October 22nd, 2009

CEO Interview: Meridian Systems' John Bodrozic on the construction front

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 10:15 am

Categories: CEO Interview, Current Affairs, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, SaaS and Beyond, Software Vendors, software. applications

Tags: Asset, Construction, Meridian, AECOM, Asset Management, Transportation, Software As A Service (SaaS), Operational Planning, Business Operations, Emerging Technologies

I recently had a chance to speak with John Bodrozic, President and co-founder of Meridian Systems. Meridian sells a number of solutions in the project portfolio management and infrastructure lifecycle management space (e.g., Prolog, Proliance, Prolog Converge) . Their products help property owners, property managers, construction firms, architects, engineers, etc.

I asked John specifically about the economy and how it has impacted the construction space. John indicated that some sectors are in dire straits, especially new housing construction. However, there are definite bright spots out there. John talked about all of the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) spending in the United States and the significant amount of public works construction it has spawned. Meridian has made sales of its solutions to organizations like City of Seattle Dept. of Transportation, Miami Dade Water & Sewer Department and the General Services Administrations’ Public Building Services group.

John also indicated that not all parts of the world are being impacted the same way. The World Bank is apparently helping out with infrastructure projects in selected locales.

Meridian is seeing lots of government interest in infrastructure initiatives particularly in areas like transportation, energy and water.

Given that Meridian had a strong private sector customer base (approximately 5000 customers/100,000 users), I asked John if these new governmental customers are any different than private sector customers. The biggest difference that John identified was that governmental customers preferred more on-premise solutions while private sector customers were more interested in their SaaS (software as a service) offerings. However, both groups are interested in looking at assets (e.g., buildings, dams, roads, power plants, etc.) as long-lived assets that need meticulous records maintained on them over the life of the asset and not just during the initial construction phase. John then told me of their shorthand name for this: plan – build – operate.

Meridian has recently added functionality to track project expenditures by fund. This functionality is especially needed for those entities administering or seeking reimbursement from targeted government stimulus funds. John also discussed how firms seeking these stimulus monies must also meet OMB compliance and reporting requirements if they hope to win this work and get compensated for it.

Finally, I asked John about whether they are seeing the overseas market being a big contributor to the company’s growth. He indicated that the Middle East is going strong for them. He singled out one success story: their customer/partner AECOM. AECOM is involved in numerous initiatives in the Middle East and Meridian’s solutions are being used in many of these efforts. AECOM is a program management company that is often hired by a building or property owner to design and engineer the structure, hire contractors to do the work and manage the lifecycle of the asset thereafter.

September 25th, 2009

Shouldn’t services firms have their own ERP?

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 9:41 am

Categories: CEO Interview, Future of Application Software, HR, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Selling Professional Services, The Applications Market, software. applications

Tags: Staffing, ERP, Services Firm, Service Firm, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Sales Strategy, Enterprise Software, Software, Sales, Brian Sommer

I caught up this week with Morris Panner, CEO of OpenAir (now part of NetSuite). One aspect of our wide-ranging conversation concerned the continuing evolution of businesses, the economy, etc. towards a greater services orientation. Drawing on that, we discussed how services firms need their own version of ERP.

Here are just some of the ways I believe a Services ERP would differ from a traditional ERP:

1) Services firms need visibility in their ‘resources’ so that the best/optimal staffing decisions can be made. If the best resource (as measured by value delivered) is available in one country but the work is sold in another and eventually delivered in a third, can these resources be optimally scheduled? ERP/MRP solutions optimize capital resources (e.g., stamping machines, extruders, CNC machines, etc.), customer orders, inventory and other assets. But, in services firms, the optimization software is still in its infancy or non-existent. Sadly, this staffing is often controlled (not optimized) by individuals whose allegiance is to a local sales or operations person and not to the service firm or its shareholders.

2) The CRM component of ERP is also structured to serve Industrial Age firms. Service firms need information about people, availability, real-time pricing data about people, etc. and this is different from products. For example, if your service firm knows it will soon offload a very large number of SAP implementers from a big project, would you want to offer some discounted pricing to prospects to soak up all of that upcoming bench time? And, would you want to be selective in offering these discounts for only some personnel while actually boosting the rates of others who have distinguished themselves as real experts in this subject matter? ERP solutions don’t do that.

