Microsoft Project Portfolio Management Solution Guide - From atidan

PPM Solution Guide
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Published October 2013

Table of Contents
Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution ............................................................................................ 5
Simple and Intuitive User Experience .......................................................................................................................... 7
Enhanced Collaboration and Reporting ..................................................................................................................... 8
Increased Agility and Control ......................................................................................................................................... 8
Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution ........................................................................................ 9
Demand Management ..............................................................................................................................................................12
Governance ..............................................................................................................................................................................12
Work Initiation and Business Case Development ..................................................................................................17
Standardize and Simplify Data Collection across the Enterprise ..........................................................................18
A Central Repository for Capturing All Requests ........................................................................................................23
Portfolio Selection and Analytics...........................................................................................................................................24
Portfolio Optimization and Capacity Planning ...........................................................................................................25
Clearly Define and Prioritize Business Strategy ......................................................................................................25
A Better Experience with the Intuitive Analysis Wizard .......................................................................................29
Objectively Prioritize Competing Requests .............................................................................................................30
Portfolio Optimization and Cost Constraint Analysis ..........................................................................................32
Maximize Resource Utilization with Capacity Planning ......................................................................................37
Resource Management .............................................................................................................................................................42
Define Resources Using a Central Enterprise Resource Pool..................................................................................43
Capture Resource Requirements for Capacity Planning ..........................................................................................44
Quickly Find the Right People to Put to Work ............................................................................................................44
Visually Manage Resource Assignments .......................................................................................................................46
Schedule Management .............................................................................................................................................................49
Flexible, Intuitive, and Powerful Scheduling Tools ....................................................................................................50
Flexible, Web-Based Scheduling ......................................................................................................................................53
Proactively Analyze and Control the Schedule ...........................................................................................................55
Task Inspector ....................................................................................................................................................................55
Multi-Level Undo and Change Highlighting ..........................................................................................................56
Managing Scope Using Active and Inactive Tasks ................................................................................................56

Compare Projects .............................................................................................................................................................57
Set Baselines and Track Dependencies .....................................................................................................................58
Effectively Communicate Schedule to Team and Stakeholders .......................................................................58
Financial Management .............................................................................................................................................................59
Capture Cost and Benefit Estimates ................................................................................................................................59
Cost Constraint Analysis and Portfolio Selection .......................................................................................................60
Track and Report Financial Performance ......................................................................................................................61
Integration with Financial Systems ..................................................................................................................................63
Time and Task Management ..................................................................................................................................................64
Intuitive User Interface for Time and Task Entry .........................................................................................................64
Efficiently Receive Project Tasks .......................................................................................................................................65
Single Entry Mode Enhances Time and Task Reporting ...........................................................................................66
Flexible Time and Task Approvals ....................................................................................................................................67
Optimized Performance, Administration, and LOB Integration ...........................................................................68
Team Collaboration....................................................................................................................................................................68
Collaborate Using Project Sites .........................................................................................................................................69
Enterprise Content Management and Search .............................................................................................................70
Enhance Communication and Project Updating ........................................................................................................72
Issues and Risk Management..................................................................................................................................................73
Portfolio Risk Analysis ..........................................................................................................................................................73
Project Risk Management ...................................................................................................................................................74
Issue Management ................................................................................................................................................................75
Business Intelligence and Reporting ....................................................................................................................................77
Project Controls and Performance Measurement .....................................................................................................77
Easily Create Reports and Build Powerful Dashboards.............................................................................................79
Effectively Mine Data and Create Sophisticated Reports ........................................................................................80
Program Management .............................................................................................................................................................81
Mobilization: Capture, Prioritize, and Select Programs ...........................................................................................81
Execution: Program Delivery .............................................................................................................................................82
Scalable, Connected, and Programmable Platform .......................................................................................................83
Familiar User Interface Improves Adoption and Satisfaction .................................................................................83

Connected Work Management Solution ......................................................................................................................85
SharePoint ...........................................................................................................................................................................85
Project Professional - SharePoint Sync .....................................................................................................................86
Lync ........................................................................................................................................................................................86
Exchange Server ................................................................................................................................................................86
Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server .........................................................................................87
Simplified Administration and Ease of Use ...................................................................................................................88
Scalable, Extensible,and Programmable Platform .....................................................................................................90
PPM Solution System Requirements ....................................................................................................................................92
Project Server ..........................................................................................................................................................................92
Software Requirements.................................................................................................................................................92
Hardware Requirements ................................................................................................................................................94
Small dataset hardware recommendations for Project Server .........................................................................94
Medium dataset hardware recommendations for Project Server ...................................................................95
Large dataset hardware recommendations in Project Server ...........................................................................96
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 ..................................................................................................98
Additional Resources .................................................................................................................................................................98

Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM)
Solution
Over the past century, project management has greatly evolved, better utilizing the latest technologies to meet the
organizational requirements of different industries (see Figure 1). Today, Project Portfolio Management(PPM) helps
organizations improve visibility and control across varied portfolios, align spend with strategic priorities, and drive team
collaboration to deliver projects on time and within budget.

Figure 1: The evolution of project management methodologies
For more than a decade, Microsoft has delivered flexible software for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) through
editions of Microsoft Project Server and Microsoft Project Professional. With the latest release of the Project Family, the
proven capabilities of Project Server are available as Project Online, a cloud service that offers organizations of all types
and sizes increased agility with a smaller IT footprint. Project Online works with the SharePoint Online platform and
enjoys the business benefits of Office 365, which modernizes productivity infrastructure without any compromise.
Similar to Project Server, Project Online syncs seamlessly with Project Professional, the signature project management
software embraced by project managers everywhere.
Utilizing a cloud-based solution offers clear advantages to setting up a customized server environment. You do not have
to worry about maintenance or upgrade issues and compatibility issues are uncommon. While traditional Project Server
implementations take time and commitment to roll out, you can provision Project Online quickly and easily. In addition,
you and your IT staff do not have to deal with inconvenient overhead costs associated with maintaining extra
infrastructure, such as applying updates, maintaining security, scaling capacity, and ensuring uptime and availability.
Because Microsoft delivers Project Online through Office 365, the solution is always up-to-date and accessible from
virtually anywhere.

Microsoft PPM Solution Guide | 5

In terms of security, Office 365 is verified to meet requirements specified in global industry standards, including ISO
27001, EU Model clauses, HIPAA BAA, and FISMA, making it a best fit for sensitive data and mission-critical workloads.
Office 365 data is stored in the Microsoft network of data centers, run by Microsoft Global Foundation Services and
strategically located around the world.
Both Project Online and Project Server offer flexible and innovative PPM solutions for everyday work, enabling you to
effectively execute and achieve your strategic priorities. For the purposes of this guide, the use of Project will refer to
Project Server and Project Online except for where otherwise noted.
Built on SharePoint, Project provides new choices for teams, departments, and large organizations to adopt lightweight
or rigorous approaches to PPM. This is a secured and reliable service delivered through Office 365 along with enhanced
on-premises performance and management options to reduce IT complexity. In addition, it also helps all types of
people, including those with limited PPM experience, to get started, define and prioritize project portfolio investments,
and deliver results with the intended business value.
Microsoft recognizes that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all PPM solution. Effective PPM solutions need to
provide organizations of different sizes and maturity levels with the right tools to ensure that their teams can successfully
deliver projects on time and realize the anticipated return on investment (ROI). The flexible approach of Project helps
ensure that organizations can select the right tools, at the right scale, to meet their current and future business
requirements on any level.
Project provides executives, portfolio analysts, managers, and team members with productivity tools that help them
effectively manage all work throughout its lifecycle and ensure alignment with their organization’s business strategy. In
addition, because Project roams with you, you can receive quick access and robust security to your latest plans and
personal settings, from virtually anywhere on any device.

The new Project offers enhancements in the following areas (see Figure2):


Simple and Intuitive User Experience



Flexible Project Portfolio Management



Enhanced Collaboration and Reporting



Increased Agility and Control

PPM Solution Guide | 6

Figure 2: Microsoft Project investment areas

Simple and Intuitive User Experience
Organizations use a variety of tools to plan and manage different types of projects. Both Project Online and Project
Server offer the flexibility and familiarity you need to quickly start and take action.
With Project, you can complete your work from virtually anywhere on almost any device. You can also support all types
of projects with the right blend of power and agility to help the professional project manager or the occasional user.


Microsoft Fluent User Interface: Quickly realize results and work more efficiently with the simple and intuitive
Ribbon tab interface that places the tools and functions you need for planning and managing your project right at
your fingertips. Contextual menus reveal powerful features, making it easier to start working and reduce training
costs. With the improved Backstage, you can automatically discover frequently used files and URLs.



Anywhere Access: Utilize Project Online to stay up-to-date in more places and on more devices such as desktop
PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, than ever before. With Project Online, you can also take advantage of Office
365 to stream, when needed, the most up-to-date version of Project to Wintel PCs. For Project Server, your
workforce can use web-based project editing on a multitude of Internet browsers to easily build or edit projects
when you are on the go.



Enhanced Timeline View: Take advantage of an enhanced timeline in the browser to see and share tasks,
milestones, and phases. With the intuitive Timeline view, you can also quickly publish key tasks and milestones and
easily copy them into Office applications, such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft PowerPoint to improve
communication


Enhanced Collaboration and Reporting
Both Project Online and Project Server help you improve team collaboration to deliver projects successfully and enhance
reporting to maintain transparency and control across project portfolios.


SharePoint Synchronization: Connect with teams and deliver the information they need, no matter their location,
with Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365.




Social Capabilities: Facilitate discussions and information sharing by utilizing the social and search capabilities of
SharePoint such as Yammer to help get projects and everyday work done (Note: Yammer requires a subscription).
Enhanced Communications: Take advantage of presence awareness, Yammer, real-time conversations and instant
messaging (IM) from within your Project with Lync.



Powerful BI: Help your organization gain insight, visibility, and control, measure progress and make resource
allocation. You can also utilize the search capabilities to execute everyday work and projects more effectively and
find the right information in the right context.

Increased Agility and Control
Both Project Online and Project Server offer agility, control, robust security, and reliability as well as enhanced
connections with other related Microsoft technologies and solutions.


Simplified Administration& High Availability: Delivered through Office 365 and independently verified to
comply with industry standards, Project Online offers 24/7 IT support for critical issues that ensures your business
stays more secure and available. You also don’t have to worry about applying updates, maintaining security, scaling
capacity, or ensuring uptime and availability.



An Efficient Work Management Platform: Project Server and Project Online connect with familiar Microsoft
technologies such as Office, Exchange, and SharePoint to provide powerful work management capabilities.



Flexible Deployment Options: Powerful management tools simplify Project implementation, so you can act and
respond more quickly to market opportunities. Project Online offers a variety of plans so you can sign up your
people for the term of service that best fits your business needs. You can also install Project Pro for Office 365
directly from the web in just moments, without the need to uninstall previous versions, enabling it to run side-byside with existing Project applications. In addition, with a web-based portal, you can add teams and projects within
minutes.



An Extensible and Programmable Solution: Improvements to the Project application programming interface
(API), Project Server Interface (PSI), client-side object model (CSOM), and JavaScript object model (JSOM), and
integration with SharePoint and Microsoft Visual Studio provides your developers with a platform to design
innovative applications that address the unique needs of your business across an entire project or program lifecycle.
You can also install applications from the new Office Store and the SharePoint Store, to meet your unique business
needs. You can even manage team access to apps through a corporate catalog. In addition, you can develop and
deliver apps for Project Online and/or Project Pro for Office 365, helping you shave time off various processes or
establish connections to proprietary systems.


Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution
In the current economic climate, companies must do more with less. As a result, organizations are looking for PPM tools
to help reduce costs, drive efficiencies, and ultimately, help set the seeds to grow their business (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: PPM capabilities that the Microsoft PPM Solution addresses
The Microsoft Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution offers a flexible, end-to-end PPM platform, used by
organizations across a broad variety of industries to automate primary PPM processes. Recognized by industry analysts
as a leading PPM solution, The Microsoft PPM Solution has consistently appeared as a leader in Gartner’s IT Project and
Portfolio Management Magic Quadrant. IDC has also identified the PPM solution as a leading Product Lifecycle
Management (PLM)/New Product Development (NPD) solution.
The PPM Solution helps organizations meet the following business imperatives:


Intuitively capture all requests within a central repository and manage them using governance workflow – Demand
Management



Objectively prioritize, optimize, and select project portfolios that best align with your organization’s business
strategy – Portfolio Selection and Analytics



Proactively and reactively manage resources throughout the project lifecycle – Resource Management



Easily create and communicate simple and complex project schedules – Schedule Management



Control and measure project and portfolio financial performance – Financial Management



Simplify the collection of time and task status updates from team members–Time and Task Management



Better connect disparate teams to share information and drive collaboration– Team Collaboration




Identify, mitigate, and communicate issues and risks that could adversely affect project success –Issues and Risk
Management



Effectively measure project performance and gain visibility and control across all portfolios –Business Intelligence
and Reporting



Initiate, plan, and deliver strategic programs –Program Management

The following products from the Project family form the PPM Solution, providing comprehensive PC, web, and Cloudbased resources (see Figure 4).


Microsoft Project Server: Microsoft Project Server is a flexible, on-premises solution for project portfolio
management (PPM) and everyday work. Team members, project participants, and business decision makers can get
started, prioritize project portfolio investments and deliver the intended business value from virtually anywhere.
Project Server also helps organizations align resources and investments with business priorities, gain control across
all types of work, and visualize performance using powerful dashboards.



Microsoft Project Online: Project Online, the flexible online solution counterpart to Project Server, enables your
organization to quickly start projects, prioritize project portfolio investments, and deliver results with the intended
business value. A unified experience with other Microsoft cloud services such as SharePoint Online, Exchange
Online, and Lync Online helps you efficiently and effectively act and respond to market opportunities. With 24/7 IT
support for critical issues, you can be sure of high availability and reliability.



Microsoft Project Professional: Project Professional delivers powerful, visually enhanced ways to simplify
planning, collaboration, and resource management so managers can successfully tackle all types of projects.
Connecting Project Professional with Project Server ensures that organizations can realize the added business
benefits of unified PPM.



Microsoft Project Professional for Office 365: Delivered as a subscription through Office 365, Project
Professional for Office 365is the Cloud delivered version of Project Professional. With Project Pro for Office 365,
software automatically stays up to date (with options for customizable policies). You can access Project Pro for
Office 365 from virtually anywhere on any Wintel PC by streaming the complete desktop client with Project on
Demand.



Project Online with Project Pro for Office 365: Project Online with Project Pro is an all-in-one subscription that
delivers the full spectrum of project management capabilities — from task management for teams to project
management to project portfolio planning. With the ability to access Project from virtually anywhere through Office
365 cloud services, team members can manage their tasks as easily as pressing a check box on their smartphone
browser and managers can check reports on the go with just a swipe on their wirelessly connected tablet device.


Figure 4: Microsoft PPM Solution spectrum


Demand Management
Demand management offers a unified view of all work in a central location, helping you quickly gain visibility into
projects and operational activities, standardize and streamline data collection, enhance decision-making, and subject
initiatives to the appropriate governance controls throughout their life cycles.
The Microsoft PPM Solution provides flexible demand management capabilities to help organizations do the following:


Capture all requests in a central repository to enhance visibility.



Standardize and streamline data collection by using configurable forms and business case templates.



Build governance workflows to subject different types of work requests—for example, a help desk ticket or a
project proposal—to the appropriate controls throughout the life cycle of the issue or project.

Governance
The generic definition of governance means the rules, processes, and laws under which a business operates, regulates,
and controls. In the context of PPM, governance provides a best-practices framework and set of guidelines that help you
effectively create, control, and deliver all types of work, enhance accountability, and optimally align spending with your
organization’s strategic imperatives. Governance processes are continuously refined based on empirical data and lessons
learned to improve process velocity and time to market, while assuring the quality of the products, processes, or services
delivered.
Establishing effective governance processes help organizations:


Effectively communicate and realize business strategy. Governance processes provide a blueprint for an
organization to successfully communicate, implement, and realize their business strategy. Best-practice processes
provide a framework for selecting the right initiatives and improving project delivery to maximize ROI.



Subject varying initiatives and work to the right level of controls. Organizations need to define the right
processes to effectively control all types of work—project and operational—and related activities, including issues,
risks, and change requests, without introducing excessive bureaucracy that can negatively impact time-to-market
and employee morale.



Drive accountability and traceability. Establishing formal checkpoints within the governance processes and
identifying individuals with the appropriate approval authority helps drive accountability, increase awareness, and
provide an auditable record of all investment decisions.



