Projects scoring system in PMO

Many of Project Management Office (PMO) realize number of projects in parallel and quite often it raises the resources conflict. That is mostly about people, but it includes also hardware, budgets and the others. Companies fix these conflicts (or not) in different way...

Independent project teams

Very good solution is to organize the whole company basing on project or product teams focused fully on realizing dedicated project/product road-map. The organization structure is quite simple and there is no management conflicts like two managers claiming that particular task/person's work is her/his duty. That approach allows also to assign 100% time of particular person to the one and one thing only, what is base assumption for most Agile methodologies. This allows people also to specialize deeply and company may benefit from it in low "introduction cost" when new project starts.

The drawback of this solution is limited possiblity of resources load balancing. You do not have "universal soldiers", which you can use at various projects and you must accept situations, when particular people have "lazy time" in particular project phases - eg. during stabilization phases developers are not allowed to add new functionalities, testers does not have much to do when developers prepare the first prototype, analysts turn on usually at the beginning and at the end of projects etc. These situations causes that number of companies have dedicated managers/leaders positions, which focus on managing resources in parrarel with project managers...

Renting services from specialized teams

In this approach the project manager (PM), when he starts the projects asks internal team leaders (eg. one for analysts, developers and testers) how much time will cost them to do particular job (eg. analysis, development, testing). PM has also free choice, if he wants to use internal or external resources - it put team leaders in competetive position to the market possibilities. PM has usually a choice, if he wants to supervise personally the resources (smaller projects, times&material) or move part of the responsibilities to subteams leaders (bigger projects, fixed price). That follows Prince2 guidelines and its 3 or 4 level organization.

The drawback of this solution is that PMs compete for resources, what raises number of conflicts. How to define, which projects are more important?

On the surface the answer seems to be simple... Where the purse with possible profits is the biggest!!! :D

Unfortunatelly the devil is details! and it starts from tricky simple questions... What is the probability of gaining money? When we will see them? Are the money the most important? Most of companies have quite high, informal political factor eg. we must do the project X, even when we have small profit from him, but we win in this way very important sector of the market... and similar and so on... Do you know it? If you have PMO, I bet you do ;)

Prioritizing projects

I know that is a horrible thing to write, but... I thought about this, during summer weekend when my skin were becoming brown ;) and then I have reminded myself about Kerzner book "Advanced Project Management", which shows number of real stories like the one above. Quite quickly I have found Drawing 7.8 "Scoring model for one project". The simples solutions are the best, so instead of explaining the whole solution I have prepared the simpler version of the matrix... where each 5 key managers taking a part in steering comitee meetings got 5*[number of projects], which they could spend at any projects as they wanted as far as no more than 10 points are spent for one. When scoring, each person must describe the key factor, which has been used to assign points. Of course the director voice is stronger than managers, so there is also wages system, which is always specific for the company as well as group of people doing the excerise. Generally the whole mechanism is quite simple...

In pratice, you need to do it couple of times until the importance are fitting the company specific and they are satisfactory for the whole commitee. The main target of it is to provide the guidelines for the whole company, when more than one person is engaged in setting the real company's strategy. Of course the whole excercise must be redone once per some time, depending on how often the strategy changes and new projects appear or existing are finished.

And one tip at the end... Take the fat book with yourself, when you introduce the system like the one. When I put the Kerzner (3kg of wisdom) on the table, everybody have been more interested in it, than in the prioritizing concept. It allowed me to go smoothly through the acceptance chain of pain :D

Sucessfull scheduling

I have been asked lastly if I know how to schedule successfully. For novice PM the task seems to be easy in Microsoft Project - simple Gantt chart is all what you need. More experienced fellow, who has realized at least one bigger project will just smile as he knows already how tricky the life is.

PMBoK defines 4 main project dimensions - scope, quality, time and budget. Most of stakeholders likes to track mostly the schedule (time) as it is the easiest thing to track. PM must be a solid man to be able to clarify connections between schedule changes and 3 others things (scope, quality and budget) - this is why the best option is to avoid baseline changes.

