Release 3.7 of iPlanWare PPM includes a host of new features to make your project or resource based organisation more productive.
Resource capacity planner
Still trying to perform resource planning and capacity planning in an Excel spreadsheet? The new version of iPlanWare PPM builds on an already strong PPM offering to deliver advanced resource capacity planning functions.
The capacity planner lets you identify your priority projects and model the effects of doing different projects on your resources. You can even model the effects of delaying of advancing projects to solve resource issues. Multiple scenarios can be created to let you “play” until you have a resource plan that works for your organisation.
Budgets and cost tracking
The budget and cost tracking features have been updated to help you track your project budgets, costs and revenues in greater detail and easily spot variances. So whether you are an internal function focused on costs or a professional service organisation focused on revenue, the new finance tracking features will help you zero in on the numbers.
In addition to the features above, iPlanWare 3.7 ships with over 20 other new features and updates.
Are you struggling to understand if you can take on more work, or how to best fit projects around your available resource? These are the types of questions capacity planning in iPlanWare helps you get answers to. Most organisations have a reasonably fixed supply of resource, so they have to make decisions about what projects to do and when to do them. Capacity planning helps you make sense of the shifting priorities within an organisation and direct resources to the most valuable work in your organisation.
What kind of questions will capacity planning help you with?
As new work requests are raised and project priorities changed, executives and resource planners need easy to use tools that let them model different project options and answer questions such as:
What projects can we do given the resources we have available?
If we need to start up a new project – what impact will it have on other projects?
Where can we fit a new high priority project into our overall work plans?
Do we need to delay lower priority projects to take on new work?
If we cancel lower priority projects, will this free up resource for more important projects?
Key features of the resource capacity planner within iPlanWare
Perform what if analysis on different mixes of projects across the portfolio.
Model the effects on your resources of delaying or advancing projects.
Use strategic drivers and objectives to prioritise your projects.
Quickly identify shortfalls or over supply of resource.
Move projects around to find a best fit given available resource.
The iPlanWare MS Project Connector is a powerful plugin for MS Project and provides an integration link between MS Project and iPlanWare PPM.
Using the iPlanWare MS Project Connector you can export project plans from MS Project into iPlanWare and import plans from iPlanWare back into MS Project. Simple to use and effective!
Once plans have been loaded into iPlanWare you can still use regular iPlanWare features such as timesheets, resource forecasting and capacity planning against the project plans. Of course, if you don’t use MS Project – iPlanWare ships with an easy to use planning tool which provides a nice alternative to MS Project.
If you are looking for an MS Project Server alternative which is easier to use and faster to implement – iPlanWare and MS Project make a compelling solution.
If you want to see the connector in action, check out this movie.
Why implement a PMO? A compelling reason is that organisations who implement a PMO deliver more projects on time and on budget and are able to make better decisions about how to allocate their resources. A recent study by Gartner Group discovered that nearly 70% of organisations that have implemented a PMO report that project success rates have improved significantly.
Irrespective of the type of organisation, a PMO can make a significant contribution to project outcomes and business decisions.
In organisations we work with, a common set of reasons are cited as the drivers for setting up a PMO and include excessive rates of project failures, cost reduction, resource issues and management having insufficient information about projects and their status.
Are you in the process of setting up a PMO? If so download our free white paper creating a project management office (PMO). It explores topics such as why organisations implement a PMO and runs through the services a PMO can provide to the organisation.
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