Better identify and comply with regulatory requirements. Governance can help organizations identify,
anticipate, and respond to industry standards and regulatory requirements. This reduces the risk of costly fines,
negative press, or even criminal proceedings.



Unify disparate lines of business by using enterprise processes. Oftentimes, departments within organizations
operate in silos, leading them to in effect, self-govern. Establishing enterprise governance standards breaks down
division walls and improves efficiency, communication, and transparency across an organization.



Drive governance acceptance and adoption through education and communication. Effective communication
that educates employees and demystifies the process is essential to driving adoption of and satisfaction with
governance processes.



Refine governance processes to improve business results. The processes that comprise the governance
framework need to undergo regular evaluation and refinement based on empirical data and lessons learned. By
analyzing processes, analysts can identify and resolve bottlenecks to improve forward movement without affecting
quality or bypassing required organizational controls.


The Microsoft PPM Solution provides rich and flexible tools that help you define, standardize, communicate, and enforce
governance processes. With the Microsoft PPM Solution, you can subject all types of work— project and operational—to
the appropriate controls throughout the lifecycle of any initiative. You can effectively evaluate ideas or measure the
strategic contribution of competing requests to determine alignment and streamline project initiation. Easy workflow
creation helps you manage your everyday work or a project’s lifecycle progression with Visio to create and manage
visual workflows in SharePoint Designer. You can even promote SharePoint task lists to become enterprise projects with
the ability to apply and enforce governance workflows.
Project governance capabilities help Project Management Offices (PMOs) quickly define and automate multiple
workflows to manage different types of projects throughout project lifecycles. For example, with business projects as
opposed to IT projects, the workflows are event-driven to control activities such as issue and risk management, change
management, document approval, and so on. A Project workflow consists primarily of a set of sequential stages that
represent the main steps within a project’s life cycle (see Figure5).

Figure 5: Example of stages in an end-to-end workflow
Each workflow stage includes a list of deliverables that require completion before the project can successfully move
forward to the next stage in the workflow. For example, deliverables early in a project’s life cycle could include various
web-based forms, called Project Details Page (PDP), which contain metadata that relate to the business case or project
charter. This data could include project information, cost estimates, resource estimates, strategic impact assessments,
and so on. Workflow and Project Detail Pages are grouped together under PWA Setting (see Figure 6).


Figure 6: PWA Setting – Workflow and Project Detail Pages
Ultimately, the workflow controls the displayed deliverables at each stage and the necessary actions needed for the
project to continue to the next stage. The workflow specifies fields that require completion in the form of PDP’s. When a
user completes a stage, the workflow performs the necessary data validation to ensure the satisfactory completion of all
fields before moving the project to the next stage (see Figure 7).

Figure 7: Project Detail Page – Basic Info


Governance phases in Project provide a common language across projects managed by different workflows that PMOs
can use to aggregate data to facilitate enterprise reporting. Project drives accountability, traceability, and control—
PMOs can add checkpoints or gates within the workflow— by designating individual approvers or approval groups at
key gates in the workflow. This helps to ensure the notification of stakeholders with proper approval authority when an
initiative reaches a decision point.
Project accommodates a wide range of process types and scenarios by providing support for different approval
techniques such as individual, group, and sequential. Workflow notifications, conveniently published in the Workflow
Approvals view in Project, are accessible from the left menu bar. When stakeholders receive an approval notification,
they can review the corresponding deliverables and then approve or reject the project and capture comments (see
Figure 8).

Figure 8: Project – Workflow Approval task
Project maintains a simple log of all approvals to provide an auditable history of investment decisions. Approval gates
provide validation steps to help organizations drive accountability, increase awareness, and effectively meet compliance
regulations.
In addition to individual notifications, Project dedicates a Proposal Stage Status page to each project. This page provides
a single portal for all workflow information that intuitively guides users through the workflow (see Figure 9). By
effectively communicating the main stages and deliverables included in the workflow, the Proposal Stage Status page
assists with driving adoption and acceptance of the process.
The governance page displays:


The name of the current workflow stage that the project is in.



The status of each deliverable required for completion of the current phase.



At able of all stages in the workflow, with their corresponding deliverables.




Approval and rejection comments.

The Project Proposal Stage Status page simplifies the workflow process, making it easy for team members to identify the
deliverables that they have to complete and easily find the right forms or views.

Figure 9: Project – Proposal Stage Status page (Note: Screenshot includes a custom workflow graphic)
Project workflow capabilities can help PMOs establish, communicate, and enforce an enterprise governance framework
to unify disparate lines of business and drive efficiencies and transparency across your organization. Project includes a
sample workflow that you can extend or customize using Visual Studio to meet your organization’s unique
requirements. The powerful workflow infrastructure in Project gives PMOs the tools to model both simple and complex
best-practice processes—for example, Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Prince 2, or agile project
management methodologies—, integrate with line-of-business (LOB) systems and easily refine workflows to improve
performance based on lessons learned and empirical data.
In addition to project lifecycle controls, Project provides support for more granular activities and a variety of planning
methodologies such as the following:


Annual Planning: An organization proactively undertakes an extensive analysis to identify, select, and fund all
deliverable projects in the next fiscal year.




Just-in-Time (JIT) Planning: An organization convenes recurring portfolio selection meetings, usually quarterly, to
analyze new requests and reassess the strategic alignment of projects already underway to maximize the portfolio’s
ROI.



The Hybrid Model: Combining the best of annual and JIT planning, this methodology lets organizations
proactively select projects for the upcoming year as well as hold recurring selection events to refine the portfolio
throughout the year.

Work Initiation and Business Case Development
For any organization, demand can include all requests for different types of project and non-project work that could
potentially consume organizational funds or resources. Project requests typically flood into an organization through a
variety of structured and informal sources: customer requests, hallway conversations, e-mail exchanges, executive
decisions, business maintenance activities, and so on. The varied nature and form of project requests can make it difficult
for PMOs to gain visibility and control of initiatives across the enterprise. By capturing all requests in an easily accessible,
central location and standardizing the collection of metadata and metrics, organizations can quickly gain visibility across
all requests and ongoing projects to help improve decision-making and ensure that they are working on the initiatives
that are right for the organization.
Formalizing the project initiation process helps organizations achieve the following:


Gain visibility by centralizing collection of demand: Capturing all project requests in a central repository helps
PMOs immediately gain visibility across portfolios, making it easy to identify and eliminate duplicate or overlapping
initiatives. Analysts can also quickly assess the effect of demand on budget and the resource pool.



Standardize metadata and metrics to drive consistency: One of the most important steps in successfully
managing project portfolios is standardizing project metadata and metrics across all types of projects. Inconsistent
metadata and metrics make it impossible to drive enterprise reporting and to effectively compare and contrast
competing project requests.



Streamline data collection and improve cycle times: Providing a single location and best-practice template for
capturing new requests provides an intuitive and repeatable framework that drives efficiency and reduces the time
it takes to create and submit both simple and complex requests.



Achieve enterprise consistency while providing LOB autonomy: There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all
project initiation process. In many organizations, different departments operate independently with customized
initiation processes and business case forms. A common challenge for a PMO is to define processes and templates
that provide enterprise standardization and control, while giving business partners in the organization a feasible
level of freedom and autonomy.



Interoperate with LOB systems: Requests can come from anywhere within or outside of the organization and may
reside in specialized systems—for example, in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or service management
system. Integration with LOB systems is critical for consolidating all work in a central repository to enhance
awareness, formalize decision-making, and assess the effect of project proposals on scarce resources.

The unified PPM capabilities of Project provide a flexible framework for capturing, selecting, and delivering all types of
work, from simple tasks to complex projects and programs. Project offers organizations a dedicated demand
management interface that standardizes the collection of all work and provides visibility and control across your
organization.


Standardize and Simplify Data Collection across the Enterprise
The enhanced project initiation platform in Project Online and Project Server helps organizations standardize the
initiation process, capture all types of requests, and develop simple and complex business cases. The main capabilities
that comprise the project initiation platform are Enterprise Project Types (EPTs), or project templates; Project Detail
Pages (PDPs), which are online forms; and governance workflows. To appreciate the flexibility of the platform, it is
important to understand how these capabilities work together.


EPTs are project templates that represent various types of projects and non-project work within the portfolio. For
example, you could create an EPT to represent a software development project or a marketing campaign.



PDPs are configurable online forms used to collect or display project information such as descriptive data, cost
estimates, strategic impact assessments, and so on. PDPs are made up of Enterprise Custom Fields (ECF), which help
establish consistency across projects by ensuring that fields and associated lookup tables are utilized in the same
manner for all projects, tasks, resources, and assignments. ECFs consist of system-mandatory and customer-defined
fields, offering maximum flexibility in data acquisition and management.



Governance Workflows subject each project template to the appropriate controls throughout its life cycle and
determine which online forms you see displayed at each stage in the life cycle.

Project helps you quickly get started by providing examples of enterprise project types, online forms, and a sample
workflow. In addition, Project includes an intuitive administration interface for creating custom project types and online
forms to meet your organization’s unique needs. The PMO can create a new project type using the administration
interface by completing a simple form, which includes the following tasks (see Figure 10):


Capture an EPT name and type in a description.



Select a governance workflow: The workflow will subject the project to the appropriate controls throughout its
life cycle).



Associate the project type with a custom project site template: Each EPT can have a custom workspace to
enhance team collaboration and communication.



Link to the appropriate department: Each project type can be global or associated with individual departments
within the organization.



Choose a best-practice project plan template: You can save time and enforce standards by defining templates
based on your organization’s best practices including predefined phases, tasks, and resource assignments, with a
project template or take advantage of industry best practice templates (such as Business Cases, Projects, and Project
sites).



Specify an initiation form: This form appears when a user selects the project type when creating a new work
request.



Utilize configurable business-case templates: Project helps you standardize data collection for all types of work
(including general information, cost estimates, resource estimates, strategic impact, and more) through
configurable business cases and forms.



Increase flexibility with business unit-specific templates: With Project you can increase flexibility by defining
business-case templates for different departments within your organization.


Figure 10: Project – EPT (project template) definition form
After publishing the project type, Project displays the template name in the list of available types, such as when a user
clicks the New button in Project Center (see Figure 11). As indicated earlier, EPTs can be global—that is, associated with
and available to all departments—or linked to specific departments within the organization. This flexibility helps PMOs
control the displayed project types for each department, ensuring that employees see only the types that are relevant to
their LOB.

Figure 11: Project – Published project templates

Project integrates the SharePoint extensible Web part infrastructure, simplifying the process of building a library of
configurable online forms, or PDPs, that can include ECFs and Web parts. An administrator can simply create a new form
by choosing the required custom fields and arranging them within the Web part (see Figure 12).

Figure 12: Project– Enterprise custom fields web part
More complex forms, such as risk questionnaires, cost estimate worksheets, and benefit-estimate worksheets, can be
built by using Microsoft InfoPath Forms Services or Office Web Applications. You can include them in the project
business case. This flexibility helps the PMO define various forms associated with business cases for different types of
projects, while ensuring the standardization of key metadata across requests to facilitate enterprise reporting.
After creating the required online forms, an administrator simply links the forms to the stages within the appropriate
governance workflow. The workflow accomplishes the following:


Determines the displayed online forms at each stage in the project lifecycle.



Dictates the configuration of individual fields within the form such as, for example, specifying whether a field is
mandatory or whether a field should be editable or read-only.



Performs data validation to ensure the correct completion of the form or to assess whether all deliverables have
been completed before the request can progress to the next stage in the workflow.

As demonstrated by this overview, project templates, online forms, and governance workflow capabilities work together
to control and standardize the project initiation process, while providing the PMO with the flexibility to meet custom
LOB requirements and maintain enterprise standards.
PMOs can enter new requests in Project by using any standard or locally-created Project Center view. The Project Center
provides a single interface for initiating all types of work, thereby streamlining the project initiation process. Submitting


a new request is easy: simply click the New button on the Project tab on the Project Ribbon interface, select the
appropriate project template from the list, and the corresponding request form appears.

Figure 13: Project – Example Proposal Request Form
After completing the request form, you save and publish the project. If the project template has been associated with a
governance workflow, the project is subject to the controls and business logic already associated with the workflow. The
workflow dictates what happens next. The request could be routed through an initial approval checkpoint or it could
simply move to another stage that includes additional forms and deliverables to be completed by the project team.
On the Proposal Stage Status page in Project, you can clearly see the forms and deliverables required for completion for
the current stage in the workflow (see Figure 14).


Figure 14: Proposal Stage Status Page
To complete the required forms, simply click a form in the left menu bar or sequentially step through the forms using the
wizard-like settings on the Ribbon—that is, using the Next and Previous buttons (see Figure 15). The intuitive and
familiar interface helps effectively communicate the governance process, educate users, simplify data entry, and improve
adoption and end-user satisfaction.

Figure 15: Next and Previous buttons in the Project tab


A Central Repository for Capturing All Requests
Project Online and Project Server offer flexible, new project initiation capabilities to provide visibility across all portfolios
by capturing requests —from everyday work tracked in SharePoint tasks lists to complex projects and programs planned
and managed in Project—and managing in-flight projects in a central repository. You can also capture and manage
non-project work (such as incidents, tickets, and so on) in Project Web App (PWA).
Consolidating all work requests and projects that are already underway in a single location provides executives with
transparency across all investments, making it easier to assess the impact on scarce resources and select the right
initiatives for your organization to fund and complete. The Project Center view helps to ensure that users can create
flexible scorecards to better visualize and report across portfolios and the project life cycle. You can configure Project
Center to provide a demand management scorecard (see Figure 16) that reinforces the benefit of capturing all projects
and work requests in a central repository. The scorecard shows projects grouped by multiple dimensions—for example,
workflow stage and department—and includes relevant metadata—dates, cost, system health, and so on—in columns to
convey the status of all initiatives from inception to completion.

Figure 16: Project Center scorecard
Requests come from a variety of sources and can reside in specialized systems. To support this diversity of input, Project
provides a comprehensive API to consolidate requests entered into other productivity tools and LOB systems alongside
requests created directly in Project.


Portfolio Selection and Analytics
In these demanding economic times, many executives are facing sharper scrutiny of their discretionary spending. This
increases the importance of effectively identifying, selecting, and delivering project portfolios that best align with an
organization’s business strategy. Best-practice portfolio selection techniques provide a handshake between value
optimization—that is, alignment with business priorities and maximizing ROI—and resource utilization, meaning the
understanding of resource capabilities and availability. Together, these techniques help PMOs recommend not only
which projects to undertake, but to forecast their delivery.
Aligning spending with business strategy can be very subjective. Organizations can make this less so by adopting
structured techniques for defining, prioritizing, and communicating business imperatives, and consistently evaluating
each competing initiative that contributes to strategic priorities. Adopting a structured portfolio selection process helps
organizations accomplish the following:


Define and communicate the business strategy: Many organizations publish mission statements and high-level
strategic objectives. Few of them, however, break down their strategy into actionable, measurable, and unique
business drivers. Defining and effectively communicating the business strategy provides a blueprint that
organizational departments can understood and implement.



Drive executive consensus around business driver priorities: Objectively prioritizing the business strategy and
driving executive consensus can help your organization more effectively assess competing initiatives and select the
optimal portfolio.



Objectively prioritize competing projects from multiple dimensions: Prioritizing projects by using a variety of
value measurements—for example, strategic value, financial value, and risk—provides a framework for assessing
requests from multiple dimensions and for creating a common currency with which to make comparisons.



Identify the optimal portfolio under varying budget and portfolio constraints: Facing budget cuts or requests
that exceed the allocated budget creates a daunting task for PMOs. Additional variables, such as inter-project
dependencies and regulatory requirements, can further compound the problem, creating a challenge in effectively
modeling scenarios that will help identify the right projects for an organization to undertake.



Effectively communicate tradeoffs: Budget, available resources, dependencies, pet projects, and compliance
requirements can potentially affect the overall value of selected project portfolios. Being able to identify and to alter
the constraints, helps PMOs communicate tradeoffs to the executive team and enhance the potential value gained
from the resulting portfolio.



Maximize resource utilization: In an annual planning cycle, people sometimes front-load projects, resulting in an
immediate over-allocation of resources in the first half of the year and surplus of resources in the second half. Using
capacity planning techniques, analysts can reschedule projects based on resource availability and model headcount
scenarios—for example hiring versus outsourcing—to maximize resource utilization and identify the optimal release
roadmap.

New portfolio selection and analytical capabilities in Project Online and Project Server build a bridge between value
optimization and resource utilization to help organizations select project portfolios based on alignment with business
strategy and resource capability.
With Project, your organization can achieve the following:


Objectively define, communicate, and prioritize business strategy.