There are the following key tips, which should be followed in any schedule - some of them may be for you a cliche, but believe me that they are easy to forget:

1. Ensure that you included any formal holidays (may and december is full of them in Poland) or informal holidays (like the integration camp)
2. Ensure that you included teammembers holiday&training plans within project timeframe (like any other days when they are not at work)
3. Estimate time conservatively, but remember about the Parkison's paradox - somehow even the longest predicted time for a task will be used in 100%
4. You MUST to have some buffer if somebody will be sick, if things will go not as planned - higher the project risk is, bigger the buffer should be. 20% is the default value calculated once by Accenture.
5. Include milestones (0 day long tasks) to mark achieving important moments in the project
6. Prepare for change - make the schedule as simple and as solid as possible so it is easy to maintain. For example if you have the team-mate who will do 4 concurrent tasks, it does not have a sense usually to model it in the schedule as 4 tasks with 25% usage of resource - usually 2 or even 1 task is enough.
7. Make phases as short as possible (1-3 months) and at the end of each has some part of visible and production work finished - yes, it comes from agile world and it works!
8. Share the schedule among all teammates - how you do it, it is up to you, but everybody should have the schedule in their vision range daily.
9. Save the baseline and track the schedule at least weekly - have a quick session with your teammates and review progress.
10. Prepare that the last 10% of task will be the worst and it will consume about 20% of your time.

I know many PMs and each of them schedule slight differently, even when they use the same MS Project - they have they own scheduling style, so to speak. The bullets below are just the guidelines and you may have your reasons to do the things differently:

• Use schedule calendars to realize (1) and personal calendars to realize (2). Tools>Change work time.
• Note who estimates too conservatively and too optimistically and make necessary corrections of their estimations (3).
• The task should not last more than 5 working days (3)
• Use dependencies between projects wherever possible - do not use constant start and end date (this approach causes usuaylly that the schedule is harder to maintain)
• When using dependecies there is quite cool option to delay or make quicker particular task - use it wherever applicable
• Very often if you request the time buffer offically you get the refusal from the stake holder - this is why the best approach is to add AT THE END of each important task group the solid task(s) like integration or unit tests with significant amount of time and ensure it is on critical section as only than it is a real bugger; you as PM are responsible for efficent usage of it during the project (4)
• MS Project gives many different ways to share the schedule among people - tasks via emails, WebAccess, EPM, Project Reader etc. I have tried most of them and I must say that still the best way is to print on paper number of copies of the schedule and pass them to all the teammates and hang it somewhere in visible place (8)
• Printing schedules in MS Project is the art itself, but there is very usuful way to do it nicely - delete all the irellevant task like the next unestimated phase (but do not save the change), go to print preview>page settings and use the option of fitting to 1 page (for small projects) or more (for big projects).
• If the schedule does not go as it is planned and the difference is significant, you must be tough enough to admit it and introduce the repair plan - do not hide the problem under the carpet, do not limit the time for tests or other following actions because any of this solutions will explode at your face later on and it will be just worse. I know it is a painful thing to explain this type of things to the stakeholders, but believe me... Even when they will angry on you, you may always tell that at least your are this type of person who can openly discuss the issue and... do not kill the messanger ;) (9)
• If the project goes better than planned, never ever promise too much... If it will be finished on time - you are the one then (10)
• Use "Resources workload" to ensure that there is no overallocation
• Using "Rosources spreadsheet" you may add cost of work and calculate easily the cost of work for the whole project
• ALWAYS, ALWAYS remember what is the target of the project and ALWAYS have it in front of your face - do not loose yourself in papers as you are not a EU clerk and do not loose yourself playing with toys as you are not a kiddo ;)

Sources of knowledge

Mood: Just after straight-11 free days without ANY business phone call (can you imagine that?)
Link: Odd Christmas wishes

I have got some time ago the very good question: "Where from do I know, what I know?". I am the type of the guy, who asked about non expected thing, usually can not come up quickly with a clever answer, so I answer something not-clever-enough. The problem is that, this type of things keep staying in the darkness of my mind for some clever-enough story. The worst of all, the dark side of the soul wakes up usually 5' after I should be already sleeping and once per a while instead of behaving like the 31 years old man should behave I get to the laptop and write something like right now (tommorow morning will be truely a horrible intiation of the new year ;) ).

