of software that facilitates the development and evolution of PMO’s. PMO’s are a prime example of business-project level partnering.