• Illustration: EPM 2007 Architecture
• Chart: EPM and Products
• Illustration: Project Web Access Project Center
• Sidebar: Complex Troubleshooting
• Sidebar: Project Portfolio Server 2007

Substantial revisions to Microsoft's Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution improve the ability of organizations to centrally propose, approve, and manage a wide range of projects, from product introduction to large-scale building construction. The latest version of the EPM solution will also improve the quality of project information for managers. However, its architecture makes it complex to install and support. As with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, successful EPM deployment will frequently require a Microsoft partner to help with technical implementation, organizational issues, and ongoing maintenance and support.

Enterprise Project Management

Microsoft's EPM solution has a multitier architecture built on three products:

• Project Professional enables project managers to define and track project milestones and resources
• Project Server centrally hosts Project Professional databases and provides reporting and data entry for project personnel and senior managers
• Project Portfolio Server, acquired from UMT in Jan. 2006, enables managers to create reports and dashboards to evaluate and track collections (portfolios) of proposed or running projects on business metrics, such as return on investment and personnel utilization.

(For more information about the tiers in Microsoft's EPM solution, see the illustration "EPM 2007 Architecture".)

The latest version of the EPM solution is designed to address the entire project life cycle, which typically includes the following phases:

• Creating new projects by defining high-level milestones and deliverables, and estimating the costs and benefits
• Selecting and approving the most important potential projects based on the value of the project to the organization
• Planning project details by expanding the initial definition of high-level milestones and deliverables, used to approve a project, into detailed plans used to track and document the project's tasks, interdependencies, and assigned resources
• Managing the progress of projects and taking corrective actions to keep them on track.

(For a list of Project components and how they fit project phases, see the chart "EPM and Products".)

For customers, an EPM solution can help standardize project management processes and management analysis, which in turn helps manage scarce resources and ensure that approved projects make business sense and will have the best payback for the organization. This is particularly valuable in businesses such as construction and engineering, which manage complex projects, but it can also support specific processes (such as product design or quality-improvement projects) in other industries. For Microsoft and its systems integrator partners, the EPM products are a major source of business in their own right and also "pull through" sales of prerequisites, such as Windows Server and SQL Server.

A deployed EPM solution requires significant planning, investment, and ongoing support. For example, because all project information for the organization will be stored in a single repository, a reliable and recoverable infrastructure must be in place to maximize availability of project data and ensure that data is never lost. Furthermore, EPM solutions often require that organizations standardize the ad hoc but entrenched processes different teams use to approve and manage projects.

Project Server 2007 Improvements

The core of Microsoft's EPM solution is Project Server 2007, the successor to Project Server 2003. Project Server stores project schedules, status, and resource information for executives and project managers who are the stakeholders in particular projects, and it supports project updates and analysis through the Project Professional client and the Project Web Access browser interface, as well as some Office applications. Project Server 2007 adds tools for parts of the project life cycle not well supported in earlier versions, such as creating projects, and provides new features for managing ongoing projects.

Creating Projects

Several new features and improvements to existing features should make it easier for project sponsors to define projects.

Programs allow the collection of related projects into a group called a program, which allows users to analyze progress and create reports about the entire program, rather than only at the individual subproject level. This is particularly useful when several projects, each large enough to have its own project manager, must meet individual project milestones for the entire collection of all the combined projects to succeed.

Deliverables allow the creation of lists of cross-project dependencies and committed dates within a program to be published through the Project Server site, running on Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), so that each project manager can view the list and create links from their projects and tasks.

Activity Plans allow the creation of mini-projects, via Project Web Access, for small projects with a limited numbers of tasks, or collection of information about the tasks that need to be performed on an ongoing basis following completion of a project—for example, to put a completed project, such as deploying a server, into maintenance mode. The main difference between an Activity Plan and a full-scale project is that an Activity Plan cannot define dependencies between tasks, but an Activity Plan can be promoted to a full project.

Planning Projects

Project Server's coordination of proposed and approved projects in an organization can make planning easier and more accurate. Users can view multiple projects through a Project Center, a dashboard showing the projects in a portfolio, from Project Server's portal running on WSS. (For an illustration, see "Project Web Access Project Center").

An important feature of the Project Center are Resource Plans, which provide a way to estimate corporate resource capacity when some projects are under way and others are still in the proposal or planning phase. Resources in the plan can be linked to a project, but the plan also allows a resource manager to see how a resource would be used in a project pending approval. Two new features will help organizations more accurately manage people and other project resources through resource plans:

Assignment Owner enables project managers to track the use of key materials, such as a test or build lab, and assignments can also be easily transferred to new owners during the life of the project.

Team Resources allows project managers to assign work to an entire team, rather than an individual, so that any member of the team can accept the assignment, perform the task, and then report time against it.

Managing Projects

Project Server 2007 has two improvements that could help in the management of projects.