Anyway... lets do the home work.

I am the type of the guy who does not like to go to the courses, which I usually very expensive, time-consuming, borning and not-engouh related with the real life. This is way I usually prefer some self-pace paths, where books and web materials are the best, primary friends. In case of Microsoft certificates (MCSD.Net) I also convinced my boss to buy the examination training kit from Transcender (wow! they have a new web page) and I was very satisfied from it. I always focus myself and my subordinates to focus on some certificate. It is not to be some type of a label whore, who needs to have a jeans from Wrangler in order to feel better, but having a material goal is always a good motivator and the one, which you can set in time - usually the certain date and hour of the exam, when you shake like the leaves on a tree in autumn. Anyway I am crossing my fingers for you ;) and I give you one hint...

If you fails, there is always a possiblity to have a next shoot. I remember until today one exam at my university, when I had three make-ups; the most horrible was that each time I have spend doubled amount of time over the books and the result was doubled misrable :D The professor Jan Węglarz finally gave me the lowest possible note to pass, just to get my out of the range of his sight. Staying in front of him I truely considered to refuse the offer despite my desprate situation, but as usually my opprotunistic side has won ;) EVERYBODY has at least one story of this type - you must to set up and take a challenge.

The second and more interesting source of knowledge are people. There are two main figures who have been the sources and spiritus movens (surprsingly I could not find yet the english explanation of these latin words). One of them is positive and second one is rather negative.

The first one, was Clem Predergast who rather acts than publish and this why there is nothing about him on the web. He was though the one, true manager whom I met and whom I could watch managing and leading the people in software projects. It was more about the soft skills and possibility to motivate people in right direction, but there was also about the "know-how" import from Irish island and Performix company. How the support mechanisms works, how QA labs should look like, what road show is about, where there is a sense to pump the money and how to gain the support from executives. He had tones of his phresals, which I am sure, most of people who have worked with him, will remember for a long time like "all hands on pump". I keep catching myself on repeating them or doing some small things in the same why how he did it like learning first how "cool" and "shit" sound in foreign language, when I am in one these countries where german and english is not the mother tongue. Learning by the example is definitely the best possible method.

The second person is much more interesting and I have been growing up with this feeling for years. This person had probably better hard skills than I had on each, technical level - starting from code, through the architecture and finshing at methodologies knowledge (especially the agile once). I am quite sure that he still has these skills better, but he had some problems with soft skills. Unfortunatelly it has appeared after some time that we do not work together but against. Why I come up the situation? Because he was a perfect challenge, which (or rather who), I admit publically in this new 2008 year, still sits in my mind and keep challenge me in the ares, which about we had this short, usually intense discussions. Of course that is not my main or even secondary motivator, but for example it forces me to review once per a while all the existing methodologies and only the ones, which I prefer or can be useful.

Where books can be treated as hardware, people would be the software - you need both and you need to have some balance. You need to have hardware to load software, you should not have too much software on the weak machine and the most important... do you really need Vista? :D

Preparing for Prince2 exam

About Prince2 exams
Prince2 stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environment and it is non-agile type of project management methodology. It bases on customer-supplier pair, who wants to make a business (represented by business cases) in a strictly formalized way, to avoid some possible misunderstanding or potential conflicts. The methodology operates mostly on customer side and it is optional for supplier, who may use different methodology (even agile).

Prince2 was financed, registered and developed by British governmental organization Office of Government Commerce (OGC). The courses, exams and materials are provided by APM Group. There are two exams to certify the knowledge in the area:
Prince2 Foundation – 1 hour long multiple choices, just to prove you may take a part in projects, 50% good answers are enough and 99% candidates pass
Prince2 Practioner – 3 hours long objective testing multiple choices, to prove you may run and manager projects, 50% good answers are enough and 75-80% candidates pass
More about exams details - here.

The interesting thing is that many companies offering authorized Prince2 courses refuses “just exam” option, even when it is not against the APM Group rules. If you are willing to take the self-learning path, probably you will need to use British Council. If it is not an option, contact APM Group directly and remember to choose the examination language ;)
More about taking exams - here.