Score and assess competing requests from multiple dimensions.



Run what-if analysis optimization scenarios under various budgetary constraints.




Compare and contrast portfolios and gain insight through advanced analysis such as Efficient Frontier Modeling.



Effectively evaluate ideas or measure the strategic contribution of competing requests to determine alignment and
streamline project initiation.



Assess capacity and adjust project schedules to maximize resource utilization across the planning horizon.



Run and model headcount scenarios.

Project provides a consistent SharePoint user interface across the solution, including Project Online, which utilizes
SharePoint Online through Office 365.
The industry-leading analysis wizard in Project intuitively takes PMOs through embedded portfolio selection
methodology systematically, making it even easier to identify and select the right project portfolios. Project supports a
logical rather than subjective approach to portfolio selection and provides a structured process for measuring the
alignment of spending with strategy, by maximizing resource utilization.

Portfolio Optimization and Capacity Planning
Project Online and Project Server help your organization define and select project portfolios that align with your
business strategy by providing best-in-class portfolio techniques to prioritize competing requests, run optimization
scenarios under varying budgetary constraints, and maximize resource utilization to manage capacity. Project includes a
best practice–based methodology that helps organizations identify and select project portfolios that best align with their
business strategy. In the following sections, we walk through four key phases of portfolio optimization and capacity
planning:


Business driver definition and prioritization



Project portfolio prioritization



Portfolio optimization: cost constraint analysis and optimization



Resource constraint analysis and utilization

Clearly Define and Prioritize Business Strategy
The first step in aligning spending with business strategy is to define a set of actionable, measurable, and unique
business drivers that clearly communicate the intent of the organization’s business strategy. PMOs can facilitate a
workshop with executives to define business drivers and to translate the organization’s objectives into actionable terms.
A rough rule of thumb is that an organization should select between six and twelve business drivers. Fewer than six
drivers usually results in drivers that are too broad to be effective and more than twelve results in driver overlap and
redundancy.
Using the Driver Library in Project, PMOs can capture and communicate business drivers defined by the executive team.
With the Business Driver form in Project (see Figure 17), PMOs can easily publish drivers. The form captures the following
metadata:


Driver name and description: By capturing a name and description for each business driver, your analysts can
better communicate the intent of each driver and reduce ambiguity.



Departments: Because the solution is flexible, your organization can have a single set of business drivers to
implement throughout the organization. At the same time, the solution gives you the freedom to associate specific
sets of drivers with multiple departments.



Project impact statements: Ultimately, organizations use business drivers to assess the strategic contribution of
each competing initiative by deriving a strategic value score during business case development. You can use the
values Extreme, Strong, Moderate, Low, or None to indicate the impact that competing requests have on one or


more business drivers. PMOs can use project impact statements to ensure the objectivity of this assessment and to
communicate clearly the threshold of each impact rating. Project impact statements come from the key
performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure each business driver.

Figure 17: Add New Business Driver form
After defining business drivers and specifying departmental associations, Project displays the driver name, description,
and impact statements in the Strategic Impact Assessment form (see Figure 18). Your organization can use this form to
collect the impact ratings to derive a common currency—a strategic value score—for competing requests.


Figure 18: Project Strategic Impact form
After defining strategy, you need to objectively prioritize business drivers and drive consensus within the executive team.
PMOs can use the driver prioritization module in Project to support a workshop in which executives openly discuss the
importance of each business driver to prioritize strategy. Your organization can prioritize business drivers at any level
within the organizational hierarchy. For example, you can define a standard set of business drivers across the enterprise,
but also prioritize business drivers independently by line of business or department.
Project includes a pair wise comparison technique for comparing the importance of and prioritizing the business drivers.
The Compare Drivers table guides executives through the business-driver prioritization process. The design simplifies
completing the assessment by displaying a single business driver in the left column, importance ratings in the center
column, and the drivers in the right column (see Figure 19). This intuitive view ensures that executives can openly discuss
and assess the importance of each business driver pairing and clearly review driver descriptions to mitigate ambiguity.
For example, “Expand into new markets and segments” is more or less important when compared to “Improve product
quality.” An analyst can simply step through the pairwise comparison assessment and move to the next driver by clicking
the Next Driver button.


Figure 19: Compare Business Drivers table
Using the input from the pair wise comparison assessment, Project derives a relative priority score for business drivers
(see Figure 20). The team can then use the normalized score to assess the relative importance of each business driver. In
addition, a normalized score provides the team with a scale to proportionally measure investment alignment with
strategic priorities. Objectively deriving this relative score provides a crucial step for being able to accurately measure
how closely a resulting project portfolio aligns with your organization’s business strategy.
In addition, Project provides a consistency ratio score that indicates how consistent a team’s responses were in the
pairwise assessment (see Figure 20). A score lower than 75 percent indicates inconsistencies, suggesting an analyst
should work with the team to refine the assessment to improve the score. The following example demonstrates how
inconsistency introduced during the assessment can result in a low consistency ratio:


Driver 1 is AS IMPORTANT as Driver 2.



Driver 1 is AS IMPORTANT as Driver 3.



Driver 2 is MORE IMPORTANT than Driver 3.


Figure 20: Business Driver Priority Score and Consistency Ratio
The pair wise comparison technique helps organizations objectively prioritize their business strategy. However, Project
also offers the flexibility to assign manual priorities to business drivers.
Executives from various functional areas tend to have different opinions about the organization’s strategic priorities.
Overcoming this discrepancy and driving consensus helps you more effectively assess competing initiatives and compile
the optimal portfolio. The open discussion that occurs when completing the pair wise comparison is an effective way to
debate the importance of each business driver pairing and to drive consensus across the executive team. Another useful
approach is to prioritize business drivers using the pair wise technique independently with each executive. The PMO can
then compare and contrast driver priorities for each executive, identify divergence of opinion ahead of the driver
prioritization workshop, and focus on the areas of discrepancy, during the session, to drive consensus across the team.
A Better Experience with the Intuitive Analysis Wizard
After engaging the executive team to better understand and communicate strategic priorities, the next steps are to
prioritize competing requests and to select the optimal portfolio of projects under varying cost and resource constraints.


Project includes an intuitive wizard that guides analysts through the Project portfolio selection methodology (see Figure
21). Using the Portfolio Analysis wizard, analysts simply move through the analysis steps by clicking the Next button or
by selecting a sequential step on the Ribbon interface. The simplicity and intuitive nature of this wizard reduces training
costs and ensures that analysts can quickly demonstrate value derived from the solution.
An analyst uses the Portfolio Analysis form to define the properties for a new analysis. The form offers the flexibility to
run the analysis at the enterprise level or by department; to filter projects to include in the analysis; and to specify the
prioritization criteria, primary cost constraints, and the time horizon for the capacity planning assessment.

Figure 21: New Portfolio Analysis form
The following sections provide an overview of the project prioritization, cost constraint analysis, and resource-constraint
analysis capabilities.

Objectively Prioritize Competing Requests
With potentially hundreds of projects competing for the same limited budget and resources, formulating common
scoring criteria become essential to effectively prioritizing and evaluating investment requests.
Using Project, analysts can select the prioritization criteria that will drive portfolio analysis (see Figure 6). An analyst can
choose to prioritize requests based on their strategic value or create custom fields that include other prioritization
metrics—for example, net present value (NPV), ROI, Risk, and Total Cost. The remainder of this section focuses on
deriving a strategic value score to effectively compare and contrast competing investments.


After defining New Portfolio Analysis properties, you need to prioritize projects based on their impact on business
drivers. On the Ribbon, click the Prioritize Projects button to display the Project Strategic Impact matrix (see Figure 22).
This heat map shows how competing projects (in rows) support business drivers (in columns) defined by the executive
team. The matrix comes pre populated with the values—for example, Extreme, Strong, Moderate, Low, or None—
captured in the Strategic Impact Assessment form (see Figure 22). Because the analyst does this offline, he or she can
make changes to the impact matrix by selecting the appropriate rating for each cell.

Figure 22: Project Strategic Impact Summary view
The primary purpose of the matrix is to derive a priority score for competing requests.
When you click the Review Priorities button, Project automatically derives a normalized priority score for competing
projects (see Figure 23). The score measures the strategic value that each project will deliver based on its contribution to
prioritized business drivers. The strategic value score provides a common currency for comparing different types of
projects. Another important way to interpret this score is that completing all projects in the portfolio would deliver 100
percent of the strategic value of the portfolio. The importance of this perspective will become evident in the following
section.


Figure 23: Review Priorities view

Portfolio Optimization and Cost Constraint Analysis
For most organizations, the number of project requests management receives often exceeds their budget and resource
constraints. Project includes a portfolio optimization engine that helps your analyst’s model different scenarios to
identify the optimal project portfolio under various constraints.
After successfully prioritizing competing project requests as outlined in the preceding section, the analyst moves
forward in the portfolio selection wizard to the Cost Constraint Analysis view (see Figure 24). This powerful ‘what-if’
analysis tool uses sophisticated optimization algorithms and embedded best practices to help executives quickly
determine the optimal project portfolio under a variety of budget and business constraints. In Project, the Cost
Constraint Analysis view provides steering committees with a single decision-making portal. For example, Efficient
Frontier and Strategic Alignment charts, embedded in the Cost Constraint Analysis view, provide valuable insights. In
addition, the analyst can configure views that include custom fields—type, phase, risk, and soon—to provide additional
clarity.

Figure 24: Cost Constraint Analysis view
When configuring a new portfolio analysis, the analyst must specify a primary cost constraint for the scenario. The Cost
Constraint Analysis view displays competing project requests in priority order (based on their strategic value), and
indicates the total cost estimate to complete all projects in the portfolio. Project automatically creates a baseline
scenario that shows the organization can gain 100 percent of the portfolio value if it funds every project in the wish list.
Plotted on the Efficient Frontier chart this baseline scenario becomes the benchmark to compare all subsequent
scenarios (see Figure 25).


Figure 25: Efficient Frontier chart
The Efficient Frontier chart helps analysts identify the project portfolio that will deliver the maximum value under various
constraint thresholds. The Efficient Frontier chart includes value criteria on the y-axis—for example, strategic value—and
cost on the x-axis. Each point on the Efficient Frontier line represents a different bundle of projects from the proposed
portfolio. The Efficient Frontier line represents the highest ROI. For example, Figure 25 shows that for a $10 million
budget (the x-axis)it can achieve approximately 79 percent of the portfolio’s strategic value (the y-axis).
Organizations can use the Efficient Frontier chart in one of two ways:
1.

Identify the point of diminishing return: Find the point where the curve begins to flatten, which indicates that
you are paying more to achieve a disproportionately lower amount of strategic value.

2.

Benchmark the selected portfolio against the Efficient Frontier: Compare the position of the selected
portfolio in relation to the line that represents the Efficient Frontier.

In reality, because of constraints such as interdependencies, project alternatives, and mandatory investments, most
portfolios are sub-optimal and fall beneath the Efficient Frontier. Analysts can identify and work toward removing these
constraints to move closer to the Efficient Frontier.
Next, the analyst enters a cost constraint and clicks the Recalculate button. Project recommends the optimal project
portfolio. The sophisticated Project optimization algorithm maximizes the value gained from the portfolio under the
indicated cost constraint, and considers inter-project dependencies. The recommended portfolio of projects is viewable
in the Selected Projects group while excluded initiatives are viewable in the Unselected Projects groups (see Figure 26).
The analyst can immediately see how much value the selected portfolio will deliver and visually assess the scenario
against the Efficient Frontier.


Figure 26: Project– Selected Projects and Unselected Projects
Using Project ‘what-if’ analysis capabilities, analysts can easily model different scenarios by further refining cost
constraints or by forcing projects in or out of the portfolio. The Force In and Force Out options help ensure that analysts
can override the algorithm and specify projects that should be automatically included in or excluded from the portfolio.
Project requests are often “forced into” a portfolio if they represent compliance initiatives or are projects sponsored by a
specific executive who wants to see them completed (“pet” projects). Force In and Force Out options have been
enhanced in Project so that analysts can select a descriptive value to more effectively communicate why a project is
being included in or excluded from the project portfolio (see Figure 27).

Figure 27: Force In and Force Out options
Analysts can save cost constraint analyses to provide an auditable record of all portfolio scenarios. When needed, they
can access the saved scenarios in the Compare Portfolio Selection Scenarios view. This intuitive view displays all saved
scenarios side by side, so it easy to compare and contrast, to see which projects were included or excluded, and to review
key metrics—for example, the number of projects selected, the overall portfolio value, and the cost constraint applied
(see Figure 28).


Figure 28: Compare Portfolio Selection Scenarios

The Strategic Alignment chart (see Figure 29) included in the Cost Constraint Analysis view helps organizations
dynamically assess how well the selected portfolio aligns with business strategy. Executives can quickly visualize the
correlation between business driver priorities and the organization’s investment in a selected project portfolio. The
Strategic Alignment chart highlights potential areas of concern, so that executives can assess whether they are
overinvesting or under investing in each of the business drivers. This assessment would be almost impossible without
objectively defining and prioritizing business drivers.


Figure 29: Strategic Alignment chart
After identifying the optimal project portfolio, analysts can either commit the scenario, which automatically updates the
governance workflow—for example, the progress of all selected projects in the life cycle—or move forward with
resource constraint analysis.

Maximize Resource Utilization with Capacity Planning
Leading portfolio management solutions provide a handshake between value optimization—determined by cost
constraint analysis—and resource utilization—determined by resource constraint analysis. Selecting project portfolios
based on ROI or value optimization does not guarantee that the organization has the right mix of resources or available
resources to deliver projects as planned. Availability and utilization of resources has a direct effect on how and when
work is completed. A common problem that many organizations face during an annual planning cycle is front-loading
prospective projects on the planning horizon. This can potentially result in over-allocation of resources in the first half of
the year and underutilization of resources in the second half of the year. Performing capacity-planning analysis can help
PMOs proactively assess supply versus demand and maximize resource utilization across the entire planning period.
Project includes a capacity-planning feature for conducting resource constraint analysis that works in conjunction with
cost constraint analysis to connect value optimization with resource utilization. The powerful resource-centric analysis
helps PMOs identify the organization’s surplus and deficits at the skill level—for example, the status of all generic
resources. This helps the organization schedule projects to better utilize available resources and to model headcount
scenarios to ensure the organization can effectively staff, execute, and realize value from the selected portfolio.
After successfully identifying the project portfolio that delivers the maximum value for the available budget, the analyst
moves forward in the portfolio selection wizard by clicking the Analyze Resources button (see Figure 30). The projects
selected in the Cost Constraint Analysis automatically carry forward to the next step in the portfolio selection analysis.
The intuitive view displays the projects in priority order and uses a Gantt chart to show a visual depiction of their


proposed start dates. Based on available resources, the system dynamically determines which projects can be fully
staffed, displaying them in a grouping of selected projects. Projects that cannot be fully staffed (because of a resource
shortfall) move to a Not selected section of the project list.

Figure 30: Resource Constraint Analysis view
To avoid front-loading the schedule in the first half of the year, analysts can use the Requirement Details view in Project
to compare supply and demand data and better visualize the resource contours across the planning horizon (see Figure
31). The Requirements Details view is broken into two sections: the top section shows generic resource availability by skill
for the selected planning horizon; the bottom section displays resource requirements (at the skill level) for each project
included in the analysis. The view automatically includes the resource requirements entered during the business-case
development phase. The projects then fall into two viewable categories, selected and not selected to denote whether
they can be fully staffed based on resource availability and estimated cost. Analysts can simply compare the resource
requirements for the projects not selected with the overall resource availability to see why initiatives cannot be fully
staffed.


Figure 31: Requirements Details view
If you select the Highlight Deficit check box in the right corner of the Resource Availability pane, the view shows time
periods for which there are not enough resources to complete all of the proposed projects. This feature helps analysts
assess resource availability over the entire planning period to identify quickly resource overutilization and
underutilization. In the following example, the analyst can quickly determine the underutilized resources in the second
half of the year. As a result, the organization can more fully utilize resources by moving some of the unselected projects
to start later in the planning horizon (see Figure 32).

Figure 32: Highlight Deficit check box selected
By understanding the resource availability contours, analysts can easily move projects around on the planning horizon.
First, specify a new start date in the Gantt Chart view for unselected projects (see Figure 33) and then click the
Recalculate button on the Analysis tab. Project automatically moves the projects and then determines if they can be
fully staffed based on their new start dates. If they can, the projects will appear in the group of selected projects. The
system maintains scheduling dependencies—for example, Project B cannot start until Project A finishes up—and
business dependencies. Moving projects within the schedule helps analysts maximize resource utilization across the
organization.


