One question that comes up regularly from programme and project managers is “How do I group my related projects and programmes in PPO?” The answer depends on what you want to achieve by grouping them.
You have probably noticed that whenever you update items such as Health Indicators, Comments Risks and Issues in PPO, the “Action / Response” is cleared of the previous comments in that field. This can be frustrating to a user who maybe just forgot to update another field like the Risk Owner or Follow-up date when previously editing. This auto clear function is a setting that can be changed, but before making this change, the pros and cons of doing so should be weighed.
Up until 2019, PPO approached project portfolio management (PPM) software implementations in a typically waterfall approach. We would spend full days with our clients meticulously taking down requirements and then carefully crafting the best solution to meet those requirements – and it worked well – so why did we change our ways? Well, let’s think of the typical issues PPM software implementations face using a waterfall approach.
Over the years in training sessions with users, one question has been consistently asked when we get to the ins and outs of uploading and maintaining documents in PPO, “Can’t I just drag and drop my documents into PPO?”
PPO’s document entity provides users with the ability to upload documents of any format. This in turn makes collaboration on documents possible and provides the means to track compliance to governance which are both important features for all project environments. It also becomes a safe storage space where you and your project team can access a centralised project document repository from any device.
One of the most valued features of PPO is the ability to import tasks from Microsoft Project (MSP) or Excel into PPO’s task entity with a couple of clicks. This ensures that Project Managers are not expected to give up their favorite planning tools when using PPO, the integration works smoothly, however there has been one drawback – PPO did not delete tasks that have been deleted in Microsoft Project (MSP) or Excel.
10 PMOs, 15 judges, 16 hours of webinar sessions, 36 evaluations, 54 hours of viewing, and we have our finalists for the last stage of the 2020 South Africa PMO Awards competition! Today, we’re thrilled to announce the 4 semi-finalists moving on to the evaluation stage of the world’s largest professional competition for PMOs, their organisations, and leaders.
I returned from the UK on Friday 13 March and self isolated until my negative COVID-19 test results came through on Wednesday 18 March. We closed the Project Portfolio Offices offices on that day, moved all staff to work remotely and officially stopped all face to face engagements on Friday 20 March. It’s thus been over two weeks that I’ve been working from home, which has given me the opportunity to eventually share some thoughts on our February 2020 PMO Forum event.
