Enterprise Project Management at Inter-Tel A Case Study

Who Am I? Member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Manager in Telecommunications for 10 years. Cut my teeth on Microsoft Project. Involved in MS Project migration –Standalone MS Project –Project Central –Project Server 2002, Team Services –Project Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services

Who is Inter-Tel? Founded in 1969 Develops and Distributes Voice/Converged Enterprise Communications Solutions throughout North America, Europe and Pacific Rim Headquartered in Metro Phoenix with 52 Facilities Worldwide Over 1800 Employees

Who is Inter-Tel? Corporate Discipline –Enterprise Communications is Our Primary Business –Focus on Applications –Proven Ability to Address SME Drivers and Issues

Inter-Tel ® Recent Awards 2004 Communications Convergence 2004 Product of the Year: Inter-Tel Unified Communicator ® software & Inter-Tel Model Internet Telephony 2004 Product of the Year: Inter-Tel Unified Communicator ® software Frost & Sullivan presents Inter-Tel with two Customer Value Enhancement Awards in the Telecom Customer Premise Equipment & Enterprise Communications Industry categories Included on Forbes magazine’s “Hot Shots 200 Up & Comers” Included on Business 2.0’s B2100 “Fastest-Growing Technology Companies”

Inter-Tel’s Project Environment 60 Projects per year –Maintenance releases to existing products –Bleeding edge technology projects 3-5 Projects per Project Manager Project durations of 2 months to 18 months

Inter-Tel’s Project Environment Over 400 Project Server Users Internal Users span 10+ departments Internal Users in multiple US cities and the UK. Third-party Vendors

Where We Were? O R G I N A Z E D N U

Yesterday’s Situation 20% overrun on project schedules and costs No enterprise resource management scheme No consistent tracking mechanism for providing project status

Yesterday’s Situation No clearly defined & documented product development process –Inconsistent project management across multiple projects –Prone to last minute scope changes No clear understanding of project intra or inter dependencies No risk management/issue tracking mechanism

Where We Are Today O R G I N A Z E D

Today’s Situation Schedules have a higher degree of predictability because: –Task estimates are more accurate –More granularity –Resource allocation is tracked more thoroughly Teams have immediate access to project information Status is in real time.

Today’s Situation Documentation, Risks, and Issues are tracked and available to everyone. Consistency across large projects. Fact-based decisions. Fewer surprises!!

How Did We Get Here? Upgraded from Project 2000 and Project Central to Project Server 2002 then Used a third-party integrator, interZnet, to get us there quickly. Requirements to release took 10 weeks. Customized views, reports, and project templates.

Key Issues To Consider Getting buy-in from: –The top down –All departments Define the correct security model. Get clear requirements for your culture; don’t create culture shock.

Key Issues To Consider Include interZnet or other third-party vendor in all requirement gathering meetings with executives and users. Provide sufficient training to end users. Executives Project Managers Resource Managers Team Members

What Inter-Tel did right -- Had partial senior management buy-in Identified a champion/go-to person for questions to be answered quickly. Had a test environment available Had all work (planning, installation, testing, and customization) performed on site.

What Inter-Tel did right -- Included interZnet in requirements gathering with project managers Held training session for project managers Had sufficient production hardware systems in place

The Project Server Environment –Microsoft Project 2003 Professional –Microsoft Project Server 2003 Two high end servers SQL Databases IIS –Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services One high end server IIS

The Project Server Environment –85% out of box features –15% customization including: Project Web Access (PWA) Project and Schedule Views Issues and Risks combined with custom fields and views Digital Dashboards for Executives Timesheet customizations

The Project Server Environment –15% customization including: Microsoft Project Columns Stoplight Creation Weekly and Monthly Slip Conditions

Examples Note: I will be adding additional slides in the examples area to show 2003 views rather than 2002 view, customized formulas, etc.

Issues

Risks

Project Overview

Executive Dashboard

Documentation

Reports

Where We Are Going? ORGINAZED

Tomorrow’s Goals More projects on time and within budget. Consistency across all projects regardless of size. Clear understanding of issues, risks, and dependencies. No surprises!!

For More Information Inter-Tel, interZnet, Microsoft Case Study –