All too often, the PMO cannot appropriately manage projects, schedules, and resources because of missing information. For many, resource availability is not truly visible because their time is split across project work and other duties – primarily IT Service delivery. So as a project manager, you may think you have open capacity on your team but you may later come to learn that there has been a spike in tickets or a major outage that has your team offline. Now what? Project deliverables, timelines, and expectations shift – the exact scenario we are trying to avoid.
To help mitigate this issue, the team at Sunnyvale, CA has taken the decision to create a unified view — this means that all service tickets, change management, and projects are managed in one place. Project Management meets Service Management. Time is tracked cohesively and resource capacity planning is a true reality. The CIO can use a single dashboard to glance over the day or month — are there tickets in danger of breaching an SLA, where is my project risk, where are my resources & what capacity do I have? She can even engage in resource capacity planning – looking at how reallocation could impact project deadlines and deliverables. The PMO can have this same view.
Why Projects & Service Management Belong Together
Optimizing Resources is a Priority for the PMO & Beyond
IT resources are stretched thin and there is no way that this can get fixed by adding enough headcount to make a difference – the way forward is to find a new path and one of the best ways to do this is to gain a better view into all work and resources – regardless of the type. When organizations manage tickets, change, and projects separately, the issues are far-reaching. Resource optimization is just one goal of the PMO – the other areas of focus include communication, tracking, and information transfer. One platform can help.
This can apply outside of IT as well – Project Management for the Masses. Areas such as marketing, HR, and facilities can equally benefit from a unified approach to project & service management.
Tickets Become Projects
What may come into IT as a ticket can blossom – into a full-blown project. When you are using a single platform, this can be a fluid motion – when the ticket becomes big enough that it needs to become a project, you can simply convert the ticket to a project and then assign resources & manage it – without rekeying data, without losing valuable information, and without draining your team further with redundant actions.
One Single Pane of Glass
When everything is in one place, CIOs can get better visibility to the entire operation — imagine one dashboard – tickets in violation of an SLA are in one box, projects at risk in another, projects with due dates in the next X days or months in another — everything is organized and everything is at your fingertips. The PMO can also gain visibility to the broader operation, facilitating a more cohesive team approach.