3) Sales commission calculations are/should be different in services firms. Some sales people would prefer to sell only domestic work as they are paid a percent of total revenues. Selling a mixed mode project (i.e., where some work is performed offshore and some on shore) results in a lower total fee estimate and lower sales commissions for the sales person. Shouldn’t the sales commissions be driven on which projects drive the greatest margin for the employer or greatest value to the client (and not greatest income to the sales person)? Do ERP systems address this? Do ERP systems show a local sales person the staff availability of personnel in another country? Do ERP systems recommend the best value people for a project regardless of location?

4) ERP systems (still) don’t integrate non-accounting data into their software well. Service firms need to capture, reuse, modify and expand prior work plans, intellectual property, ideas, etc. into their projects, deliverables, work plans, etc. They need a flood of information about people so they know who to staff and where. That sort of information changes daily and is rarely found in the standard HR system. This is why resource managers exist in service firms and knowledge management components are essential in service firms’ IT solutions. ERP providers have tried to bolt on project tracking and some PPM capabilities to their ERP offerings but it doesn’t work well. ERP was designed first for accounting transaction data and then updated for Industrial Age firms. Overlaying ERP on service firms is an unnatural act and not optimal for these firms.

PSA (professional services automation) firms did some great things to get services firms more productive and efficient. We all owe them a big thank you just for making time entry a one-time event and eliminating all the reconciliation work (between the project tracking module, payroll and budget/estimating systems). PSA vendors also made billing, collaboration and other project work easier, too.

The initial focus of PSA has been to stitch together a number of service functional needs into a smaller collection of better integrated solutions. Service firms now have better, larger, more robust and more efficient systems. They still have islands of service automation software and data that include: PSA, spreadsheets, accounting software, HR/Payroll software and BI/Analytics. It’s time for that to come together as a more unified solution set.

These larger solutions will likely form the nucleus of a SRP (services resource planning) offering but won’t initially deliver the full capability of SRP until someone adds the unique business functionality that only service firms have and need. Functionality like support for global service delivery models, billing and currency reconciliation for global projects with globally sourced team members, resource staffing optimization models, etc. That may be a few years off but it’s what will eventually come. The question is which vendors will deliver it?

I’m pleased NetSuite kept Morris after they acquired OpenAir. It speaks volumes to their support for the service industry. The question now is will NetSuite create a full, robust SRP for the services space?

September 16th, 2009

Interview with Microsoft’s Seth Patton

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 4:49 pm

Categories: PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Service Providers, Software Vendors, software

Tags: Microsoft Corp., PPM, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Brian Sommer

More from the Project Conference

Seth Patton is the senior marketing director for Microsoft Project. I got thirty minutes alone with Seth at the Microsoft Project Conference 2009 show this afternoon.

We discussed several topics impacting the PSA (professional services automation) and PPM (project portfolio management) software space. Here are the highlights from that conversation:

1) How will Project 2010 impact other PPM competitors? Seth and I discussed how the 2010 version of Microsoft Project makes the solution more competitive with existing PPM solutions, especially those targeting the SMB (small-medium business) market. Independent software vendors in that space will definitely feel more competition from Microsoft. More specifically, these vendors will see more energized competition from Microsoft vast army of channel partners. Seth discussed how Microsoft customers are desirous of solutions that take advantage of other Microsoft products like SharePoint, Office, Exchange, etc. Many customers are looking to consolidate or reduce the number of software vendors they are dealing with. As Microsoft’s Project technologies continue to improve, Microsoft may continue to drive out more independent software vendors from customers’ IT departments.

2) Why did Microsoft make so many ease of use and interoperability improvements to this product? Seth discussed how making the product easier to use means more people can utilize the product immediately. By reducing the product’s learning curve, Microsoft expands the potential user base. More novices and more users in different sized firms are now target customers for Project 2010.