Figure 33: Modeling changes to project start dates
As in the cost constraint analysis, analysts can override the algorithm and force projects in and out of the analysis. This is
especially useful to ensure that you can resource lower-value compliance projects ahead of higher-value discretionary
projects.
After identifying an optimal release schedule for the project portfolio based on resource availability, analysts can run
head count scenarios to staff the remaining unselected projects. Simply enter a full-time equivalent (FTE) value or a
monetary value—for example, two people or $200,000—in the Metrics pane (see Figure 34), and then click the
Recalculate button to run the scenario.

Figure 34: Metrics table
Project automatically recommends the appropriate skills needed, up to the value specified by the analyst, to fully staff as
many of the remaining unselected projects as possible. The analyst can immediately assess the impact of the increased
head count by seeing which projects moved into the selected group. By running the Hired Resources Report (see Figure
35), the analyst can quickly determine the skills needed for each of the projects, the required start date, and the total
cost of each resource.


Figure 35: Resource Constraint Analysis – Hired Resources report
The head count modelling feature in Project provides analysts with the flexibility to specify whether to hire additional
full-time employees (internal resources) or contract staff (external resources), and to select an appropriate cost rate.
Analysts can easily save the analyses they conduct, which become an auditable record of all portfolio scenarios. The
saved scenarios are accessible in the Project Compare Project Selection view. This intuitive view (see Figure 36) displays
all saved scenarios side by side, making it easy to compare and contrast, which projects were included or excluded, and
to review key metrics such as the number of projects selected, their value, and their cost. After finalizing the portfolio
selection, the analyst simply clicks the Commit button to move the selected projects to the next phase in the workflow.

Figure 36: Compare Project Selection view

Resource Management
Resources are often an organization’s most valuable asset and potentially its biggest expense. By properly managing and
optimally utilizing your resources, your organization can develop and retain its world-class workforce while
simultaneously realizing its business strategy.
Adopting best-practice resource management techniques helps organizations accomplish the following:


Gain visibility and control using an enterprise resource pool: With a large number of employees and globally
dispersed teams, it can become difficult to keep track of who is available, what they are capable of doing, and where
they are located. Centralizing resources and standardizing metadata about the enterprise resource pool is the first
step to gaining visibility and control.



Proactively compare capacity to demand to maximize resource utilization: Resource capacity often
determines whether organizations are able to complete strategic projects on a specific planning horizon. Capturing
resource requirements early in the project life cycle helps analysts anticipate future demand and proactively
schedule projects to maximize resource utilization.



Find the right people for the project: Projects often include globally-dispersed teams and require a diverse set of
skills. Quickly finding the right people with availability for each project significantly increases the chance of
successfully completing the initiative and realizing ROI.



Intuitively manage resource assignments and overcome conflicts: Managers improve project success rates by
effectively managing resource assignments. Managers require tools that help them access and manage assignments
through the project lifecycle and easily communicate with team members about assignments.

The Microsoft PPM Solution provides a powerful set of capabilities to help analysts and project managers maximize
resource utilization and manage capacity across a project’s life cycle. Offering a central repository and standardizing
enterprise resource metadata, Project Online and Project Server help your PMOs and resource managers search your
enterprise resource pool to find the best available people to work on a project. With the new capacity-planning feature,
your analysts can compare resource demand to capacity and proactively reschedule new projects to maximize resource
utilization. In addition, the Tasks view helps team members conveniently pick up assignments.
The Project Resource Center view consolidates all resources in a central repository and helps PMOs and resource
managers standardize the collection of supporting metadata that they can use to analyze the resource pool. Creating an
inventory of resources, clearly defining and separating working hours from non-working hours, such as holidays and sick
leave, helps analysts determine the organization’s overall capacity. The PPM Solution provides a variety of tools—for
example, resource plans and project plans—to help organizations capture resource requirements early in the project life
cycle.
The Team Planner tool in Project Professional and Project Professional for Office 365 helps project managers visually
manage project-level resource assignments, quickly identify and resolve over-allocation, and easily substitute resources
to overcome conflicts that could affect project delivery. Team members can conveniently pick up assignments in the
Project Tasks view or they can access their tasks through Outlook. Native interoperability with Exchange Server ensures
that organizations no longer have to install an Outlook add-in and ensures that team members can stay connected and
receive tasks in Outlook or Outlook Web App.


Define Resources Using a Central Enterprise Resource Pool
Project Online and Project Server provide a centralized location for all of your resources and related information,
improving and simplifying resource management. Offering enhanced visibility and control, the Resource Center View
(see Figure 37) helps your PMOs and resource managers quickly assess overall capacity and better understand employee
skills and availability. New Departmental fields enable resources to be associated with a business unit, helping your
managers filter and sort resources by department.
With Project, administrators can capture all named resources in a single location and standardize the collection of
associated metadata. The metadata represents discrete resource properties—skills, a resource’s level in the resource
breakdown structure, geographic location, and billing rates—that managers can effectively use to tap the resource pool.
By using the new Departmental fields, resources can be associated with a business unit to ensure that managers can filter
and sort resources by department. In addition, administrators can create generic resources for capturing resource
requirements at the skill level, such as developer or analyst, early in the project life cycle. Resources also can be assigned
to teams for more flexibility; tasks assigned to a team can be completed by any resource within that team.

Figure 37: Resource Center view
Capturing all resources in a central location helps PMOs and resource managers quickly assess overall capacity and
better understand the employee skills that are available to them to use in the organization.
In addition to people, Project supports the management of consumable resources such as concrete and lumber.
Organizations can also create and manage data for inanimate resources such as machinery, hardware, and facilities.
Managers can apply multiple rate tables to these resources to model purchasing versus rental scenarios, helping deliver
better cost management.
Using Project Server Interface (PSI) (the API for Project), the PPM Solution can connect with LOB applications to gather
up-to-date resource information from the chosen system of record. Enhanced Active Directory synchronization enables


you to add resources quickly and reliably, helping simplify and automate the creation of the resource pool. This level of
automation saves time and simplifies resource management to create an integrated work management platform.

Capture Resource Requirements for Capacity Planning
Project Online and Project Server demand management capabilities help you capture resource requirements early in a
project’s life cycle, providing visibility on future demand that you can access from any device. You can capture
requirements at the resource name level, skill level (generically), or team level using Resource Assignments (see Figure
38) or by assigning resources directly to tasks in the Project Web App schedule or in Project Professional. Administrators
can also create best-practice project plan templates that include pre-populated resource assignments.

Figure 38: Project Resource Plan
PMOs can use the capacity-planning module in Project to proactively manage resources at the skill level and assess
whether an organization has the capacity to undertake a proposed project portfolio. Analysts can use the module to
compare resource requirements and availability data to help identify resource surpluses and deficits across the planning
horizon. They can then reschedule projects to maximize resource use. [For more information, see Portfolio Selection and
Analytics].

Quickly Find the Right People to Put to Work
With Project Online, Project Server, Project Professional, and Project Pro for Office 365, your managers can use the
Resource Center View or Build Team views to create filters to search for the right people based on geography, skill, or
other variables (see Figure 39). They can then add resources to their project and specify whether the booking is a
proposal or commitment.


Figure 39: Build Team view
Using the Resource Assignment and Resource Availability views, they can locate available resources to work on their
projects (see Figure 40). These flexible views let managers include multiple resources, change the date range and time
granularity, and see other projects that resources are working on during a given time period.

Figure 40: Resource Availability view

With the right resources identified, managers can engage the capabilities of the Build Team view to add resources to
their project and specify whether the booking is a proposal or commitment.

Visually Manage Resource Assignments
The new Team Planner view in Project Professional offers a resource-centric view that helps managers visually manage
project-level resource assignments (see Figure 41). Team Planner gives managers a complete picture of all assignments
for a project. In addition, managers can intuitively drag and drop tasks between resources. With the easy-to-use
interface in Team Planner, managers can quickly identify unassigned tasks in the lower half of the view, find resources
that have availability, and easily move tasks to the right person. This resource-centric tool visually highlights resource
over allocation, indicated by red bars that indicate overlapping tasks (see Figure 41). Managers can manually resolve
scheduling conflicts or rely on the levelling capabilities of Project Professional to fix the issue. The Team Planner also
visually highlights resources assigned to another project, enabling the project manager to drill into the competing
project to receive a better understanding of the impact on the resource’s time.

Figure 41: Project Professional – Team Planner view
The Team Planner view also provides mouse-triggered, context-sensitive dialog boxes that display useful information
about tasks, including start and end dates, work remaining, and percent complete. Tasks appear in different colors to
denote the completed percentage (see Figure 42). The Team Planner View is not available in Project Pro for Office 365.


Figure 42: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365– Mouse-triggered, contextual dialog boxes appear for
any task
With Project Pro for Office 365, you can see what your teams are doing—even when they’re managing everyday work or
ad hoc projects in SharePoint Online. Because Project Online provides mobile support for your Project site from virtually
anywhere, you can review and edit with the flexibility you need to get work done. An enhanced timeline in the browser
enables you to see and share tasks, milestones, and phases. You can arrange the time to show start, finish, or other
important dates for a collection of projects related to a particular initiative, portfolio, or department.
The Tasks View in Project provides a one-stop-shopping destination for all assignments for each team member (see
Figure 43). This helps simplify communication about resource assignments and ensure that team members are aware of
their designated activities. Team members can use this view to provide time and status updates or to reassign tasks if
they lack the bandwidth to complete them. Because Project connects with Exchange, team members can also receive
and update their project assignments as tasks in Outlook, Outlook Web App, or by using a PC, smartphone, or tablet.
Project Pro for Office 365 offers limited functionality in this regards, in comparison to Project Server. [For more
information about task assignments, see Time and Task Management].


Figure 43: Project Tasks view


Schedule Management
A project schedule provides your project teams with a blueprint for project execution and a baseline for tracking
progress and managing change. In addition, the schedule provides project teams with a map for project execution and
delivers a baseline to track progress and manage change.
Most employees in any organization manage projects as part of their day-to-day responsibilities. For example, a
marketing manager might lack training or official recognition as a certified project manager, but often ends up
simultaneously executing a number of projects. Today, many organizations have both occasional and professionallycertified project managers—Project Management Professionals (PMPs), for example—executing initiatives and using
different tools and techniques to build and manage both simple and complex schedules.
Adopting best-practice scheduling methodologies and tools helps organizations:


Support both occasional and professional project managers. Schedules range in complexity from a simple list of
activities to project plans with thousands of lines. Organizations require a scheduling solution that is easy to use for
occasional project managers, but that can also provide the required rigor to support professional managers.



Create and update schedules from the desktop or online. With geographically dispersed teams and a mobile
workforce, project managers need the flexibility to build and edit project schedules on their computer desktop or
on the Web.



Get started quickly and use best practices. Creating a schedule can be a time-consuming process. Establishing
schedule management standards and using best-practice templates makes it easier for project managers to get
started and saves valuable time.



Effectively control and analyze schedules. Complex and lengthy project schedules can be hard to manage and
even harder to analyze. Project managers need effective tools to reduce complexity of interrelated tasks, provide
early-warning indicators, and make the schedule easier to control.



Easily communicate schedule information. The Gantt chart is the universal symbol of project management, but it
might not be the most intuitive view for communicating schedule information to stakeholders. Project managers
need an easy way to communicate key phases and milestones with simple timeline views.

With The Microsoft PPM Solution, you can give your occasional and professional project managers the flexibility to build
and edit schedules on their computer desktop, their device of choice, or on the web—wherever they are working. Webbased project scheduling helps your managers quickly build simple and complex schedules online and conveniently edit
projects in the browser from any location. By extending your PPM experience to smartphones, you can keep up-to-date
while you’re on the go with an interface suited to small form-factors.
Multi-Level Undo and Change Highlighting helps managers quickly model schedule changes, online or from the
desktop, with minimal risk, providing organizations with a comprehensive scheduling system with familiar and flexible
capabilities to support both the occasional and the professional project manager. The Ribbon interface in provides a
consistent experience with Project Online and Project Server, ensuring that the tools managers need to plan and
manage projects are always at their fingertips.
The Microsoft PPM Solution further simplifies managing and controlling schedules with improved analysis and visual
tools, so that project managers can focus on deliverables and spend less time manipulating the project schedule. Similar
to the spelling checker in Microsoft Word, Project visually identifies potential issues and inefficiencies in the schedule
with red and green underlines. Using Project Professional or Project Pro for Office 365, managers can easily generate a


Timeline view that gives high-level view of the major activities in the schedule. Managers can copy this view into other
Office applications such as Outlook and PowerPoint to share with stakeholders.

Flexible, Intuitive, and Powerful Scheduling Tools
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 offer improved and innovative scheduling capabilities to help project
managers of all levels get started quickly and be more productive.
The Ribbon interface includes task-oriented tabs that make finding and performing activities easier and faster (see
Figure 44). Contextual menus reduce training requirements for occasional project managers and better display useful
tools that professional project managers regularly use.

Figure 44: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – The Ribbon
The PPM Solution supports informal project scheduling in addition to the full rigor of project management best
practices and techniques. Today, many occasional project managers choose to use tools such as Excel and SharePoint to
build simple schedules. The new user-controlled scheduling in Project Professional and Project Professional for Office
365 makes scheduling simpler for occasional project managers while providing more flexibility and support for topdown and rolling-wave planning for professional project managers.

Figure 45: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Manually Schedule and Auto Schedule buttons on
the Ribbon Task tab
User-controlled scheduling gives project managers the flexibility to schedule tasks using the Manually Scheduled or
Automatically Scheduled task modes. By choosing to manually schedule tasks, managers maintain full control of the
project schedule, bypassing incoming scheduling effects. They can simply switch back to Automatically Scheduled task
mode to use best-practice planning at any time. In Manually Scheduled task mode, Project does not fill in missing
information and, as in Excel, managers enter data only when they have it. When you manually add a new scheduled task
to a project, corresponding cells for duration and start and end dates remain blank. Managers can add the data for each
task when it becomes available (see Figure 46). For example, a manager can add:


A start date without a duration value: Project displays an open bracket in the Gantt chart view. This is useful when
the manager knows when an activity starts but does not have a definitive duration.



A duration value without a known start and end date: Project displays the tasks in light blue on the Gantt chart to
denote that additional information is required. This is useful for tracking task level estimates



Text reminders: a task’s duration might not be known—the manager can add a note (for example, “Ask Bob”) in any
cell as a reminder to add the right value when it becomes available.


Figure 46: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Manually scheduled tasks
Typically, in the early planning stages of a project the manager makes high-level “napkin” estimates. User-controlled
scheduling techniques help project managers take control of the schedule. In addition, Manually Scheduled task mode
enhances support for top-down planning. Managers can specify duration, and start and end dates for summary tasks,
while continuing to add and finalize the details of activities within the phase. This flexibility enables a manager to
communicate phase-level estimates while finalizing lower-level activities within the schedule. The manager can also
intuitively compare the phase estimate with the sum of the duration of the underlying tasks (see Figure 47).

Figure 47: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Improved top-down scheduling
A manager can choose to revert from Manually Scheduled task mode to Automatically Scheduled task mode at any time
by selecting the task and clicking the Auto Schedule button on the Task tab of the Ribbon.
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 include a number of usability enhancements designed to make the
tool easier to use and to increase the productivity of project and business managers. The Excel-like experience ensures
that managers can eliminate laborious formatting by turning on text wrapping. They can enter data faster using autocomplete and easily mine data by filtering and grouping columns. It is also simpler to add a new column to the schedule.
For example, the manager can simply start typing values in an undesignated column (see Figure 48). The tool
dynamically chooses the correct column format and performs the required data validation.


Figure 49: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Enhanced copy-and-paste function
PMOs can continue to use project plan templates (See Figure 50) to package best practices and reduce the time it takes
to build complex project schedules. Project plan templates provide a best-practice blueprint for a type of project—a new
software module or marketing campaign, for example—based on your own empirical data. The templates include all
summary tasks, granular-level activities, and generic resource assignments to provide a quick-start framework that the
project manager can easily adapt to their specific needs.
A new list template in SharePoint consolidates the Tasks and Project Tasks in previous versions of SharePoint. The new
list template has full visualization of the hierarchy (instead of folders), checkmark control of status, formatting of late
tasks, a timeline view rendered above the list, and the ability to reorder rows and related items.