About Prince2
It is focused on processes and documents flows maintained within 3 main folders for project, each stage and quality. Management is split into 2+ levels (above Project Board there is Company or Programme management, but it is outside Prince2 scope):

• Project board – taking strategic decisions, before-and-after stages and when project manager reports exceptional situation (beyond established level of tolerance). Its members must represent main 3 interests – customer, supplier and business.
• Project manager – taking daily tactical decisions
• Team leader (optional) – may take over part of project manager duties especially if some specialized (eg. technical) teams takes a part in a project

Prince2 consists mainly of 8 processes (flows), 8 components (key elements used in flows) and 3 techniques (important approaches across all processes realized with use of components). The methodology is though scalable and the minimum is 2 level organization (board and manager) and 2 processes (initialization and acting).

The Prince2 is a brother of PMBoK methodology. The main difference is though that Project Manager Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) answers the question what PM should know, and PRINCE2 answers a question what PM should do.

Processes
Detail list of all sub-process you may find in number of places like english or polish wikipedia. The scope of the paragraph is to show the boundaries of the processes and linkages between them.

· Starting up a project (SU) [Uruchamianie Projektu/Przygotowanie Założeń Projektu (PP)] – it is about organizing Project Board [Komitet Sterujący] and nominating Project Manager (creating Organization component) and preparing documents for first strategic decision
Input: Project Mandate [Zlecenie Przygotowania Projektu] document
Output: Project Brief [Podstawowe Założenia Projektu], Project Approach [Formuła realizacyjna], Initation Stage Plan (IP) [Plan etapu Inicjowania projektu (IP)]

· Directing a project (DP) [Strategiczne zarządzanie projektem (ZS)] – that is about taking strategic decisions by Project Board; they are always taken when one process/stage finishes and next is about to begin OR if Project Manager request exceptional situation and wants to put into play the Exception Plan
Input: Output from previous stage and plans for the next one from PM
Output: Decision

· Initiating a project (IP) [Inicjowanie projektu (IP)] – when SU is just the general approval to work over vision of the project, IP is about the detail preparation for project realization split into one or number of management stages (they may be parallel to operation stages). It is about quality, risk register, business cases, controls and setting up documentation flow gathered at the end into one key Project Initiation Document. It includes also planning the basic budget plus changes and reserve budgets.
Input: SU [PP] input and permission from Project Board (DP1) [ZS1]
Output: Project Initiation Document [Dokument Inicjujący Projekt]

· Controlling a stage (CS) [Sterowanie Etapem (SE)] – As mentioned above the realization of the project is split into one or many management stages. Within the stage the full responsibility is delegated on PM, who fully manages tactical decisions and optionally he may delegate his responsibilities on team leaders. The process is about all the actions linked with authorizing and acceptance of performed work packages (1,9), controlling the project progress (2,5), registering and managing issues appearing during a project (3,4), reporting to project board (6), small (7) and big (8) crisis management depending if the problem is going out of established tolerance scope or not.
Input: Project Initiation Document and output from previous stage (if any)
Output: Realized set of work packages within controlled time and budget

· Managing product delivery (MP) [Zarządzanie Wytwarzaniem Produktów (WP)] – Prince2 is products based planning. The management products may be split into the specialized products, which may be realized outside the company. The process is mainly about dealing with such a situation. It is a very simple process consisting off three parts – accepting (1), executing (2) and delivering (3) work packages. It is the lowest possible in Prince2 acting level - doing the thing.
Input: CS1 [SE1] work package authorization > (1)
Output: 2 > CS2 [SE2] project progress 3 > CS9 [SE9] work package acceptance

· Managing stage boundaries (SB) [Zarządzanie Zakresem Etapu (ZE)] – When “Controlling a stage” process is coming to the end and a new stage is planned this process is run as a preparation for new stage including updates of project plan, business case and risk register. The result of it is Final Stage Report and plan for the next stage (small IP process), which is presented to Project Board for acceptance. The process is also used for crisis management if some significant changes to the base plan are necessary (the path CS8>SB6>DP3)
Input: Current project documentation
Output: Final Stage Report, plan for the next stage or input for “Closing a project”