3) How will Project 2010 interoperate with other ERP and PPM solutions? Better than before. Avnet is integrating Project with SAP application software. Seth indicated that they are moving time sheet data between the two systems. Project 2010 will come with out-of-the-box integration with two MBS (Microsoft Business Solutions) accounting products: Dynamics SL (nee Solomon) and Axapta.

4) Are professional services firms using Project or are they using PSA products instead? According to Seth, several large services are big users of Project. He specifically mentioned CSC and EDS as two examples of this. While PPM products, Microsoft’s included, contain many of the functions needed by professional services firms, they are still some key functions not available within Project just yet. These include: client billing; dedicated time entry for vendor, client, contractors, etc.; two-way interfaces with payroll systems; proposal tools; and, more. Nonetheless, Seth reminded me that thousands of Microsoft partners are service firms as well as users of Project in client work.

5) Is Microsoft seeing an uptick in Project sales due to ARRA (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009)? Seth stated that they have seen some big deals pop in on the big federal deals but state and local action has been minimal to date.

6) Does Microsoft have anything to report on the NPD (new product development) front? Microsoft has struck deals with PLM vendors. One of these is PTC. If you are into this functionality, you should also check out Planview’s and CA’s offerings here.

I’ll do one more post tomorrow after Gary Hamel speaks. Until then…

September 16th, 2009

More on Microsoft Project 2010

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 1:37 pm

Categories: PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, Software Vendors, software

Tags: Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., Capability, Collaboration, Content Management, Groupware, Microsoft Project, Team Management, Enterprise Software, Software

The Completeness of the PPM Solution Grows

(More from the Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix)

As the demonstrations of Project 2010 continue, I noted the following:

1) Microsoft has added a lot of functionality in its Resource Management and Time Entry components. The resource management capability gives project managers, staffing professionals and others a lot of visibility into the project conflicts, overbookings, under-utilization, etc. of potential team members. I have seen slicker capabilities in some high-end PSA (professional services automation) systems but the version I saw today is a big jump in capability compared to the older version of Project that is on my desktop computer. Likewise, time entry capabilities are slicker. Microsoft even added a well-controlled/secured ability to let a project manager enter time for sick team members or third party team members who do not have access to the software.

2) Project 2010 has functionality to support: Demand Management, Portfolio Selection, Resource Management, Schedule Management, Business Intelligence and more. As I posted earlier today, the product is no longer just a project tracking/management tool. It’s a PPM (project portfolio management) tool.

3) Connecting Project 2010 to SharePoint opens up additional capabilities for users. Specifically, SharePoint brings Collaboration, Project Portal, Knowledge Management and other capabilities to this PPM solution. While SharePoint integration is not entirely new to the product, the enhanced capabilities, easier tailoring and more powerful reporting are. These improvements make the product a stronger player against other PPM solutions on the market.

Users of this software might need four components: Project Web Access (to access project data on the go (i.e., via laptop, cell phone, etc.), Project 2010 Professional for the desktop/laptop (to do more complex project tasks), Project 2010 Server (to execute key processes and facilitate the sharing/updating of shared project data), and, SharePoint Server (to facilitate project portals/web pages, collaboration, etc.).

More to follow….

September 16th, 2009

Microsoft’s Project 2010

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 10:15 am

Categories: PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Portfolio Management Function, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Brian Sommer

The conference announcements so far…

I just watched Microsoft executives demonstrate the upcoming Project 2010 product here in Phoenix at the Project Conference 2009.

Here are my first blush comments/observations:

1) The product has matured significantly as a PPM solution. The portfolio management functions are more robust, more graphical and address executive what-if needs quite well. This observation alone makes one wonder whether other PPM vendors will continue to freely integrate Microsoft Project solutions with their own as the degree of functional overlap appears to have increased significantly. The competitive conflict should be most felt by those PPM vendors who serve SMB organizations needing a project or project portfolio management solution. ***UPDATE*** A reader contacted me to clarify this part of the post. He correctly pointed out that other PPM vendors integrate the project tracking aspects of Microsoft Project and not necessarily the full-blown version with the PPM server and its attendant PPM functionality. More precisely, this reader said:

There are two distinct differences which may not be evident within your article, first MSP desktop does not provide things like “portfolio management functions” and second MSP desktop would continue to be a valuable integration piece for other PPM vendors as it is moreover the defacto standard for project managers today.