Figure 50: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Available Project Plan Templates

Flexible, Web-Based Scheduling
Project Pro with Project Online for Office 366 empowers a mobile workforce by bringing the flexibility of Project
Professional to the Cloud. You can also choose to work through a browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and
Chrome to view, edit, submit, and collaborate on project, portfolio, schedules, and everyday work. In either instance, you
can stay you up-to-date while you are on the go with an interface suited to small form-factors such as smartphones and
tablets.
Using Project Web App, managers can create complex schedules online and assign multiple resources to each task.
Project incorporates the Ribbon interface, which provides a familiar and consistent experience regardless of whether the
project manager builds the schedule on their desktop, in the Cloud, or on the web(see Figure 51).

Figure 51: The Ribbon
The schedule view integrates usability improvements, including drag-and-drop functionality for moving columns,
support for tabbing between cells, and more (see Figure 52). New user-controlled scheduling capabilities are available in
the browser, so project managers have the flexibility to switch between Manually Scheduled and Automatically


Scheduled task mode. Multi-Level Undo and Change Highlighting functions within the browser help managers safely
model changes to the schedule and quickly identify all affected tasks.

Figure 48: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Easy column additions
Many schedules begin their life as a hallway or e-mail conversation or a set of bullets captured during a meeting. Project
managers need an efficient way to use this information to kick-start a project schedule. Built to work with versions of
Office, Visio, Microsoft Lync, Exchange, and SharePoint, Project provides your workforce with a familiar, unified
experience that improves participation and helps them get more done. Enhanced copy-and-paste capabilities ensure
that managers can conveniently copy formatted lists from other Office applications such as Word or Outlook into a
blank project plan, while maintaining formatting and data fidelity (see Figure 49).
Project Online and Project Pro for Office 365 utilize Office 365. Office 365 integrates applications your organization uses
every day—Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync online—with cloud-based versions of Microsoft
communication and collaboration services. Moving these productivity tools and services to the cloud as a subscriptionbased service helps your organization more accurately match cost to usage. Project Online also utilizes Office Web Apps,
so that your workforce gains the freedom to write, edit, and share Microsoft Office files from virtually anywhere.


Proactively Analyze and Control the Schedule
Detailed project schedules can be hard to control and even harder to analyze. Project managers need effective tools to
reduce the complexity of interrelated tasks, manage inter-project dependencies, provide early-warning indicators, and
make the schedule easier to control.

Task Inspector
The Task Inspector in Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 helps project managers proactively highlight an
issue, quickly identify the root cause, and resolve the problem immediately (see Figure 53).

Figure 53:Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Improved Task Inspector
Used in tandem with Manually Scheduled task mode, Project Task Inspector guides the occasional project manager by
visually identifying scheduling concerns and recommending scheduling efficiencies. Similar to the spelling checker in
Word, Task Inspector highlights issues using wavy red underlines beneath start or end date fields. A red underline
denotes a potential scheduling problem—for example, an underlying task exceeds the duration of a summary task—and
a green wavy underline indicates that the schedule can be optimized—for example, a task has slack time and could
potentially start earlier in the schedule (See Figure 54).Project managers can choose to ignore these warnings or choose
from a number of repair options listed in Task Inspector.

Figure 54: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Task Inspector warnings


Multi-Level Undo and Change Highlighting
Performing what-if analysis to model the impact of changes to a complex schedule can be a daunting task. Project
provides enhanced tools for 'what if' scenario planning, helping you collaborate with your team on potential problems
and make changes to assess impact without recreating your entire plan. The powerful Multi-Level Undo, Change
Highlighting, Active and Inactive task mode, and Compare Projects features in Project Professional and Project Pro for
Office 365 make it easier than ever to analyze the schedule.
Multi-Level Undo analysis tools (see Figure 55) in Project help ensure that a project manager can quickly make changes
to assess impact without recreating your entire plan, enabling you to easily reverse edits to a previous state. In addition,
the Change Highlighting function visually identifies all tasks affected by an amendment to the schedule, helping project
managers assess the effect on the plan.

Figure 55: Project–Change Highlighting and Multi-Level Undo

Managing Scope Using Active and Inactive Tasks
Using Inactive task mode in Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 (see Figure 56),project managers can
easily remove and then restore tasks in the schedule, to see the effect of removing the task on the rest of the project
plan. Toggling between Active and Inactive task mode gives managers the flexibility to model changes to scope by
simply right-clicking to make a task or group of tasks inactive. If required, the manager can simply restore these tasks
later by toggling to make them active tasks.


Figure 56: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365– Active and Inactive task mode

Compare Projects
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 helps you effectively analyze project plans and highlight differences
by using the improved Compare Projects function. With the tool, managers can effectively model changes to the
schedule and visually assess the effect of those changes on tasks and resources. Managers simply save a copy of the
project plan, then make changes to the plan and use the Compare Projects feature to assess the delta or change. The
Comparison Report highlights the differences between different versions of the plan; the manager can simply switch
between tasks and resource views (see Figure 57).

Figure 57: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365–Compare Project, Task Comparison Report


Set Baselines and Track Dependencies
In addition to monitoring the relationships between tasks within a project, project managers need to assess the impact
of inter-project dependencies that could affect their initiative. Project ensures that project managers can quickly link
dependent tasks between projects or publish key deliverables. Managers can publish deliverables to the collaborative
project site so that other project managers can be aware of key dates and establish a soft dependency in their own plans.
If deliverable dates change, Project notifies affected project managers the next time they open their project.

Effectively Communicate Schedule to Team and Stakeholders
Although the Gantt chart might be the universal symbol of project management, it offers limited effectiveness in
communicating schedule information to stakeholders. The Timeline view in Project Professional and Project Pro for
Office 365 gives project managers an intuitive and easy way to share key phases and milestones with minimal overhead
and effort to stakeholders that require less detail. Project managers select the tasks and milestones they want to include,
and with one click, generate a concise Timeline view. The Timeline view provides a manageable overview of the main
activities in the schedule (see Figure 58). Using the options available on the Ribbon Format tab, project managers can
quickly customize the Timeline by changing the bar colours or rearranging tasks as callouts.

Figure 58: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Timeline view
After creating and customizing the Timeline, project managers can simply copy the graphic and paste it into Outlook,
PowerPoint, and other Office applications. With a few clicks, project managers can create, customize, and share the
powerful Timeline view with team members and key stakeholders.


Financial Management
Pressure to reduce or maintain budgets has led to sharper scrutiny of discretionary spending. Furthermore, providing
project accounting views can be a challenge when financial data is spread across multiple LOB systems. Effective
financial management processes help improve cost and benefit estimating as well as track cost performance, ensuring
that each project finishes within budget and delivers the forecasted benefits.
When organizations try to improve their financial management, they typically encounter key challenges in the following
areas:


Standardizing cost and benefit estimates: Accurately capturing realistic cost and benefit estimates for projects
early in their lifecycle helps executives effectively select portfolios that maximize ROI under varying budget
constraints and measure financial performance during project execution.



Project accounting and change management: Selected projects for a portfolio need to provide accurate cost
accounting throughout the entire project life cycle. Changes in scope or in execution of a project have an effect on
the overall project cost and related benefits upon completion.



Financial visibility and insights: Executives need reports and views that enable them to assess financial
performance across the project lifecycle. Effective analysis of financial data for projects or the entire portfolio
requires a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use reporting system.



Integration with LOB systems: Organizations need to be able to obtain quickly accurate financial data from
appropriate LOB systems. Whether that information is payroll or expense data from an accounting system, planning
data from a business case, or actual project costs, the ability to integrate the data into one view for management
and oversight is critical to ensuring that accurate financial information is available when needed.

The Microsoft PPM Solution delivers flexible and extensible financial management capabilities throughout a project’s
entire life cycle. PMOs can use custom fields to standardize the collection of cost data or take advantage of Excel Web
App or InfoPath Forms Services to embed financial estimate Web parts within the Project Online and Project Server
business case infrastructure. Executives can use best-in-class portfolio selection analytics with decision-support tools to
effectively allocate funds and optimize the portfolio to align with business strategy. In addition, Project offers a
comprehensive API to help ensure that your organization can effectively integrate with financial systems, LOB
applications, and industry standards such as OData for data mining, business intelligence, consolidating data, and
driving project accounting reports. Organizations can also utilize partner add-in products.
The powerful reporting infrastructure in Project gives PMOs the flexibility they need to easily create project-level reports
and quickly configure dashboards to provide executives with manageable views that communicate the complete
financial picture. The best-in-class portfolio selection analytics included in Project provide executives with decisionsupport tools, which help them effectively allocate funds and continuously optimize the portfolio to ensure it delivers
the biggest bang for the buck and optimally aligns with business strategy.

Capture Cost and Benefit Estimates
Project Online and Project Server offer a flexible business case infrastructure that helps standardize the collection of cost
and benefit data for each request. PMOs simply add custom fields to an online business case form—a Project Detail
Page, or PDP [see the Demand Management section]—to capture multi-year cost and benefit values. They can also
embed detailed cost and benefit templates within the business case using Excel Web App or InfoPath Forms Services
Web parts (see Figure 59). After capturing the data, analysts can build formulas to derive metrics—ROI, Internal Rate of
Return (IRR), and so on—to better understand and communicate a project’s financial value.


Figure 59: An Excel Web App Web part embedded in a project business case
Accurately capturing cost and benefit estimates is critical, because this data is one of the primary variables used to assess
and select competing initiatives, measure financial performance against baseline in the execution phase, and analyze
whether the initiative realized the forecasted benefits.

Cost Constraint Analysis and Portfolio Selection
For most organizations, the number of project requests often exceeds the organization’s budget and resource
constraints. Project Online and Project Server include a portfolio optimization engine that helps analysts model various
scenarios and identify the optimal project portfolio. Using portfolio selection techniques, analysts can run what-if
analyses under a variety of cost constraints to recommend project portfolios that deliver the maximum ROI and that best
align with your organization’s business strategy (see Figure60). [For more information, see Portfolio Selection and
Analytics]


Figure 60: Cost Constraint Analysis view

Track and Report Financial Performance
The Project Online and Project Server governance workflow controls a project throughout its lifecycle, and plays a key
role in supporting budget review and approval cycles. Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 help
organizations manage and effectively track financial data using the following:


Budget Resources helps project managers record the approved project budget at the project-summary level,
providing a baseline for comparing and proactively managing actual costs against expenses.



Cost Resources help managers capture non-work costs associated with a project (i.e. equipment, materials, travel,
training, contractor costs, and so on).



Multiple billing rates can apply to each resource. Companies can use this technique to calculate the cost of the
resource based on the amount of work. In addition, resources can be tied to cost centers.

Project managers can establish project baselines and use Earned Value Management (EVM) metrics to control changes,
analyze project performance, and manage expectations. Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 includes
calculations for standard EVM metrics, such as cost and schedule performance indices, based on planning and actual
cost, in addition to schedule fields. These tools help organizations capture the original intent of project costs in a
baseline and modify them where necessary using change management techniques.
Built on SharePoint, Project takes advantage of the Microsoft BI platform to provide an easy-to-use and flexible
reporting infrastructure that helps your organization gain insight, visibility, and control. Taking advantage of these
powerful capabilities, managers can build project-level reports and. PMOs can design dashboards to ensure that
executives have all the information they need to stay in control of funding decisions (see Figure 61).
You can also find best-of-breed reports such as Burndown, Cashflow and Resource Overview in Project Pro for Office
365. You can share the reports through Office 365 apps in just a few clicks and print them in beautiful detail.


Figure 61: Configurable dashboard
Project also enables you to see summary dashboards, plans, and timelines in PWA, helping you glean insight and make
better decisions across a collection of projects, a particular program, or a portfolio. To support performance tracking,
users can define KPIs by using custom fields that provide an overview of financial performance, in addition to specific
data at various phases of a project life cycle (See Figure 62).


Figure 62: Project Center view with KPIs

Integration with Financial Systems
Organizations need to be able to obtain accurate financial data from different LOB systems. With the comprehensive
Project API, PSI, organizations can automate the collection of financial data from LOB applications to drive project
accounting views and reports. In addition, organizations can take advantage of Microsoft independent software vendor
(ISV) partner add-in solutions that offer certified integration with familiar Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems,
such as those offered by SAP. The integration supports bi-directional data transfer, ensuring that project managers and
financial analysts or accountants can effectively share data while working in their productivity tool of choice.


Time and Task Management
Good decision making comes from having accurate, up-to-date information. That is why project managers need
efficient methods for capturing and communicating status on project work to help gauge progress and anticipate
the effect on planned cost and timeframes.
Effective time-capture and project progress reporting need to provide the following characteristics:


An easy-to-use interface: Time-entry systems tend to be widely used across organizations. As a result, they
need to be simple, familiar, and intuitive for anyone who regularly enters and approves updates.



Single-source, to report working and non-working time: Organizations want streamlined processes that
capture and update information used for operations, analysis, and control. Different business applications can
be used for project management, financial reporting, or operational processes that collect time worked by
individuals as the basis for reporting and projections.



Ability to capture projects, operations, and administrative time: Project-based organizations need to be
able to capture progress and status on tasks at the same time that they are gathering non-project time, such as
systems maintenance work and administrative time, including non-working time for vacation, sick leave, or
other paid time off (PTO).



Support for high use in short, recurring time periods: Unlike other business processes, time and task status
reporting tends to involve a recurring cycle of large numbers of activities performed at periodic intervals. Timereporting systems need to scale to support high volumes of transactions at the end of the working week or the
month.



Flexible choices for how you and your organization work: Time reporting solutions need flexible
approaches to support data collection, systems integration, business rules, exception handling, and information
reporting requirements.



Integration with LOB systems: Enterprises would prefer one system for capturing time and project taskprogress information that they could then integrate with other LOB applications, such as payroll, project cost
accounting, and financial management systems.

Project Online and Project Server provide your organization with the flexibility it needs to centralize time capture,
streamline processes, automate task management, and increase project forecasting accuracy. Single Entry Mode
enhances time-reporting capabilities, helping to unify time and task status updates. Project aggregates multiple lists
(tasks, calendar, etc.) into a project summary web part specifically geared toward giving an at-a-glance view of
upcoming milestones, a timeline of the entire project, a list of late tasks, and a list of upcoming events/tasks. Project
also extends scheduling capabilities in Project Web App (PWA) so your team can plan, schedule, and manage tasks
more effectively in the browser—giving them the flexibility they need to get work done.
A standardized web-based user interface for timesheet entry and task management speeds learning. Project also
enables integration between captured timesheet and task-management process information and LOB applications
that use time and progress information for processing.

Intuitive User Interface for Time and Task Entry
With Project Online and Project Server, intuitive Timesheet and Tasks views help ensure that team members provide
task status information and project, non-project, and nonworking time (see Figure 63). An improved interface
standardizes the experience between the Timesheet and Tasks views to ensure quick completion of time and task
update submissions. An easy-to-use interface is customizable for specific preferences and needs. In addition,
simplified time reporting processes help reduce training requirements.


Figure 63: Common user interface for time entry and task updates

Efficiently Receive Project Tasks
Your organization needs flexible methods for users to submit time and provide real-time task updates. Project
Online and Project Server offer tools for managing and communicating resource assignments and effectively
gathering task updates from team member entries. Team members can receive and view their assignments through
the web-based Tasks view, through an e-mail notification, or as Outlook tasks grouped by project. Another added
benefit for Project is that you can work within familiar applications such as Outlook and SharePoint without having
to shuffle back and forth between Project (and the other applications).
After consolidating their assignments in an effective view, team members can choose to update an assignment
through the Tasks view or directly in Outlook. In addition, connectivity with Exchange helps ensure that team
members can receive and make updates to project tasks in Outlook or in Outlook Web App (without requiring an
Outlook add-in) on your PC, smartphone, or tablet(see Figure 64).

Figure 64: Project tasks displayed in Outlook Web App
The Tasks view displays project and non-project work assigned to individuals. Users can also view tasks assigned to
other resources and provide updates, such as contractors or team resource assignments, for their projects (see
Figure 65).


Figure 65: Tasks view
Project organizes assignments by time period, helping you focus on current information and prepare for upcoming
activities. Sorting, filtering, and grouping options help you find relevant tasks. Team members also have the option
of reassigning tasks or self-assigning tasks made to their team assignment pool.

Single Entry Mode Enhances Time and Task Reporting
The Single Entry Mode in Project Online and Project Server consolidates task progress and time reporting data,
helping simplify timesheet submissions, capture and update time and information used for operations, analysis, and
control, and unify task status updates.
The Project Timesheet view includes entry lines for assigned project tasks so that you can record your work during
the timesheet period. It also includes entry lines to capture work and non-work time for administrative categories.
An adjustable vertical bar, between line description information and the time entry area, simplifies entering data.
Timesheets support a fixed calendar period, organized with project tasks listed at the top, and administrative items
below so users can navigate to relevant time entry lines. Organizations can establish predefined administrative
working and non-working time categories for meetings, vacation, sick leave, holidays, and other administrative
categories (see Figure 66).


