Enterprise Project Management: The Different Perspectives

There are several perspectives that can be taken regarding Enterprise Project Management (EPM) and its various characteristics. The first is that EPM is purely a form of software that does nothing but manages and implements all of an enterprise’s various projects. While this is certainly true and the software application chosen to implement EPM is critical, perhaps more critical is identifying the strategic principles of EPM and how they relate to the enterprise prior to actually selecting and deploying a software application or suite to manage an enterprise’s projects.

EPM provides a corporate level perspective of all of an enterprise’s various projects and examines how these projects strategically align with an enterprise’s core strategy. At the highest strategic level EPM allows an enterprise to ensure that its vision, mission, and strategic goals are adequately reflected in all of its projects no matter how far removed from the executive office. Thus, even the selection of an appropriate EPM software solution reflects the need for strategic management to review this software solution in order to ensure that it allows selective input derived from corporate level strategies and is not just a complicated time scheduling tool for the project manager alone.

To better understand EPM it is best to define what is meant by a project and to place a project where it most properly belongs in the corporate hierarchy of action planning.

A project is simply a collection of activities that require resources to be committed to them and that are planned and executed in a controlled fashion that is supposed to result in a positive outcome relative to the enterprise. Basically, a project is a resource conversion mechanism that changes resources (time, quality, costs) into recognizable units which are conceived of as being a product and/or a service. Projects fit within the broader framework of a program which performs a set of functions within any given organization such as research and development (R&D) or sales and marketing (S&M), among others.

Above the program level is the strategic level that aligns the enterprise’s business level strategy; its programs, with its corporate level strategies to ensure that the actual work of the enterprise is achieving the desired outcomes as stated in its corporate goals and objectives.

In order to more effectively manage all these operational and strategic challenges enterprises implement EPM processes and solutions, in the form of operating methodologies and software, to ensure the most effective work is accomplished.

EPM accomplishes all of these activities through implementing a series of policy and procedural guidelines into a unified project management framework monitored through software applications consisting of the following dimensions:

• Project selection criteria guidelines
• Project planning requirements
• Project termination criteria
• Project controls that measure for progress (metrics)
• Human resource contributions

Human resources is not a formalized component of EPM software applications nor is it a fixed component of EPM methodologies but the selection of competent project management personnel and the project team requires some degree of human resource related competence in and of itself which someone in the organization must take responsibility for. It is an important distinction within the specialty of EPM that even the best and most effective EPM solution will fail if it is not selected, implemented, and managed appropriately.