Ten PMIS Deliverables That Will Enable Your PMO to Do More for Less
Our last article detailed the ten deliverables that will justify the investment in a Project Management Information System (PMIS) for your PMO. This article will detail additional ten deliverables that the same PMIS investment will enable the PMO to more for less effort and time as well as with increased transparency and accountability. The article will mainly focus on the two most important functions of a PMO and that is improved projects’ communications and real-time financial transparency.
The PMWeb PMIS will be used to improve the most common project communication types which include queries, correspondence, meeting minutes, deliverables acceptance and progress reports. In addition, it will be used to enforce financial transparency by improving the most cost management processes which include budget, actual cost, change management, earned value and consolidated financial reporting.
Project Queries
Project queries which are also known as request for information or request for clarification are used by project team members to clarify project scope areas that are ambiguous or not clear. The PMWeb RFI module allows the project team members to record the query, recommended solution for the query and the formal response on what should be done to resolve the query. Some of those queries could result in project scope change, impact the project cost and/or project schedule. Those queries need to be responded on in a timely manner to avoid project delays. Having a conditional workflow assigned to the RFI, PMWeb will ensure that the RFI is channeled through the proper communication channels as defined by the PMO. Having all projects queries in a single repository, enable the PMO the monitor, evaluate and report the status of all queries in the desired form and format.
Correspondence
Delivering a project requires the PMO and Project Managers to send letters to companies and authorities that are involved in the project. Some of those letters could have contractual implications like the Notice to Proceed, Letter of Award, Letter of Intent, Termination Letter, Final Acceptance Letter among others. PMWeb PMIS allows the PMO to create all those letter templates and have them ready to use when they are needed. This will not only save time and effort in preparing such communications but ensure that they are contractually correct.
Meeting Minutes
It is estimated that executive members of the PMO and projects spend more than 50% of their time attending meetings. Each meeting will produce a meeting minutes that will list the actions due by each project participant who have attended the meeting. PMWeb meeting minutes module allows capturing all types of meeting minutes for which each captured meeting business item is added along with supportive documents, responsible project team member to act on the item and by when to conclude, the project schedule activity that is affected by this business item and when it was actually concluded. This will save a lot of effort not only in generating the following meeting agenda but also in tracking and reporting on the status of all identified meeting business items.
Progress Reports
Daily or weekly progress reports are part of every project’s performance reporting. Those reports would usually list the work progressed or completed during that period as well as the resource, HR and others, consumed to perform this work. Those resources are usually linked to project schedule activity that the work relates to. The progress report can also include information on weather conditions for on site activities and other information that the project team members need to report on. PMWeb daily progress report module will be used to capture this information.
Project Deliverables
Each project has list of deliverables that need to be completed to ensure that the project scope of work had been delivered in full. Those deliverables are usually aligned with the project life cycle stage gates detailed in the previous article. PMWeb drawing list module will be used to capture the details of all those deliverables include the version history of each deliverable. Those deliverables are usually submitted as sets for which they will have predefined workflow steps to detail the sequence for submitting, reviewing and approving those deliverables.
Budget
A project could have many budget versions but it can have only one approved budget. The level of detail of the project should be aligned with the cost breakdown structure (CBS) for which the PMO will have it standard across all projects. The multi-level CBS will ensure that the budget is detailed to the desired control level. Using PMWeb, the project budget CBS levels can be linked to the relevant project schedule activity to establish the planned budget spending plan also known as planned value (PV). When a budget is approved, all budget adjustments and transfers will be managed using PMWeb budget request module to ensure complete transparency. Further, using PMWeb funding authorization module, PMWeb allows the PMO to link available projects funding with each project budget.
Actual Cost
Actual cost incurred by each project could be as a result of progress achieved against awarded commitments like contracts, subcontracts, purchase orders among others as well as actual cost incurred via miscellaneous expenses like permits, authority fees among others. In addition, actual cost could be the cost of resources, HR and others, charged against the project using timesheets. PMWeb progress invoices and miscellaneous invoices will be used to capture the actual cost charged against a project. Workflow can be assigned to those documents to ensure that the proper reviews and approvals are received before approving the actual cost.
Change Management
Awarded commitments could be subject to change due to change in project scope or other reasons, as allowed in the contract agreements, that could result in increasing or decreasing the original contract value as well as extension of time to project’s milestone dates. PMWeb captures those changes using two modules. The first is known as potential changes which are the changes that the project party member believes could happen and could affect the project scope, cost and/or schedule. The second module is change orders which could be generated from the potential changes or added directly. Those change orders could include approved, pending and disputed contract changes. Similar to all other PMWeb modules, conditional workflow is usually used to formalize the submit, review and approve sequence taking consideration the authorized approval levels assigned to the PMO and project team members.
Earned Value
The approved budget, also known as Budget at Completion (BAC), Planned Value (PV) and Actual Cost (AC) along with the Earned Value (EV) which will be calculated by multiplying the percent complete for the updated project schedule activities with their relevant budget at completion value, will be used to report on the project’s earned value performance. PMWeb forecast module will use those values to calculate the schedule variance (SV), cost variance (CV), schedule performance index (SPI), cost performance index (CPI) and variance at completion (VAC) values. The estimate to complete (ETC) can be manually adjusted to reflect the anticipated performance for the remaining periods.
Consolidated Financial Reporting
Every single financial transaction in PMWeb will be automatically stored in what is known as the cost ledger. This will enable the PMO to create different financial reports, known as Cost Worksheet, that consolidates the everyday cost data in the desired tabular form. Formulas can be added between those cost fields to generates new measures and variances. The cost worksheet can be designed to summarize the projects’ cost data at the desired CBS level. The PMO can produce consolidated financial reports for a program, portfolio of projects, or all projects managed by the PMO. All those cost reports will report a single version of the truth of a project or portfolio of projects financial status.
Conclusion
Although the investment for having a project management information system like PMWeb was already justified by the ten deliverables explained in the last article, nevertheless, the PMIS provides the PMO not only with the ability to do more of their needed duties in less effort and time but also with the needed transparency, accountability and real-time single version of the truth on how their projects are performing.