2) Microsoft has simplified the product line and product naming. Going forward, there will be three products: Project Standard 2010, Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010.

3) Drag and drop/cut and paste interoperability between Microsoft Office applications and Project has been enhanced. I was particularly pleased to see much easier connectivity between Excel and Project. Just being able to copy several columns over to Project from Excel and having Project retain the indentation was a big improvement.

4) This announcement is part of a number of Microsoft announcements for 2009 and 2010. These include: Windows 7, Bing, Xbox 360 Project Natal, Windows Azure, Office 2010, Sharepoint Server 2010, upgrades to SQL Server 2008, the Yahoo search deal and more. If all of these go well, Microsoft should experience a good PR and revenue boost in the near term. These initiatives should keep Microsoft channel partners quite busy in the near term as well. The key to success though will be in managing the successful rollout of all of these new/improved products.

5) PSA (professional services automation) functionality has not been discussed yet. Does this mean the Project product line is still a PPM solution only? Probably.

6) There was one brief mention of integration of the Project products to MBS (Microsoft Business Solutions) software products and that involved Dynamics SL.

More to come…..

September 15th, 2009

Interesting things I've been briefed on lately...

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 12:47 pm

Categories: Current Affairs, ERP, Mergers & Acquisitions, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, SaaS and Beyond, Software Vendors, Sourcing, The Applications Market, software, software. applications

Tags: Food, Open Source, Information Technology, NetSuite Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., iTrade Network, Meridian Project Systems, UC4, Food & Beverage, Manufacturing

NetSuite, CA, iTrade Network, Meridian Project Systems, UC4, Project Open,….

NetSuite has some new financial consolidation/planning functionality in their SaaS solution. It permits global firms to handle currency conversion. Adaptive Planning’s software is at the core of this solution. This technology does not currently use an in-core memory resident database. The more of this sort of advanced financial capability that NetSuite builds into its products, the more upmarket they’ll become.

iTrade Network is the result of three related firms coming together to solve an important problem in the food industry. iTrade is providing the traceability needed in this sector to protect us, food manufacturers and distributors and others from problems in our food supply. Their solution can expedite recalls and hopefully drive a more complete and accurate removal of contaminated products from the selves. The company has already attracted a lot of big name customers. Last year, I did a white paper for SYSPRO on the food sector. Product recalls were one of the most contentious issues that I discussed in that piece.

ARRA (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009)– You’ve likely seen this acronym on a road project near you. In fact, my daughter and I recently drove from Colorado to Chicago and we passed a lot of construction sites benefiting from these rehabilitation monies. Meridian Project Systems briefed me many months ago about this and now CA is out there with their Grants Management functionality. CA’s solution is an offshoot of their PPM solution (nee Clarity). Meridian has scheduled a more detailed briefing with me later this week.

UC4 has put the 2.0 moniker on something called Automation 2.0 for the IT data center. Their software puts all kinds of scheduled tasks under a single, integrated toolset. Why is this technology needed? Just look at how many different applications and activities IT groups support now versus a 10-15 years ago? Email archiving, CRM applications, web applications, data resident on SaaS systems, etc. are all relatively new IT responsibilities. Each of these requires backups, report runs and other processes and they all must be scheduled. IT shops don’t need to buy a different scheduler for every database, application, reporting tool, etc. IT data center personnel should experience greater productivity and should be available to work on more strategic initiatives. UC4 claims a 6-12 month ROI.

UC4 also acquired an event-driven technology, SENACTIVE, to complement its offerings.

Project Open is an open source project portfolio management solution based out of Europe. The software has attracted a fair following there and is used by a number of professional services firms (e.g., Cambridge Technology Partners). The software is frequently used in an on-premise mode although hosted versions are available from the firm or selected partners. I only had time for a cursory examination but the functionality appears fairly robust for service groups of 20+ people. It’s a PSA/PPM option for those looking at open source solutions.

