Muhammad Shahzad

Presentation: Project Portfolio Management System Implementation and Deployment – A Case Study

Abstract: Prince George’s County, Department of the Environment is required to design and construct stormwater management restoration projects to comply with the water quality requirements of the Clean Water Act. To implement and track a program that could include 1000’s of projects, a project tracking and control system was employed. The tracking program consists of a Project Portfolio Management System utilizing SharePoint and Microsoft Project Professional on a networked Project Server platform (PPM). This paper explores the limitations and benefits of such a system and lessons learned since the implementation over 1 year ago. In the process, IT security concerns were met by working through a consultant to configure the PPM structure on the County’s secure network.

The Project Portfolio Management System has vastly improved the accessibility to on-demand individual project level performance indicators and enterprise-wide project/program summary statistics for reporting matrices. PMs can easily update status and project cost information through minimal efforts through the MS Sharepoint tasks list. Project information is shared between project teams and through a hierarchical structure. Project data transparency between PMs, consultants, and contractors allows for smoother coordination of activities and evaluation of system schedules and cost data. This implementation is based on a Master Schedule Template in Microsoft Project Professional software, which helps Prince George’s County to standardize the projects data and develop a strategy. This standardization will project the In-house Manpower Capacity Demand vs Supply Projections. The system also helped Prince George’s County to successfully create GIS data integration from various sources like SharePoint, Microsoft Project, Project Invoicing System and combine it into enterprise geodatabases. Now that the system has been operational for about a year, PMs have provided feedback and many suggestions to make the system a useful and powerful tool for managing projects. The paper is a case study of the implementation and deployment of the PPM and highlights lessons learned in overcoming obstacles along the way.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management

Biography: will be posted soon.