Cube Building Service. This new service in Project Server 2007 uses a graphical user interface and SQL Server's Reporting Data Service to help project managers and business analysts build detailed multidimensional reports for analyzing task, resource, project, and assignment data, which can help them spot and manage project issues and risks. When using cubes in a typical business intelligence application, a business analyst may build a cube with an axis for time, a second axis for a variety of products, and a third axis for sales regions. Manipulating the cube allows managers to see the values for a particular time frame or period, a particular product or group of products, and a particular sales region. Similarly, cubes in EPM allow a business analyst to create a collection of project data, such as time periods on one axis, all of an organization's projects on the second axis, and budget information, including custom budget fields that may be unique for a particular organization. Managers can then see how all of the projects in an organization are doing against their budgets.

Project cubes can be managed with the Reporting Data Service, which can transform the data into a reporting format and store it in the Project Server reporting database for use as needed.

Timesheets allow workers to input time data for a variety of project and other tasks in a browser, which in turn allows project managers to know which resources are available and which are already scheduled with work. Project Server 2007 adds support for both predefined and customizable accounting codes, which can be used to link time data tracked by Project Server and a company's financial management application and further reduce the need for team members to enter time data in multiple applications. Project managers can also now approve or reject a timesheet independently from project status updates.

Extensibility and Performance

The Project Server programming interface, called the Project Server Interface (PSI), gains an event handler that developers can use to write custom applications that respond to more than 160 events on Project Server. Every Project Server 2007 object, such as Project, Task, Assignment, custom field, or Timesheet, can be used to implement business rules or to integrate Project Server with an ERP application, such as an accounting system. For example, the Timesheet events, including submitting and recalling events, can be used to create event handlers that check the organization's business rules before a timesheet is submitted to the database and cancel the submission if the rules are not met. The event handlers can also use Windows Server's Windows Workflow engine for managing business processes around Project Server.

The Scheduling Engine from Project Professional is also available on Project Server. In previous versions, project managers had to be using Project Professional as a client to recalculate a project's schedule. With Project Server, a manager can use Project Web Access to perform schedule calculations on the server.

To increase performance, Project Server uses a new Active Cache, which copies files, enterprise resource pools, global templates, and other relevant information to the user's computer for faster access. A new server-side Queuing Service also allows a user to continue working even if her request for information from the server is pending processing.

Partner Opportunities

Project management is a complex discipline, and Microsoft's EPM offering is a complex solution built on multiple products that suffers from incomplete documentation. These factors could create significant opportunities for Microsoft partners to help organizations understand how to use, deploy, and manage it. (For a look at how complex support of Project Server can be, see the sidebar "Complex Troubleshooting".)

There are also significant opportunities for partners to use the programmatic interfaces to integrate Project with other enterprise applications, or create specialized interfaces for specific industry or vertical project management requirements.

Availability and Resources

The 2007 EPM products (and the stand-alone Project Standard 2007 desktop application) were all released to business customers in Nov. 2006 and in the retail channel (primarily Project Standard) in Jan. 2007.

The Open Business price for Project Server 2007 server licenses is US$4,424, and a Project Server 2007 Client Access License (CAL) is US$159. An External Connector for Project Server 2007 is US$35,295—this licenses access to a single server for an unlimited number of nonemployees and is particularly useful for extranet access to Project Server. Project Portfolio Server 2007 is US$4,424, with a US$238 CAL. Project Portfolio Server's External Connector is also US$35,295. Volume discounts are available for larger purchase volumes and Select or Enterprise Agreements.

Earlier versions of Project Professional, such as Project Professional 2003, cannot be used to access Project Server 2007, and Project Professional 2007 cannot be used to access earlier versions of Project Server, due to the changes in architecture and the use of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the .NET Framework 3.0. An organization can license and run an earlier edition of Project Server side-by-side with Project Server 2007, and some data, including project and other Project Web Access Data, such as security settings and Project Web Access views, can be migrated from Project Server 2003.

For a review of the new features in Project Standard and Professional edition, see "Project Desktop Editions Updated" on page 34 of the Feb. 2007 Update.

Information on Project 2007 is available at www.microsoft.com/office/project.

Information on Project Portfolio Server 2007 is available at office.microsoft.com/en-us/portfolioserver/HA101656491033.aspx.

Information on Project Server 2007 is available at office.microsoft.com/en-us/projectserver/FX100739841033.aspx.

Technical information on Project is available at TechNet, www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/project/default.mspx, and from the Project Developer Center at msdn.microsoft.com/office/program/project.

Solution Providers with an expertise in Microsoft EPM solutions are listed at directory.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/project/projectpartners.aspx.

Information on the MOM Management Pack for Project Server 2007 is available at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=12b3dfab-da4b-4cf0-b136-69a8c4b91f7b&DisplayLang=en.