· Closing a project (CP) [Zamykanie Projektu (ZP)]

· Planning (PL) [Planowanie (PL)] – planning is unique process as it is a parallel thing happening in the background through the whole project life cycle. This is mainly about documentation review and keeping it consistent. It includes products management, configuration management, schedule, risks register etc. It is especially used at sub-processes SU[PP]6, DP6 [ZS6], IP2 [IP2], MP1 [WP1], SB[ZE]1,2,6
Input: Various
Output: The project plan

1. Prince2 process flow

8 components:

• Business Case [Uzasadnienie biznesowe]– The justification behind the project.
• Organization [Organizacja] – The way in which the personnel involved in the project are structured.
• Plans [Plany] – Documents describing what the project should accomplish, how the work should be carried out, when it should be carried out and by whom.
• Controls [ Elementy sterowania] – The way in which the project manager and project board should exercise control over the project including the things like tolernace, reports etc.
• Management of Risk [ Zarządzanie ryzykiem] – The way in which the project should approach and manage risk. PRINCE2 defines a risk as uncertainty of outcome, which may be either a positive opportunity or a negative threat. Enlisted risks are analyzed and then, they are managed in one of 5 ways – prevention, reduction, reassignment (for example on the external company eg. insurance), acceptation, planning the reserve budget in IP process.
• Quality in a Project Environment [ Jakość w środowisku projektu] – The way in which the project should ensure that a quality product is delivered. Prince2 does not specify details and it relays on external standards – especially the once already used by the customer or supplier.
• Configuration Management [ Zarządzanie konfiguracją]– The way in which the project's products are identified and tracked including versions management.
• Change Control [ Sterowanie zmianami] – The way in which the project manages any changes to specification or scope of its products. Benefits/Savings versus risk,cost and time.

3 techniques

• Product Based Planning – the technique of planning based on defining the products, establishing their hierarchy and than the relations between them – product flow diagram. Based on this information the plan is created including the schedule, quality and risks.
• Change Control – the technique of registering and taking decisions about the planned changes including analysis and granting permission plus planning Changes Budget in IP process.
• Quality Reviews – how the quality assurance should be performed on a regular basis, in order to provide the planned quality level

Prince2 Maturity Model (P2MM)
As Prince2 is scalable solution and many companies are willing strongly to get Prince2 label for minimum cost, many companies suffer PINO (Prince In Name Only) syndrome. OGC develops lastly the maturity model as the remedy for this, which defines 5 levels:

• 1 Initial Does the organisation recognise projects and run them differently from its ongoing business? (Projects may be run informally with no standard process or tracking system.)
• 2 Repeatable Does the organisation ensure that each project is run with its own processes and procedures to a minimum specified standard? (There may be limited consistency or co-ordination between projects)
• 3 Defined Does the organisation have its own centrally controlled project processes, and can individual projects flex within these processes to suit the particular project?
• 4 Managed Does the organisation obtain and retain specific measurements on its project management performance and run a quality management organisation to better predict future performance?
• 5 Optimised Does the organisation run continuous process improvement with proactive problem and technology management for projects in order to improve its ability to depict performance over time and optimise processes?

APM Group among others, provide the maturity assessment to define the existing level of organization maturity and prepare the action plan to improve it for future (most of companies offering authorized Prince2 trainings does it as well).

Resources
„Understanding Prince2” Ken Bradley (polish version)
Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 (polish version)
NOTE! There is a newest edition of these books, which you may buy in AMPG shop.
Polish and English wikipedia
Sample exam questions

PS.
I have just passed the Prince2 Foundation exam - happy Christmas ;)

Marriage of Prince2 with Microsoft Solution Framework

Very often there pop-ups the question like: 'What of methodologies do you know/use?'. There is usually some smart answer like PMBoK, RUP or SCRUM, but when the question is drilled down, it appears out of the blue that there is just the set of unique practices - the mixed salad from everything what market offers and world wide web says about. There is nothing wrong with it and furthermore it is a wise strategy to collect patiently the practices, which truely works. Wise senior executives will slow down the saint paladins, who coming back from the training are trying to change the whole company into the Six Sigma or whatever else. Of course this type of change is possible, but it must be implemented incrementally and it must respect existing well-working practices, even if they do not fit to the template.