Figure 66: Timesheet view
You can categorize timesheet data for integration with financial systems for payroll, invoicing, project costing, and
charge backs. This includes support for regular and overtime pay and billable versus non-billable time. Timesheets
provide a variety of administrative controls to enforce time-reporting standards. You can also address additional
complex scenarios such as support for users to submit approval for status updates in the middle of a timesheet
period without submitting an entire timesheet.
Project also makes it easier to complete and submit timesheets from almost any browser, including Internet
Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, giving you more flexibility and control to accurately record exceptions and
accomplishments.

Flexible Time and Task Approvals
Many organizations have different control and oversight requirements for timesheets and task status updates. To
help PMOs select the level of review and control they want, Project Online and Project Server offer configurable
approval workflows. A dedicated Approval Center simplifies the review of timesheet, task updates, and
administrative time request approvals (see Figure 67). Utilizing the same intuitive interface as the Timesheet and
Tasks views, The Approval Center offers options to group, sort, and filter tasks, helping you streamline approval
activities.

Figure 67: Approval Center View


Project gives managers and PMOs the choice of requiring approval for timesheet submittals, specifying individual
approvers, letting users select approvers, or using automatic approval routing. The timesheets go through a multilevel workflow based on organizational hierarchy. In addition, Project can delay sending timesheets for approval
until all tasks on the timesheet receive approval from the designated status manager.
With Project, you can also route task updates directly to the project manager or a designated task status manager.
Business managers or PMOs can create automatic approval rules for tasks, which can help reduce administrative
burden. Using the Web-based Approval Preview feature, managers can visually assess the effect of changes on the
schedule before accepting task updates (see Figure 68).

Figure 68: Approval Preview view

Optimized Performance, Administration, and LOB Integration
Time reporting systems need to support high volumes of transactions because most team members complete their
timesheets at the same time—at the end of the work week. Project Online and Project Server time and task
management capabilities can meet the changing needs of your organization. Administrators can configure server
settings to manage intuitively the timesheet process by defining the appropriate fiscal accounting periods, creating
timesheet periods, adding timesheet line classifications, configuring administrative time categories, and more.
PMOs can easily open and close timesheet periods to facilitate lock-down periods and control time entry in open
date ranges. End users can act as delegates on behalf of other users. This is extremely helpful for timesheet and task
updates for users with periodic or extended absences.
An expanded reporting database includes comprehensive details about timesheet data. This information helps show
the status of timesheet submittals and approvals at a specific point in time, or as overall trends to support
management compliance and performance reporting.
Additionally, you can summarize timesheet and task data to use with or integrate into other LOB systems. This
ensures that Project will be your hub for collecting and disseminating information with other LOB applications, such
as payroll, project cost accounting, and financial management systems.

Team Collaboration
Over the past decade, team collaboration has evolved from informal techniques into a recognized discipline that
helps organizations more effectively find and share information. In many ways, team collaboration today forms the

backbone of an organization, supporting and driving overall project success and execution effectiveness. As a result,
collaboration tools and techniques are fuelling the next phase of project management evolution.
Organizations that hope to achieve increased efficiency and growth need to deploy effective collaboration
techniques within their PPM processes, such as the following:


Provide a central location for team collaboration: With one location for project-related information, team
members can quickly review project status, access related artifacts, and more effectively collaborate.



Package best-practice templates: Organizations gain efficiency through standardization and by reusing
project-related artifacts and processes that evolve out of best practices and lessons learned.



Effectively manage a variety of content: In most organizations, information grows exponentially. From faster
access, enforced security, and improved control to reducing manual processes. Enterprise content management
helps organizations address all forms of information needs.



Simplify and enhance team communication: With the growth of Web 2.0 capabilities and the web’s
intersection with social behavior, individuals and teams are looking for ways to enhance and simplify team
communication. Project teams can enhance communication using blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and
presence.

Built on SharePoint, Project Online and Project Server combine powerful collaboration services with structured
execution capabilities to provide flexible work management solutions.
Project Online and Project Server provide organizations with a powerful framework for team collaboration to create
a true work management platform. Building on top of SharePoint ensures that organizations can:


Take advantage of the Microsoft BI platform to create reports and powerful dashboards.



Create custom Project Site templates for each type of project that provide a one-stop-shop collaboration
workspace for the team.



Deliver new capabilities for organizations to move from semi-structured to structured project portfolio
management or continue to mix their approach



Control document review and approval throughout the workflow.



Use enterprise search to make it easy to find people and effectively mine project data



Connect teams and enhance communication with wikis, blogs, discussion forums, and Yammer.

Collaborate Using Project Sites
Project Online and Project Server take advantage of SharePoint team sites, Enterprise Content Management (ECM),
and social computing capabilities to provide teams with a collaborative workspace—a project site—that contains
project-related artifacts and helps teams communicate, share information, better manage your project pipeline and
more effectively measure your team's ideas throughout the project lifecycle. With each project, you can utilize a
project site template in SharePoint that includes documents, tasks and calendars specifically geared towards
working on simple projects. The social capabilities of SharePoint work with your project site or “my site,” to facilitate
discussions and facilitate information sharing so you can get projects and everyday work done.
With Project, administrators can define custom project site templates and associate them with an enterprise project
type (EPT) (see the Demand Management section). An IT project might require a different project site template than
a business project. With this flexibility, PMOs can standardize project site templates across the organization by
embedding and reusing best-practice document templates and techniques to improve project delivery and team
collaboration. Project sites are highly configurable and can include preconfigured Web parts—for example, Team
Calendar, Project Schedule, or Issues and Risk—and custom Web parts to better disseminate project information.
Incorporating social computing techniques, such as blogs, wikis, Yammer, and discussion forums into the project site
helps managers and team members collaborate more effectively (see Figure 70).


Figure 70: Project Site
The default project site includes the following components:


Documents: A central location for storing and managing project documents throughout the project lifecycle.



Project site template: Each template includes documents, tasks, and calendars specifically geared towards
working on simple projects



Issues and Risks Log: A central location for effectively identifying and managing issues and risks. This
promotes use of standard processes for definition, impact assessment, escalation, and resolution.



Deliverables: Project managers can publish deliverables to the collaborative project site so that other
managers can be aware of key dates and establish a soft dependency for their own plans. If the deliverable
dates change, affected project managers receive automatic notifications the next time they open their project.



Team Calendar: The project manager can visually communicate key meetings and recurring governance
events, such as a weekly team meeting, to the project team.



Announcements: An easy way to broadcast information to the project team.



Team Discussions: Team members can openly communicate and debate topics within the project site. Project
maintains the discussion threads, making them viewable by the project team and stakeholders.



Yammer: Yammer is a social network, available by SharePoint integration, which connects people,
conversations, and data across business applications. Team members can collaborate on documents, share
knowledge, and improve overall internal communications.

Enterprise Content Management and Search
Project Online and Project Server use SharePoint ECM capabilities to ensure that teams can effectively manage
documents and artifacts throughout the project lifecycle. The enhanced ECM capabilities in SharePoint help
organizations manage digital assets, documents, records and discovery, enterprise metadata, and Web content.
Project provides a central location for storing and sharing project documents that helps reduce the number of
manual processes a team uses and eliminates metadata silos within an organization (see Figure 71). PMOs can
establish enterprise standards by easily publishing best-practice document templates and artifacts to the libraries to
enhance efficiency, productivity, and governance.


Figure 71: Management of an organization’s content and documents
You can link project documents to the corresponding task in the project schedule. You can also make decision using
the latest information because team members have a central location for finding the information they need, when
they need it. Built-in version control helps manage the document revision process, ensuring quick access to the
most recent copy of all documents, while maintaining earlier iterations for reference (see Figure 72). Flexible
document workflow capabilities help minimize the typical e-mail routing and review cycles that most project teams
experience today and provide a clear history of approvals and reviews on every major deliverable.

Figure 72: Linking document with project tasks
You can configure Project to take advantage of sophisticated SharePoint search engine capabilities that enable you
to find the right information in the right context to execute everyday work and projects effectively. Enterprise search
amplifies the impact of knowledge and expertise by delivering a platform for social computing, collaboration, ECM,
and BI. Project teams can take advantage of platform search capabilities to mine project data and artifacts.


Enhance Communication and Project Updating
Project Online and Project Server utilize customizable SharePoint apps to help facilitate discussions and information
sharing. PMOs can use Web 2.0 techniques to enhance their governance processes and further enhance team
communication and collaboration. Project teams have access to powerful customizable apps that drive user
participation and interaction that fuel creativity and productivity (see Figure 73).

Figure 73: Example of a list of customizable apps used to convey project information


Issues and Risk Management
An important part of any complete project management methodology is prevention, identification, and mitigation
of potential business or project-related risks and issues. By using a standard methodology to assess risks, your
organization can improve decision making related to your portfolio.
Adopting best-practice methodologies can help your organization:


Define a standard way to assess risk for new initiatives. Risk ratings, along with strategic value and financial
value, are the main variables used to assess projects during portfolio selection analysis. Organizations need a
consistent approach to deriving risk scores and weights for proposed initiatives.



Standardize project risk collection and management. Successfully managing project risk requires project
managers to have centralized and standardized methods for capturing risk information and document
mitigation strategies throughout the project lifecycle. A centralized log of all project risks makes risk easier to
manage and provides the necessary transparency for leadership and project teams.



Establish proper issue resolution and escalation. No matter how well planned and managed a project is,
unexpected events can arise. As with risk management, a centralized and accessible location for capturing all
project issues provides the project manager and the team with the necessary tools to manage issues and to
reach resolutions.

The Microsoft PPM solution supports risk identification from the earliest stage of portfolio analysis through the final
stages of project execution and benefit realization. Project Online and Project Server provide a central location for
identifying and managing issues and risks. Offering standard processes for definition, assessment, escalation, and
resolution of issues and risks, Project helps define a standard way to assess risk for new initiatives and establish
proper issue resolution.

Portfolio Risk Analysis
Project Online and Project Server include flexible tools for standardizing risk definition and measurement. At the
portfolio level, risk represents the level of uncertainty involved in the overall success of the endeavour. Each
organization has a unique definition of its risk tolerance that it will adapt to specific market conditions and
opportunities. By using a standard methodology to assess its risks, the organization will have a solid, credible
method for decision making during portfolio selection and in later analysis of the portfolio.
Project provides a variety of standardized ways to capture a risk score and weight for competing projects. PMOs can
use custom fields that enable a user to subjectively capture or specify a risk score—for example, between 0 and 100
or High, Medium, or Low. Administrators can use InfoPath Forms Services to define objective online risk assessment
questionnaires for inclusion within the business case for each project (see Figure 74). The chosen answers lead to a
risk score and weight that stakeholders can use to analyze projects during portfolio selection. Risk metrics are also
available to include in a variety of visual reports, like scorecards and bubble charts


Figure 74: InfoPath Services risk assessment survey

Project Risk Management
Project Online and Project Server help standardize risk identification and management across the enterprise and
contributes to the overall successful delivery of projects with less harmful effect from unforeseen or poorly managed
events. A standardized risk collection mechanism identifies, manages, tracks, and mitigates risks throughout the
project or program lifecycle. A Risk list is included in the project site template.
You can define a project risk as a potential event that, if it occurs, might have a negative impact on a project’s
success. Proactive risk management involves identifying and qualifying risks related to a project using industrystandard probability/impact definitions and fields. It is important that organizations identify and manage risks at all
appropriate levels: project, program, and portfolio. The Project standardized risk form provides a set of common
fields for risk identification and management (see Figure 75).


Figure 75: New Risk form
Project managers and team members can use the Project Risk form to identify project risks and to capture their
potential impact and probability of occurrence. After you identify risks, you can document and manage appropriate
mitigation plans from the same central location so that all involved stakeholders can be aware of status and next
steps. You can use SharePoint workflows and e-mail notifications to escalate risks and to notify essential individuals
within the organization to become involved as needed. The establishment of escalation processes makes risk
management efficient and effective. It can provide timely notification to leadership when their support and
attention is needed while providing project managers with the proper level of autonomy to manage projects.
Organizations can easily customize views and create powerful reports to expose high-probability and high-impact
risks to executive leadership to help address them early.
Using Project gives an organization the platform to manage proactively its risks. You can reduce the need for timeconsuming data collection and reporting because the information is readily accessible.

Issue Management
All scenarios bring with them some level of unpredictability. To this end, Project Online and Project Server provide a
standardized issues collection mechanism to help identify, manage, track, and resolve issues throughout a project’s
or program’s lifecycle. Having a centralized log of all project-related issues provides a designated location where
everyone can contribute and review. Using a standardized template Issues list, project managers can review these
issues, assign individuals to work on resolutions, and set deadlines to decrease the impact on a project’s success (see
Figure 76).


Figure 76: Issues list


Business Intelligence and Reporting
One of the great challenges organizations face is how to collect, categorize, understand, and make decisions about
project data. Conventional reporting offers tools and methods to collect, aggregate, display, and communicate data.
Business Intelligence (BI) takes that concept to the next level by providing visibility and helping organizations with
decision support for proactive work management.
BI is a rapidly evolving discipline. Its effectiveness depends on an organization’s ability to pull together accurate
information in real time that is standardized and tailored to the needs of the audience. Some of the challenges
organizations face in this area includes the following:


Lack of standard metrics for measuring performance: Without standardized metrics, organizations struggle
to compare projects, recognize problems, roll up key data to the program or portfolio level, and provide
cohesive reporting to executive management.



Time-consuming, manual report generation: Automating the reporting process means that PMOs and
project managers will not spend valuable time gathering and assembling up-to-date project progress data and
manually preparing project and portfolio reports.



Specialized skill sets are required to build reports: The problem with many reporting solutions is that they
are difficult to use and require highly specialized, technical resources. This creates a strong dependency on
certain resources being available and requires sufficient planning, which can lead to delays and bottlenecks.



It is difficult to create on-demand reports: PMOs often have to accommodate and react to fire drills. As a
result, they need powerful reporting tools to mine data and easily produce and distribute reports.



Lack of reusable reports and best practices: Organizations need to be able to generate, share, and reuse
best-practice template reports. Selecting from the same set of best-practice reports promotes efficiency and
the ability to adapt common formats into reusable templates at any level—individual, team, department, and
enterprise.

By standardizing the collection of data and performance metrics in a central repository, PMOs can more easily
facilitate enterprise reporting. Project Online and Project Server include a variety of online views, such as Project
Center, Resource Center, and Portfolio Analysis, in addition to powerful BI and reporting services to help
organizations gain insight, visibility, and control across all project portfolios. Because Project is built on SharePoint,
users can take advantage of almost all of the tools included in the Microsoft BI platform, such as Excel Services, Visio
Services, Power Pivot for Excel, and more. On-premises versions of Project can also take advantage of Performance
Point Services (PPS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).The flexible Microsoft BI solution provides
nontechnical resources with familiar tools to easily create reports and configure powerful dashboards, while
providing technical resources with more sophisticated capabilities to create complex views.
Project includes a dedicated reporting set of tables that store project and portfolio data to ensure access to up-todate information. PMOs can satisfy LOB reporting requirements by using departmental cubes, so decision makers
can focus on their data, eliminate unnecessary clutter, and ensure faster build times. The improved Business
Intelligence Center in Project includes a library of pre-configured best-practice template reports. Nontechnical
resources can easily customize the templates in a familiar Excel editor and then simply publish the report using Excel
Services to incorporate into dashboard views. PMOs can create intuitive audience-based dashboards to ensure that
managers receive relevant and useful information. Resources that are more technical can use more sophisticated
tools, such as SQL Server Reporting Services with Project Server, to create complex reports—for example, monthly
reporting packs—to meet the organization’s unique requirements.

Project Controls and Performance Measurement
Powerful BI solutions quickly become redundant if the required data is not available or if the accuracy of the
information is questionable. Automating the collection of accurate status information helps organizations focus on


delivering projects on time and within budget, rather than engaging in manual, time-consuming efforts to gather
data to drive status reports.
Project Online and Project Server help organizations standardize data collection and performance metrics across the
enterprise and streamlines status reporting through easy-to-use Web-based tools. With Project, PMOs can define
consistent KPIs to measure the overall health of initiatives. Colored indicators, such as red, amber, and green, easily
convey health, budget, resource, schedule, quality scope, and risk. Performance indicators, displayed in the project
schedule or configurable scorecard views, provide an overview of portfolio- and project-level performance (see
Figure 77).