September 8th, 2009

Imagine that! More innovation in PPM

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 10:25 am

Categories: Current Affairs, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, software

Tags: Innovation, Software, PlanView, Tools & Techniques, Product Marketing, Project Management, Management, Marketing, It Operations, It service Management

When Ideation Meets Project Management

Innovation in the PSA/PPM space was missing for much of this decade. Professional Services Automation software and Project Portfolio Management software had fallen into a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) status for a while.

That’s definitely changed lately.

The use of PPM software to develop new products is a hot idea for this space. The software you use to manage projects can now be used to manage R&D efforts and solicit input for new product development.

This last year, I was briefed by both CA and Planview as to their respective NPD (new product development) capabilities. Last week, Planview upped the ante by announcing new functionality to enable the capture of customer input, employee input, etc. in the creation of new products or extensions to existing products.

I’ve seen firms use this type of capability before. Dell has a solution (built on Salesforce.com technology) to capture customer ideas re: their products. Planview’s approach is a bit different in that the solution integrates with their project management tools. I like the integration because just capturing ideas isn’t enough. You need to get new ideas and flow them into the development cycles/plans.

July 22nd, 2009

Wedding Bells: NetSuite + OpenAir + QuickArrow

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 6:45 pm

Categories: Current Affairs, ERP, Financial Software, Future of Application Software, Mergers & Acquisitions, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, SaaS and Beyond, Software Vendors, The Applications Market, software, software. applications

Tags: Software-as-a-service, NetSuite Inc., OpenAir Inc., ERP, Software As A Service (SaaS), Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Emerging Technologies, Enterprise Software

When PSA (and SaaS) Got BIG!

Today, NetSuite announced it is buying QuickArrow, an Austin, Texas based PSA (professional services automation) vendor. This $20 million deal will put QuickArrow with OpenAir, another PSA solution that NetSuite acquired a little over a year ago. Click here for the official release.

NetSuite has been aggressively targeting service industries and has developed a number of solution capabilities beyond just the PSA set. Additionally, NetSuite has a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), a full set of financial applications and many other SaaS (Software as a Service) capabilities.

This deal brings NetSuite serious service industry street credibility. Combined, QuickArrow and OpenAir have 80,000 users and some of the largest service firms in the world as customers.

Deals like this should wake up those ossified, old-school ERP vendors who are still on the fence about their own SaaS offerings. Vendors like NetSuite are:

- growing organically (i.e., product line and revenue growth)
- continuing to innovate
- growing inorganically (via acquisitions)
- building impressive market share

Old-school ERP vendors should realize that continuous market share gains by SaaS vendors into old ERP accounts are going to start to hurt the old-school firms’ bottom lines. When SaaS vendors got the occasional CRM deal, it really didn’t hurt. Now, SaaS vendors are increasingly their:

- vertical industry penetration
- breadth of product line
- up market movement

The times, they are a changin’ and the old ERP vendors aren’t….

July 22nd, 2009

Teams in the (Troubled) Cloud

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 7:20 am

Categories: Auditing - Tax - Accounting, CEO Interview, CRM, Future of Application Software, HR, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Professional Services, SaaS and Beyond, Service Providers, Web/Tech, Wisdom of Crowds?, group dynamic, internet

Tags: Team, Team Member, Worker, Maynard, Loyalty, Team Management, Management, Brian Sommer

Not all team members are created equal

I’ve had some really interesting briefings/meetings lately. If you want to understand where software executives, industry leaders, etc. are going/thinking, then read on.

Let’s begin with a conversation I had with Maynard Webb. He’s the CEO of LiveOps and former CIO of E-Bay. Maynard’s running a huge virtual call center and outsourcing operation these days but these businesses lack the miles of cubicle walls and background noises we hear in so many other call center operations. His workers are home-based contract workers. The better the level of service a worker provides causes that worker to be rewarded with ever greater call volumes. Therefore, the better reps get more pay while bad reps get shunted off.

Maynard and I got into a great discussion about how difficult it is to do project work in any situation and how much harder it is when the team members are physically disconnected from one other. Sure, teams can access online white boards, chat rooms, etc. but these technologies cannot replace one requirement of great teams: people that know and want a team to succeed.