For a long period of time I have been using (or I have tried to use) the MSF and I am quite used to it. Of course, there had to be some compromises each time and it was never the pure implementation. For example just once I had the situation where there was the true separation of the project and product manager roles.

Nevertheless at my current position, there is a strong rule across the whole department to use the Prince2 methodology. This type of situation, common and strong support from top executives, does not happen often. I am currently on my learning curve of the methodology and I must admit that only things, which you do not know scares you. Furthermore, it seems to be a good fit to treat a Prince2 as a general flow of documents on higher, execuitve level, where written documents are necessary to take some serious, strategic decisions and MSF as a parallel, technological flow on a tactical level.

The main flow of the Prince2 is more-or-less as follows:

• [DOC] Project Mandate
• [PROC] Starting up a project (SU)
• [DOC] Project brief
• [PROC] Directing a project (DP)
• [PROC] Initiating a project (IP)
• [DOC] Project Initiation Document
• [PROC] Directing a project (DP)
• Stages after stage
• [PROC] Closing a project (CP)
• [DOC] End Project Report

DOC : Document
PROC : Process

DP is mostly about decisions of a steering committee : 'do we continue a project or not?'
There can be any number of stages, one after the other
Stage is in fact the mixture of the four processes: Controlling a stage (SG), Planning (PL), Managing Product Deliver (MP) and Managing Stage Boundaries (SB), but to simpfly these things I called the thing Stage.

The Prince2 methodology definitely causes formalization of the project, but in case of a big nterprises that is actually a good approach especially at the beginning and at the end. After the key decision is taken each stage of the project may be passed to MSF solution, where we already have the Vision phase managed and there is a time for all the remaining 4 phases – planning, development, stabilization and implementation. These are strongly technical activities, which are not in scope of Prince2. The best sample is a planning phase, which has totally different meaning. In Prince2 that is about the way how the plan is constructed: what will be delivered (products), what are the linkages between products, risk management, estimation and master plan. In MSF it should be actually called design and that is splitted on conceptual and technical planning of the architecture.

At the end of the whole project the deliverables (work packages) provided by MSF, should be checked within the Prince2 Controlling A Stage (SG) process or Closing a project (CP). This double checks that final result goes along with expected and defined within Project Initiation Document.

Assuming the business case of the big company A, which request the delivery of the big software product X and a smaller company B, which is a pure software house. The company A may use Prince2 and company B the MSF, without bigger problems in communication. Actually Prince2 itself predicts that company B may use different methodology (not Prince2) and it is a main purpose of the whole Managing Products Delivery (MP) process.

Furthermore the whole concept is not new, when we speak about Prince2 and RUP (I really found the link after writing the first version of this document) ;)

Project planning and EPM

Mood: Regular, despite it is the election day in Poland
Music: Bedshaped- Keane

Black screen. At the bottom appears the sentence written with the white, bold Verdana 18

7 years ago – Microsoft Project 2000

A manager is sitting in his cubicle and creates in silence the project plan in MS Project 2000. At the end, when he created his masterpiece (at least he thinks so :) ), he is willing to dispatch the tasks to a team. He starts the painful road of tries and dies.

1. Tasks
At the beginning he is ambitious and he wants to share the appropriate tasks to appropriate people. He notices that he can do it by emails! Wow! Great thing! He sends these… but somehow, after some time he is reported that some of the tasks does not reach the recipient, team is bitching and complaining

2. Project plan
He becomes less ambitious, so he wants simply to send everybody the whole project plan. Yes, you can do it. But the reader… must have the full, commercial installation. Bitching and complaining again.

3. Microsoft Project Central
I bet you did here about it. The solution were not too popular, despite it was quite interesting – the installation over the IIS is quite simple and the only disadvantage was a relatively not-comfortable way of browsing the whole plan, especially when it was a little bit more complicated. Bitching and complaining again.

