Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) and Data Visualization

Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) is a database management system. Because it links the projects portfolio delivery schedule status with all related data in each project (Scope, Time, Resource, and Cost) from one side and the business processes in the other side. It is the future gate for managing and control projects in the project based organization like consultant, contractors and developers who work on projects delivery. The most important examples of the EPPM outcomes are: creating visual for project life cycle status, managing resource pools, managing projects cost, managing project prioritizing, project ranking, resource information, cost code information and unlimited information you might store and manage in the EPPM database.

It is not logical and accepted in the 21st century with the huge development of systems and programs to continue running such organization using the old method by managing the projects as separated accounts. Using EPPM enhance business sustainability and revenue generation. EPPM gives visualization to the external and internal conditions. It improves managing business uncertainties by providing the decision makers the right information on the right time. EPPM is a great data visualization which most organization is missing. They usually use visualization through excel and other software. However the disadvantage of such systems is communication and data transfer which makes it difficult to get it right or it needs to be done every time you want to generate a report which is more time consuming and might create different out comes to previous report, while EPPM build on top of the previous report.

This article will concentrate on data visualization as a start for EPPM creation and management.

Data visualization is the information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information. In another terms it is the visualization representation of data meaning by organizing data by different forms, adding context and cross checking to data scattering. The most known visual data encoding examples are by bars, chart, shape, size, color, and customized dashboards.

Data visualization is always linked to the data management and business process. Data management is a unending task. It includes data collection, check, sorting, and entry, check, cross checking, confirming and security. Therefore, who works on data management could be divided into two groups. The first team one is the professionals who are familiar with the data field. They understand what to collect and how to sort it out and check it. The second team is the data entry who might be not familiar with the data and his job is to enter the data with no scrutiny or thinking. Here, if we have to use less cost data entry, we must ensure the systems and the supervision of data managed is high to pick up discrepancies data and misrepresentation. This misrepresentation includes missing data too.

Data visualization as mentioned above is linked to the business process. Business process includes tasks. Tasks must have, defined scope, a timeframe delivery and resources to do it. Therefore representing the data must be identified by cutoff date and time. Business process must be defined and tested. EPPM is a challenge to organization with no clear business process. Defining the right business processes is the secret for sustainable business and success.

Data management, presentation and analysis must be supervised by project management professionals. An example of this is using a cost engineer who is finance background against a cost engineer who is an engineer with cost control course or experience. Using non engineers on project based organization to manage such data is still used everywhere because the limited numbers of engineers who are professionals in project management with business orientation and knowledge. Most engineers who like to work in managing project based organization used to study MBA or used to do few days’ workshop training. However, this is another subject to write about in the future.

Huge data management is a challenge for nonprofessionals who can’t manage it. Some organization might prefer to divide the problems in easy part to solve (separate the projects) rather than making a bigger problem. Here, the decision makers are trying to run away of a must organization development. They might not have the skills within the organization and the organization maturity is far away from high standards. However, acknowledging this maturity might delay the decision to go for EPPM systems, although, you can’t survive the markets torments with the old systems.

The core rationalizing check point for the need of such system is your revenue record for the last ten years. If it is not sustainable and going up and down then you must go for EPPM. Remember, building such system would take from 1 year to 3 years based on your organization maturity.

In conclusion EPPM would add greater context and create a powerful, comprehensive view of the business situation and provide solution one click away from the decision maker.

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