Figure 77: Configurable Project Center view
Project offers automated methods of time, task, and status reporting so team members can provide project
managers with real-time progress data. Project managers can create custom status reports to collect and combine
progress updates from team members (see Figure 78).

Figure 78: Custom Status Report created by project manager
The project manager defines the recurrence of the status report—weekly, monthly, annually, and so on—selects the
resources, defines the categories (ex. Major Accomplishments), objectives for Next Period, and Hot Issues that need

to be included in the report. This approach sets clear expectations and responsibilities within the project team, in
addition to automating status collection. For more information about time and task reporting, see Time and Task
Management.

Easily Create Reports and Build Powerful Dashboards
With Project Server, your organization can take advantage of SharePoint tools included in the Microsoft BI platform,
such as Excel Services, Performance Point Services, Visio Services, the Power Pivot Excel add-in, and SQL Server
Reporting Services. Best of all, you do not have to have deep technical skills to take advantage of them. That is
because the flexible BI solution provides familiar tools to intuitively create reports and easily configure powerful
audience-based dashboards to monitor performance.
The new Project Business Intelligence Center helps you get started by including a Reports Library with
preconfigured best-practice report templates (see Figure 79). The best-practice templates include common reports
such as Issues and Risks, Timesheet Actuals, Simple Project List, Resource, Deliverables, and more. Using the Report
Library, PMOs can easily add new report templates, and share and reuse best-practice report templates across the
enterprise.

Figure 79: Business Intelligence Center (sample reports)
Using a familiar Excel editor, users simply click and open the required report template in a familiar Excel editor.
Because data connections are already established, the user can intuitively customize the report by selecting and
arranging the required data and using the PivotTable field list in Excel.
Once Project updates a report, it saves it within the Reports Library. The report, published using Excel Services,
becomes available as a Web part for integration with various dashboard views. Users with appropriate permissions
can build powerful dashboards by selecting and arranging the required Web parts within configurable dashboard
views (see Figure 80).


Figure 80: Easily create reports and build powerful dashboards
In addition, Project offers the flexibility to filter content based on a specific user or role. Audience-based Web parts
and dynamic content filtering help you easily discover and share relevant information with people based on their
role within the organization. For example, a CIO could view IT-specific information by default, whereas
departmental managers may want to see a dashboard that displays project metrics for their lines of business.

Effectively Mine Data and Create Sophisticated Reports
Project Online and Project Server BI capabilities provide sophisticated tools to meet custom reporting requirements.
Users can access up-to-date data because Project stores project and portfolio information, including business case
metrics and custom fields, task, resource, and timesheet data in dedicated reporting tables. Administrators can
create Office Data Connections (.doc) files that aggregate data from the reporting tables and LOB systems to ensure
the availability of real-time and accurate data.
By simplifying access to the right data, Project makes it easier to generate on-demand reports without engaging
specialized and highly technical skill sets to build the right reports. PMOs, department leads, and project managers
can rapidly respond to business needs using the Project reporting infrastructure to create a variety of project and
portfolio reports.
With Project, you can also immediately derive insight about your portfolio with new point-and-click reporting
capabilities. You can also look at sample reports in The Business Intelligence Center in PWA. With Project Pro for
Office 365, you can find great looking reports such as Burndown, Cashflow and Resource Overview that you can
share through Office 365 apps in just a few clicks and that you can print in beautiful detail.
IT pros can continue to use tools like SQL Server Reporting Services to meet complex reporting requirements.
Reporting Services is ideal for creating scheduled reports, such as monthly reporting packs for executives, and for
sending e-mail reports to relevant stakeholders.
The departmental cubes in Project help PMOs better satisfy LOB reporting requirements. Managers can use
departmental fields to filter project data and resources by LOB so decision makers can focus on their data, eliminate
unnecessary clutter, and provide better performance.


Program Management
Each project within a program has its own set of goals that when combined together with each other deliver the
forecasted benefits of the overall program. Program management techniques provide visibility and control across
underlying in-flight projects and extend across program initiation, selection, and execution framework. However,
organizations can derive additional benefit from establishing program mobilization techniques that provide a
program initiation and selection framework before breaking down the program into its underlying projects.
Because programs are often misinterpreted and can be difficult to define, they have a unique set of challenges that
include the following:


Mobilization and selection: To facilitate the top-down planning process, organizations need to centralize the
collection of program requests and standardize the metadata captured in business cases.



Clarifying program and project controls to improve efficiency: Organizations need to adapt best-practice
program management methodologies to establish processes, define appropriate levels of control, and
effectively manage initiatives. Program management must balance control and oversight with adequate project
management authority, so project managers can effectively execute their projects while supporting the overall
program goal.

The Microsoft PPM Solution provides your organization with tools to effectively initiate, plan, and manage large
programs and their underlying projects to a successful conclusion. The enhanced demand management capabilities
and powerful portfolio selection techniques of Project Online and Project Server help ensure that PMOs can
centralize the collection of program requests, standardize metadata collected in program-level business cases, and
run what-if analyses to help executives finalize funding decisions under various budgetary constraints.
After finalizing funding, managers can use Project to define detailed schedules for the underlying projects within the
program and to find resources with the availability to participate on the project team. By using Master Projects, a
program manager can quickly consolidate all projects into a single master program plan to maintain visibility and
control across the entire schedule identify critical interdependencies, and quickly drill down into each project for
more detail.
The enhanced collaboration capabilities of Project help teams communicate more effectively through programlevel workspaces, better manage documents throughout their life cycle, and easily escalate issues and risks to
program stakeholders

Mobilization: Capture, Prioritize, and Select Programs
Programs often require a unique set of standards due to multi-year commitment and multi-department
involvement. PMOs can take advantage of the flexible demand management capabilities of Project Online and
Project Server to define project templates, such as Enterprise Project Types (EPTs), for program requests; create the
required online forms, such as Project Data Pages (PDPs), to be included in business cases; and build governance
workflows to control programs through their initiation and selection stages. Similar to projects, a program-level
business case in Project can include custom fields to capture basic information, cost and benefit assessments,
resource estimates, risk assessments, strategic impact assessments, and more. For more information about project
and portfolio initiation capabilities, see Demand Management.
After centralizing the collection of program-level requests, analysts can take advantage of Project portfolio
analytical capabilities to finalize funding decisions across the various program requests. The powerful portfolio
selection and analytical capabilities in Project help PMOs prioritize programs from multiple dimensions, optimize
the portfolio under diverse budget constraints, and objectively finalize funding decisions. For more information
about how Project can help organizations select initiatives that best align with their strategic priorities, see Portfolio
Selection and Analytics.

Execution: Program Delivery
Project Online and Project Server provide powerful scheduling, resource management, team collaboration, and
reporting capabilities for planning, managing, and tracking initiatives at the project and program levels. After
finalizing funding and selection decisions at the program level, managers can easily break down the program into its
underlying projects. Project managers can use Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 to construct
detailed schedules and identify the project team for each of the underlying initiatives within a program. By using a
Master Project (see Figure 81), the program manager can quickly consolidate all projects into a single master
program plan. A Master Project can help the program manager maintain visibility and control across the entire
program schedule, easily identify critical tasks and interdependencies, and quickly examine each project for
additional, specific information.

Figure 81: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – Master Project
PMOs can create project sites, at the program level, to improve team collaboration and communication. Because
Project works well with Lync, you can have real-time conversations and instant messaging (IM) from within your
project, further aiding in this process. Project sites are highly configurable and can include standard Web parts—for
example, Team Calendar, Project Schedule, and Issues and Risk—and custom Web parts to better disseminate
program information. Using social computing techniques, such as blogs, wikis, Yammer, and discussion forums
within the project site helps managers and teams collaborate more effectively. For more information about project
sites, see the Team Collaboration section.
Project BI capabilities help PMOs create powerful dashboards that provide executives with a concise summary across
the organization. KPIs help highlight areas of concern and executives can then drill down to the department,
program, and project level to identify causes and take corrective action. For more information about reporting, see
the Business Intelligence and Reporting section.


Scalable, Connected, and Programmable
Platform
When vetting PPM solutions, most evaluation committees will assess competing products from a business
perspective and through an IT lens. To ensure that a product’s functionality meets business requirements, and that it
aligns with the organization’s IT requirements and enterprise architecture strategy, the evaluators will look for PPM
solutions that score well in both categories.
When choosing a comprehensive PPM solution, organizations are looking for:


Simplified administration and flexibility: PPM platforms need to be flexible to ensure that you can easily
configure them to automate your organization’s unique processes and meet custom reporting requirements.



A connected work management platform: Depending on their role and preferences, employees and teams
will use a variety of productivity tools to receive and complete work. Organizations require a PPM solution that
can connect with common productivity tools so users can continue working in their preferred and accustomed
environment and easily provide updates to facilitate enterprise resource management and reporting.



Enterprise scalability and performance: Organizations require a PPM solution that can scale and support
deployments at the departmental and the enterprise level, meet peak use scenarios, handle large volumes of
data, perform across wide area networks (WANs), and support and empower the mobile workforce.



An extensible and programmable platform: Often organizations customize their PPM solution to automate
their unique requirements or to effectively integrate with third-party or homegrown systems to maintain data
integrity. Leading PPM solutions need to provide an open API and developer tools and resources to support
custom development activities.

The Microsoft PPM Solution provides a scalable, connected, and extensible platform that has the flexibility to meet
most business requirements and align with the organization’s enterprise architecture standards. The familiar
SharePoint user interface in Project helps enhance productivity, reduce training costs, and drive adoption. The
enhanced Project API, PSI, and connection with SharePoint and Visual Studio provide developers with the required
tools and resources to integrate with third-party systems and successfully build and deploy custom solutions.
Project Online offers flexible plans that help you quickly and easily sign up for the service that best fits your business
needs. With Project Online, you can be up and running with enterprise-grade reliability and zero upfront
infrastructure costs in no time at all. You can add teams and projects in minutes with a web-based portal. In
addition, you can stream Project Pro for Office 365, your project management desktop application, directly from the
web.
Project Online and Project Server also simplify administration through an improved console that provides one-stopshopping for both project and portfolio management capabilities. Improved administration helps to ensure that
PMOs can spend less time managing the system and instead focus on monitoring the PPM process.

Familiar User Interface Improves Adoption and Satisfaction
The Microsoft PPM Solution provides users with a familiar and consistent interface across Project Online, Project
Server, Project Professional, and Project Pro for Office 365, helping to enhance productivity, reduce training costs,
and drive adoption and satisfaction.
By building Project on top of SharePoint, the portfolio selection and analytical modules have a consistent SharePoint
user interface, ensuring a uniform experience across bottom-up and top-down PPM capabilities.


The Ribbon interface in Project provides users with a familiar experience, so they can work more efficiently whether
they are accessing Project capabilities through the browser (see Figure 7) or by using the powerful desktop
scheduling tool (see Figure 84).

Figure83:The Ribbon interface for Web-based editing

Figure 84: Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 – The Ribbon interface
The left navigation bar in Project is designed to better group related capabilities to enhance the user experience (see
Figure 85).
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 / PWA do contain distinctions between the user interfaces and
variety of views available to visualize and format project data. The web-based interface is ideal for access from
virtually anywhere and works in most web browsers. The Project Professional desktop client takes advantage of the
extra power of the Windows environment to deliver a rich and immersive interface.

Figure 85: New left navigation bar


Connected Work Management Solution
The connection between Project Online and Project Server with SharePoint provides organizations with all the tools
and services they need to automate their PPM processes. It also provides additional benefits for small teams that run
lightweight projects. Occasional project managers can use SharePoint task lists to manage simple projects and tasks,
without calling on the full rigor of Project. However, a SharePoint task list can easily be imported into Project at any
time if the team requires additional capabilities, or the manager can continue to execute the project in SharePoint
and sync status updates (with Project) to facilitate enterprise resource management and reporting.
Office 365 utilizes best practices and adds unique innovations to give users the power to mix and match the right set
of tools to meet business needs. Project Online brings SharePoint Online capabilities with it, and the experience only
gets better when licenses are added for Lync Online communication, Exchange Online email services, and streaming
Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to personal computers virtually anywhere. Visio Pro for Office
365 is also available as a subscription, enabling integration of business process modelling, zero-code workflow
design for demand management, data-connected dashboards, and traditional diagramming.

SharePoint
As mentioned throughout this guide, Project is built on SharePoint, bringing together powerful collaborative
platform services and structured execution capabilities to provide flexible work management solutions. This
connection provides organizations with all the required tools and services to automate fully their PPM processes.
The connection between the products also provides additional benefits for small teams that run lightweight
projects. Occasional project managers can use SharePoint task lists to manage simple projects and tasks, without
requiring the full rigor of Project (See Figure 86). However, at any time a SharePoint task list can easily be imported
into Project if the team requires additional capabilities, or the manager can continue to execute the project in
SharePoint and sync status updates (with Project) to facilitate enterprise resource management and reporting.

Figure 86: Lightweight project visibility and tracking using a SharePoint task list


Project Professional - SharePoint Sync
Enhanced synchronization between Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 with SharePoint (and
SharePoint Online) helps effectively connect teams, keep projects on track, and deliver the information they need,
no matter their location.

Lync
Whether you have urgent schedule changes or upcoming project milestones, Project seamlessly works with Lync,
enabling you to have real-time conversations and instant messaging (IM) from within your project. Presence in
Project enables you to see at-a-glance whether or not a team member is available to talk or send an IM to through
Lync. Simply hover over the individual’s name in your plan to see their status, and then click to send an IM. Your
team member can quickly respond so that you can update the plan or learn about changes.

Exchange Server
Project Server includes native interoperability with Exchange Server to ensure that team members can choose to
receive and update their tasks in Outlook (see Figure 87) using their PC, smartphone, or tablet. Project displays tasks
in Outlook, conveniently grouping them by project name. Team members receive notifications and quickly update
the completed percentage, work done, and remaining work values for tasks, and automatically sync the updates
with Project. Exchange integration ensures that organizations no longer have to install an Outlook add-in and
ensures that team members can stay connected and receive tasks in Outlook or Outlook Web App.

Figure 87: Users can conveniently receive and update their project tasks using Outlook


Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server
Unifying Project Online, Project Server, Project Pro for Office 365, and Project Professional with Microsoft Visual
Studio Team System Team Foundation Server helps to better connect the worlds of PPM and application
development. Connecting these disparate worlds empowers project managers and development teams to follow
their own methodologies (for example, agile versus waterfall), select optimal productivity tools, and yet remain
seamlessly connected throughout the development lifecycle.
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 provides native connectivity with Team Foundation Server,
ensuring that development managers can take advantage of the new user-controlled scheduling and Team Planner
features to help plan development sprints and better visualize and amend resource assignments. Managers can
simply extract and view all development activities as tasks in Project Profession a land Project Pro for Office 365 and
then amend and sync the updates back to Team Foundation Server. Managers control the data exchange through
the intuitive Team menu option in the Project Professional Ribbon (see Figure 88).

Figure 88: The Team menu option in the Project Professional/Project Pro for Office 365 Ribbon
With all development, activities captured in Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 the project manager
can simply synchronize with Project to better connect the worlds of project and portfolio management and
application development.


Simplified Administration and Ease of Use
Project Online and Project Pro for Office 365 simplify IT management, integrating the admin experience with
SharePoint so you can easily set up the service, add resources, and adjust permissions. Project also separates IT and
business settings so your Project Management Office (PMO) or business sponsor can manage the PPM aspects
without requiring additional assistance from IT. As a result, IT can easily achieve the following:


Utilize Active Directory (AD) synchronization in PWA to choose which AD group contains the teams that
you want to make resources. After entering the name of the AD group, you just click “Save and
Synchronize Now.” You still have the flexibility later to add resources that aren’t part of your AD groups.



Easily give your teams the right level of access through a new SharePoint-integrated security model in
PWA. Just click on the “Share your site” tile in PWA, type in the names of those who need access, pick the
appropriate permission level, and you’re done.



Separate IT and business settings—your Project Management Office (PMO) or business sponsor can
manage PPM settings without additional assistance from IT.

