Keeping an eye on IT

As a professor of MIS at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business, Reagan Ramsower didn't need a crash course in project portfolio management. But when he took over as Baylor's first CIO 15 months ago, he got one anyway.

These days, Baylor's IT division, with a budget of $15 million and a staff of 130, is managing upwards of 150 projects on the Waco, Texas, campus. With rare exception, IT can deliver them on time and on budget, Ramsower says. But without project portfolio management (PPM), it probably wouldn't be possible.

Put simply, PPM is the tracking and management of multiple IT projects with a clear eye on the costs and benefits as well as the potential overlap among them. In that sense it is simply project management applied collectively to a company's entire group of projects.

"Portfolio management says we're going to look at this collection of programs from the point of view of time and cost and risk and value," says Howard Rubin, executive vice president of Meta Group. "In particular, it reinforces the dimension of risk and value."

Value was exactly what Ramsower was concerned about. Baylor's president has outlined a 10-year vision for where he wants to take the school, and Ramsower wanted to ensure the IT department's projects were aligned as closely as possible with its goals.

Ramsower turned to Project Office, a client/

server portfolio management tool from Pacific Edge Software. But even from the beginning, he never expected it to be a silver bullet that would solve all his problems.

"I knew there wasn't a tool that would really get me to where I needed to be," he says. "I entered into it thinking there were some tools out there but that we would need to essentially partner with a firm that would work with us to develop those tools over time."

Indeed, the tools are relatively immature, and while they are evolving quickly, they are not yet able to provide complete oversight. At the same time, analysts caution buyers to be careful of the buzzword appeal of PPM. While many products claim to provide it, few actually do. (See graphic.)

"A good portfolio tool tells you how many projects you have in the planning stage, the loads on the organization, the demands on resources, and nobody does that [perfectly] as yet," says Gopal Kapur, president of the Center for Project Management.

Few people in Ramsower's organization were familiar with the principles of project management. One reason he chose Project Office was its ease of use. Staffers would spend enough time getting comfortable with the concept, and he didn't want the software adding more frustrations.

In particular, Ramsower was happy with the straightforward way the tool lets projects be defined through templates. Ramsower also says Project Office allows for a wide variation in PPM methodology, making for smooth integration between a company's internal process and the application.

On the downside, Ramsower says he'd like to see better integration between the task structures in Project Office and those in Microsoft Outlook.

"If I'm a systems programmer and I pull up Outlook, I'd like to see my tasks aligned and coordinated with those in Project Office," says Ramsower, who is discussing his concerns with engineers at Pacific Edge.

However, Ramsower says buyers of PPM software should worry less about the functionality than about training their staff members.

"The biggest benefit has been the discipline it has imposed on all of our projects, even small ones," says Ramsower, who says the school is now more selective about the IT projects it pursues. "The structure lets us be more effective in terms of delivering on time and within budget."

Project Office was helpful in converting the human resources and alumni development system from a terminal-based application to client/server. "Project Office forced us to sit down and delineate the tasks involved and group them into meaningful categories," says Becky King, director of information systems and services for Baylor. "It really helped keep us on track. We felt like there were fewer things that got left out or forgotten."

Analysts say PPM can reduce the overall number of IT projects by more than 30%. In Baylor's case, it has simply let the department prioritize better. Today, Ramsower says, there are more projects on the books than when he started the job, but management of them is better than ever.

Baylor's project list now includes an 18-month-long upgrade to the student information system, an enterprisewide application that manages course schedules, tuition payments and a host of other student-related matters, and the implementation of a VPN for remote access.

"If you don't have good project management processes in place, then a tool is not going to help you," says Matt Light, a research director at Gartner. "But if you have those processes in place, you can render them more efficient and effective with the help of a PPM tool."

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Duffy is a freelance writer in Haydenville, Mass. He can be reached at tomduffy62@aol.com.