So finally our poor manager, printed simply the plan in 5 copies and passed it manually.
Seven years passes.

Now – Enterprise Project Management

Now the manager is sitting in front of the Project Web Access opened from the IE (maybe even Firefox), where the one sees, the central deck with all the flavours:

• Schedules (personal and teammates)
• Risks
• Tasks
• Status reports
• List of projects in which we are involved

Yes, there is a difference and furthermore future seems to be promising even more.

The end

of the trailer… Let’s come back to the real life.

Since some time my company uses the Microsoft EPM Solution; I must say there is a lot of complaining in the house, that many things does not work as it should, but these are the most often some organizational / implementation problems. At the end of the road, personally I am pretty amazed by the capabilities of the system. It is still quite new version of the system, not adult yet, but it has truly great perspectives - the marriage of MS Project with SharePoint seems to be great shoot. I am pretty sure that many people on the world, looking at the screenshoots, says "Finnally". It would be actaully quite nice thing for MS commercial :)

The most important thing is to explain that EPM is not just the MS Project via Web Page, but the true implementation of the heavy weight project management methodology like Prince2 or PMBoK. It is a true Project Management Office.

Of course the tool is just a tool – you can build the chair with the hammer or kill your neighbor. If you have no common and detail vision of what you want to do with IT (whatever IT means for you :) ), you should clarify first the processes before the installation, instead of believing in the mysterious panacea for everything. There are no silver bullets – there is always the sweat and pain of the change management :)

I am just getting on the path, but I can already enlist couple of things...

Cons

1. The solution is relatively young and not too many companies are using it
2. There are still some small bugs like you can change the name of the project, but the portal name will not change
3. Lack of archiving mechanisms
4. The hardware requirements are pretty high
5. System could be slightly quicker
6. Administrator must know SharePoint solution in details
7. You must have appropriate SharePoint license, which is not cheap
8. Just couple of very simple workflows is installed and any new require coding
9. Limited capabilities of creating a plan for Proposals and Activities on the web
10. You still must to have couple of smart key users, who make the system living

Pros

1. Common and nice GUI, which is truly user friendly after a while
2. Very extensive administration/installation options and scalability
3. Good integration with MS Project 2007 and Office 2007
4. Focused on collaboration – discussions, alerts, white boards, lists, document libraries
5. Wide possibilities of customizing – in fact new project runs the new SharePoint site using the template
6. Nice idea of Proposal (before project) > Project > Activity (after project)
7. Well-planned reporting mechanisms - eg. reporting hierarchy with accept-decline, status reports
8. Nice workflow mechanism from user point of view - eg. Acceptance and reviews collection
9. Possibility of creating any other SharePoint site side by EPM, when necessary like the Bug Tracking System
10. Smart key users have the place, where they can show their talent
    (if you need more what MS Marketing says)

Before you turn on the system for users

1. Establish the common vision of users groups, roles and privileges sets
2. Establish the hierarchy of reporting and mechanism to control the way it works (or not)
3. Establish the projects life cycle in the system (including projects versioning) – saying that we are Prince2 or PMBoK is not enough
4. Establish some audit mechanisms to standardize content of the system, avoid duplication and ensure that system works well providing real data
5. Train all users, especially key users
6. Establish some working, feedback chain from users
7. Avoid packing everything into EPM- if you need department site, create the separate SharePoint site
8. Prepare for integration with the other systems
9. Except the production environment, prepare the test system, where you can (pre)test various settings
10. Remember that the main goal of the system is to make the life easier; it is for people and not backward

Other solutions
iPlanner
PlanView – (PlanView vs MS EPM)
Business Objects EPM XI

And at the end... EPM has actually very various meanings, but anyway I hope that at the end of the implmenetation process you will be the monkey walking on two feets :)

And couple of screenshoots (sorry for polish)...

1 - start screen with tasks, schedules, schedules to approve, status reports, problems & risks plus list of projects

2 - Schedules approval screen with filtering options and possibility to send marked elements directly to superior with a comment (at the bottom)

3 - Projects center

4 - Resources center (yellow lines are employees and green are their tasks)

5 - Your tasks list