Project Online and Project Pro for Office 365 offer a series of features and benefits that simplify IT management and
improves performance by consolidating databases. Delivered through Office 365 and independently verified to
comply with world-class industry standards such as OData (open data protocol) for data mining and business
intelligence, Project Online and Project Pro for Office 365 offer Project Online offer enterprise-grade reliability with
a 99.9% financially-backed uptime Service Level Agreement. You also receive 24/7 IT support for critical issues that
ensure your business stays more secure and available. Other IT benefits include the following:
 No upfront infrastructure costs means predictable monthly costs and an easy deployment.
 Flexible service plans help you sign up your people for the term of service that best fits your business needs.
 Continuous data backup, disaster recovery, and globally redundant datacenters provide high-availability
and keep your information secured.
 Click-to-run, a streaming technology, quickly installs Project Pro for Office 365 over the Internet, internal
networks, local file systems or from offline media.
 Project for Office 365 installation comes directly from the web and takes just moments, without the need to
uninstall previous versions, enabling it to run side-by-side with existing Project applications.
Project helps PMOs and IT pros more effectively configure, deploy, and manage the PPM Solution with simplified
and streamlined administration capabilities. These enhancements ensure that administrators can better meet their
organization’s business requirements and spend less time managing the system, and instead focus more on the
successfully delivery of projects and portfolios. Enhancements include:
Centralized administration: Project unifies top-down portfolio management and bottom-up project management
capabilities within a single server. The improved one-stop administration console helps ensure that administrators
can effectively manage both top-down and bottom-up capabilities through one intuitive interface.
Departmental fields: The new Departmental fields in Project help ensure that administrators can associate and
filter enterprise project types (EPTs), business drivers, resources and custom fields with specific departments within
the organization. This new feature helps administrators provide business units with an appreciable level of
autonomy, eliminates unnecessary clutter so departments can focus on their data, and simplifies the creation of
reporting cubes while ensuring that PMOs maintain enterprise standardization and control.
Administer reporting cubes: Project includes an enhanced administration interface for displaying the status of and
managing available cubes. As a result, administrators can now easily manage all cube settings and data including
adding, copying, deleting, and refreshing cubes. Organizations can take advantage of improved performance and
cube build times by utilizing the on-premises version of Project to build smaller cubes independently.


Figure 89: Improved Reporting Administration
Elimination of ActiveX controls: Project simplifies deployment by eliminating ActiveX requirements across the
project, portfolio, and reporting capabilities of the solution. The removal of ActiveX controls helps improve security
and overcomes deployment complexities for organizations that block client-side controls in their environments.
Project permissions view: Project Permissions view empowers the project manager to control who can view or edit
their projects. Project managers no longer need to rely on an IT administrator to establish access rights to their
projects.
User Delegation: Project enhanced delegation capabilities empower users to easily name colleagues to act as their
delegate when on vacation, without assistance from a PMO officer or system administrator.


Figure 90: User Delegation Capabilities

Scalable, Extensible, and Programmable Platform
Project Online and Project Server are built on SharePoint and the Shared Service Provider (SSP) design has been
updated to a Service Application model that helps to increase scalability by allowing more services to run on the
application tier. Project architecture now requires64-bit capability across all servers in the farm, which inherently
provides additional scalability and throughput for project data profiles. Project Professional is also available in 64bitversion and 32-bit version. The 64-bit version ensures project managers can more easily work with larger project
plans and master projects that exceed the 2-gigabyte (GB) memory limit on earlier 32-bit versions.
Project Online provides the flexibility to scale up and out with ease. Costs of subscription services are
straightforward and make budgeting easier, easing the long-borne pain of complicated expense accruals across
businesses or departments. You can quickly update user licenses to reflect demand from an administration console
in moments, so the PMO can pilot Project Online without worry and scale out with ease.
With Project Online and Project Pro for Office 365 you can add teams and projects in minutes with a web-based
portal. You can also utilize apps from the new Office Store and the SharePoint Store to meet your unique business
needs. You can even manage team access to apps through a corporate catalogue.
Leading PPM solutions need to provide an open, extensible, and programmable platform to help ensure that
organizations can develop and deploy custom offerings and effectively integrate the toolset with LOB systems. The
PPM Solution includes the Project Interface, a flexible API that helps ensure that customers and Microsoft partners
can continue to extend Project to meet their unique requirements.
Because Project is built on SharePoint, developers can take advantage of a consistent and robust platform to rapidly
build and deploy solutions using familiar tools and services, including Windows Communication Foundation
Business Connectivity Services, Visual Studio, and SharePoint Designer.
Project Server is highly customizable, but to make it possible to deploy consistently updates to the cloud service,
Project Online has a new extensibility model, which limits some of the ways the environment can be customized.
Customers who need capabilities beyond what can be done through platform customizations can use the new app
store to plug in modules that have been developed in-house or licensed from third parties. With the app store,


features specific to an industry, methodology, or individual company can be implemented as necessary and
controlled on a user-by-user basis.

List of Acronyms
AMO

Analysis Management Object

API

Application Programming Interface

BI

Business intelligence

CPM

Critical Path Method

CRM

Customer Relationship Management

ECM

Enterprise Content Management

EPT

Enterprise Project Type

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning

EVM

Earned Value Management

FTE

Full-Time Equivalent

IRR

Internal Rate of Return

ISV

Independent Software Vendor

JIT

Just-In-Time

KPI

Key Performance Indicator

LOB

Line-Of-Business

NPV

Net Present Value

NPD

New Product Development

OLAP

Online Analytical Processing

PDP

Project Detail Page

PLM

Product Lifecycle Management

PMBOK

Project Management Body of Knowledge

PMO

Project Management Office

PMP

Project Management Professional

PPM

project and Portfolio Management

PSI

Project Server Interface

PTO

Paid Time Off

RDB

Reporting Database

ROI

Return On Investment

SSP

Shared Services Provider

WAN

Wide Area Network


PPM Solution System Requirements
Project Server
Software Requirements
Project Server requires SharePoint Server and the SQL Server 2008 Analysis Management Objects (AMOs).
Web Browser

The following browsers are required for a Project Server installation and for
client computers that will be using Project Web App:


Mozilla Firefox (latest released version)



Apple Safari (latest released version)



Microsoft Excel

Windows Internet Explorer 10.0, 9.0 or 8.0



Google Chrome (latest released version)

On premises (supported versions):



Excel 2013
Excel 2010

Project Online:

Excel 2013 only
Lync presence in Project
Web App or Project

One of the following:


Professional

Lync 2013 with Internet Explorer 10, Internet Explorer 9, Internet
Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox (latest released version), or Google Chrome



(latest released version).
Lync 2010 with Internet Explorer 10, Internet Explorer 9 or Internet



Explorer 8.
Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox (latest released
version), and Google Chrome (latest released version) with any Office
2013 application will provide the user a contact card, but no Lync
presence.

Workflow Editing

Requires both of the following:



Microsoft Project

SharePoint Designer 2013
Microsoft Visio 2013

2010 or 2007 can be used to preview 2013 files without editing capability

Professional
SharePoint Server

2013 Enterprise Edition

SQL Server

SQL Server 2012 (64-bit) or SQL Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) (64bit). The following components of SQL Server are required:


Database Engine



Analysis Services



Reporting Services



Management tools




Connectivity components

The SQL Server Agent service must be running.
If you plan to upgrade from a Project Server 2010 environment, be aware that
this version of Project Server does not support SQL Server 2005.
Windows Server

Windows Server 2012(64-bit) or Windows Server 2012 R2(64-bit) or Windows
Server 2008 R2(64-bit) with a minimum service-pack level of Service pack 1

Server Roles and Windows

Project Server requires the following Windows Server roles on each

PowerShell

application server in the farm:


Application server role



Web server role with Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0
Management compatibility enabled

In addition to these server roles, Project Server also requires enabling
Windows PowerShell.
Both the server roles and Windows PowerShell are configured automatically
by the SharePoint Server 2013 prerequisite installation tool (if not already
enabled).
SharePoint Server 2013

Project Server runs as a SharePoint Server 2013 service application and
therefore requires SharePoint Server 2013 prerequisite for Project Server 2013
installation. The following components of SQL Server are required:

Database Engine


Analysis Services



Reporting Services



Management tools



Connectivity components

SharePoint Server 2013 and the latest version of Project Server are available
only in 64-bit editions, and they require 64-bit editions of Windows Server
2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012.
Optional

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later
Visual Studio Team System 2012Team Foundation Server for Application
Lifecycle Management

My Tasks (task

Server requirements: Exchange Server 2013

synchronization with

Desktop requirements (supported Outlook versions):
 Outlook 2013

Exchange Server 2013,
Project Server 2013, and
SharePoint Server 2013)





Outlook 2010
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007





Windows Phone 7.5 or newer
iApple: OS 5 or newer

Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
Mobile requirements (supported mobile operating system versions):

Android 2.3 or newer


Active Directory

The domain controller must be one of the following operating systems:
 Windows Server 2012 R2

Synchronization
(Resources and security






groups)

Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2003

Hardware Requirements
When you plan for the hardware that is required for a Project Server deployment, as a starting point, you should
determine the usage requirements for your Project Server environment. These variables include the number of
projects, tasks, users, average tasks per project, and so on. By using the How datasets affect performance and
capacity in Project Server tables, you can compare the numbers from your environment to the data for small,
medium, and large datasets defined in their corresponding table. By selecting the dataset that most resembles the
usage requirements in your environment, you can use the recommended topology and associated hardware
requirements for your topology as a starting point when you plan for hardware for your Project Server deployment.
This section specifies the hardware requirements for a Project Server 2013 deployment based on the datasets
defined in How datasets affect performance and capacity in Project Server 2013.
Note: The minimum hardware requirements in this section are recommended in which only the required services to
run Project Server are enabled. Be aware that enabling additional SharePoint Server 2013 features in the farm may
require more resources. For more information about hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server
2013, see Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013.

Small dataset hardware recommendations for Project Server
The following are the recommended hardware requirements for a Project Server small dataset scenario. See How
datasets affect performance and capacity in Project Server 2013 for more information about how the small dataset
size is defined.

Minimum hardware requirements for a small dataset in Project Server
The minimum hardware topology for a small dataset scenario is a single–server deployment that contains the
following three tiers:





SQL Server
Application server
Front-end web server

The minimum recommended hardware requirements for the servers in this dataset are as follows:
Processor

64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core

RAM

24 GB for developer and evaluation use

Hard Disk

80 GB for installation
For production use, you need additional free disk space for day-to-day operations.
Add two times as much free space as you have RAM for production environments

Recommended hardware for Project Server for a small dataset
Project Server runs as a service application on SharePoint Server 2013, and usage by other service applications
generates additional resource usage (processor, RAM, and hard disk). While the minimum recommended
requirements are suitable for a small dataset with light usage, more substantial datasets and usage patterns may


require additional hardware resources. For a single-server deployment with a small dataset, we advise 16 GB of RAM
to assure a high level of perceived performance.
We recommend that, if possible, you separate your SQL Server tier from the Application and front-end web tiers by
placing your databases onto a dedicated computer that is running SQL Server.




Server 1: Application and front-end web
Server 2: SQL Server

For a two-tiered deployment supporting a small dataset, we recommend the following hardware requirements:

Front-end web and Application server hardware recommendations for Project Server
Processor


RAM

8 GB for developer or evaluation use
16 GB for production use

Hard Disk

80 GB

SQL Server hardware recommendations for Project Server for a small dataset
Processor

64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core (If your dataset size is significantly larger than
the medium dataset, we recommend 8 cores.)

RAM

16 GB

Hard Disk

80 GB

Medium dataset hardware recommendations for Project Server
The following are the recommended hardware requirements for a Project Server medium dataset scenario. See How
datasets affect performance and capacity in Project Server for more information about how the medium dataset
size is defined.

Minimum requirements for hardware for medium datasets for Project Server
The minimum recommended hardware topology for a medium dataset scenario is a three-tier deployment that
contains a dedicated server for each of the following:





Server 1: Front-end web server
Server 2: Application server
Server 3: SQL Server

For a three-tier deployment supporting a medium dataset, the following are the hardware minimum requirements:

Minimum hardware requirements for a Front-end web server for a medium dataset
deployment of Project Server
Processor


RAM

16 GB for single server and multiple server farm installation for
production use

Hard Disk

80 GB

Minimum hardware requirements for an Application server for a medium dataset
Processor


RAM



16 GB for single-server and multiple-server farm installation for
production use
Hard Disk

80 GB

Minimum hardware requirements for the SQL Server tier for a medium dataset
Processor

64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core (If your dataset size is significantly larger than
the medium dataset, we recommend 8 cores.)

RAM

16 GB

Hard Disk

100 GB

Recommended hardware for Project Server for a medium dataset
As a general prescription, you should prepare to handle additional user load and data load by having sufficient
computers to add more front-end web servers and Application servers to your topology. The hardware
specifications of your front-end web servers and Application servers can remain largely the same. A 4x2x1 topology
(four front-end web servers, two Application servers, and one computer that is running SQL Server) should be
sufficient for handling the needs of most medium data sets and usage patterns. However, scaling out your
Application and front-end web servers will add more load to the SQL Server tier, which you will have to compensate
for by adding more memory and CPU resources. The following SQL Server specification should be able to handle the
performance needs of most medium datasets.

SQL Server hardware recommendations for Project Server for a medium dataset
Processor

64-bit, eight-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core (If your dataset size is significantly larger
than the medium dataset, we recommend 8 cores.)

RAM

32 GB

Hard Disk

160 GB

Note: Ideally, you should separate and prioritize data among disks. Place your data files and your SQL Server
transaction logs on separate physical hard disks.
Note: RAID 5 should provide a good compromise between reliability, and throughput.
Additionally, if the SharePoint Server 2013 instance on which Project Server is coexisting with also experiences heavy
usage (for example, you are not using the instance specifically for Project Server functionality), we recommend a
separation of the Project Service database and the SharePoint Server 2013 content databases. This requires you to
place them on two dedicated computers that are running SQL Server.

Large dataset hardware recommendations in Project Server
The following are the recommended hardware requirements for a Project Server large dataset scenario. See How
datasets affect performance and capacity in Project Server for more information about how the large dataset size is
defined.
For large datasets, data load is the biggest concern. At a minimum, for large datasets you will want a 4×2×1
topology. The hardware characteristics of the front-end web and Application servers can generally remain the same
as those recommended for the small and medium datasets. However, because the SQL Server tier will be the
bottleneck, you may find that this constrains your ability to scale out to additional front-end web and Application
servers. If data load is the bottleneck, you may find that additional front-end web and Application servers do not
produce an improvement in throughput.
For large datasets, if the SharePoint Server 2013 instance that Project Server is coexisting with is also experiencing
heavy usage (that is, you are not using that SharePoint Server 2013 deployment specifically for Project Server


functionality), then we recommend that you separate the Project Server 2013 database from the SharePoint Server
2013 content databases, placing them on their own dedicated computer that is running SQL Server.
For a large data set, we recommend that you invest in additional resources on the SQL Server tier of your topology.
You can "scale-up" your SQL Server by adding additional RAM, CPU and hard disk resources.
The following are the minimum and recommended specifications for the SQL Server tier of a large dataset topology.

Minimum hardware requirements for the SQL Server tier for a large dataset
Processor

64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core (If your dataset
size is significantly larger than the medium dataset, we
recommend 8 cores.)

RAM

32 GB

Hard Disk

250 GB

Recommended hardware for Project Server for a large dataset

SQL Server hardware recommendations for Project Server for a large dataset
Processor

64-bit, eight-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core (If your dataset
size is significantly larger than the medium dataset, we
recommend 8 cores.)

RAM

64 GB

Hard Disk

300 GB



Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365
Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365 have the following minimum system requirements:
Processor
Memory

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster x86/x64 processor with SSE2 instruction set



1 GB RAM (32-bit)



2 GB RAM (64-bit)

Hard Disk

2 GB available

Operating System

Supported versions:



Windows 8



Windows 7



Windows 7



Windows Server 2008 Release 2

.NET Framework version 3.5 or 4.0 required
Display

Graphics hardware acceleration requires DirectX10 graphics card
1024×576 resolution or higher resolution monitor

Browser

Supported versions:









Office Excel 2007, Excel 2010, or Excel 2013



Visual Reports Requirements

Internet Explorer 10

Office Visio 2007, Visio 2010, or Visio 2013

Internet Explorer 9
Internet Explorer 8
Mozilla Firefox (latest released version)
Apple Safari (latest released version)
Google Chrome (latest released version)

Additional Resources
For expanded help, step-by-step guides, and video training on how to get the most of Project and the Microsoft
PPM Solution, visit Microsoft Project.
To learn more about Project and the Microsoft PPM Solution, refer to the following list of related links:
Project Portal - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project
Project Blog - http://blogs.office.com/b/project
Project Developer Center - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/office/aa905469
Microsoft Office Project TechNet - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/projectserver
Project Web Channel - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkVbjMOJpo-mlEpYt_07zQgP47pUw-qLx


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