Technology cannot do a number of things. It can’t make people share information. Hoarders and those who use knowledge for power can really screw up a project team. Technology cannot change the personality makeup of a lone-wolf worker. If they don’t want to play with the team, they won’t. At least when a person is in the next cube, you can check up on them or ask them a question. That gets really difficult when they’re 1000 miles away. Technology can help the person who’s communicative, social and team oriented become a great team worker even when no one is physically co-located with other team members.

Yes, process work flow technologies can help a (project) manager identify who is a bottleneck or who isn’t co-operating. But, these solutions pre-suppose that firms want this kind of worker in the first place. They don’t.

Earlier in my career, I had the pleasure of working with hundreds of individuals who:

- put the client’s interest ahead of their own self-interest
- did what it took to honor commitments
- were career-focused
- wanted to continue to learn and grow professionally
- helped teammates especially when one was floundering or adversely impacting the critical path

Since then, I’ve seen a lot of other kind of workers. They are:

- self-interested. If it doesn’t impact their compensation directly and immediately, they cannot be bothered
- of the opinion that if they personally didn’t commit to something then they feel no reason to move their schedule or life around to honor someone else’s timeline or commitments

- more concerned about their immediate needs & commitments (e.g., attending a concert) than meeting a client’s commitment or deadline
- disinclined to help a colleague as there is nothing but downside in it for them
- expecting you to pay them whether they deliver value or not
- certain that they possess more skill and knowledge than you (and others) believe them to possess
- mercenary. If you don’t pay them plenty now, they’ll walk. Loyalty is dead to these people. So, is commitment.

In many professional services firms, lone wolves are either loved or hated. In some law firms, lone wolves are expected to hunt and deliver their own work. In systems integrators, executives may be expected to be great team members and team leaders. Moreover, they may be expected to include many others in a prospective deal. Team selling and lone wolves do not go well together.

Teams in a cloud world have challenges that warrant a lot discussion. The first issue you should surface is: “When staffing a cloud-based team, are the personalities (i.e., lone wolf vs. team orientation) of the team members appropriate for this environment?” I’m not sure some cloud technology purveyors have thought this through but it should be a big discussion item for their HR department. The fact that Maynard is thinking about this issue is a comfort.

Now, the lone wolf, mercenary, self-interested individual is not indicative of any generation of worker. They exist in all generations. Lone wolves are great in many sales, trading or broker jobs. They may not excel in virtual projects.

Another issue to consider is how decisions get made in a distributed team environment. In a research piece I read last week from an Ivy League graduate student, this person identified some interesting team behaviors in audit and consulting teams. One observation was that junior team members deferred to the more senior team members. They deferred even when the senior team members may lack specific technical knowledge that the more junior people possess.

Why did this occur? Well, it seems that the more senior team members were decidedly more experienced in other, non-technical matters. The senior teammates knew:
- how to deal with persnickety clients
- how to navigate complex client office politics
- how to develop winning value propositions/proposals
- how to manage client expectations
- etc.

The highest functioning teams were those where the most senior team members knew when to back away and let more junior members step up. But how does this work in virtual teams? How do the most junior members know what others may or may not know? Likewise, how do the most senior people know when to let others take over? Many of the clues/cues in face to face project team interactions are absent or diminished in the virtual or cloud based project. This is another area that warrants additional research.

Small projects might be more manageable in the cloud but more study is needed on the ability of really large projects to work well in the cloud. To date, I know of many projects where large groups of team members in one location are co-operating with other teammates in other locations. These many to many or many to few combinations are working but can large numbers person to person connections in a very large project really work well? I’m optimistic it can be done but there are likely to be hundreds of best practices, personality issues, etc. that need to be documented and promulgated in new project management technologies.

These are only three of the numerous cloud-based team issues that Maynard and I discussed. Our conversation was spirited and energizing. He clearly knows of the challenges and the issues to be explored. And, it’s great to speak with someone who’s thinking about the business (and not their golden parachute).

June 16th, 2009

Adding agility to Compuware's Changepoint

Posted by Brian Sommer @ 11:27 am

Categories: Current Affairs, Implementing Technology, PPM - Project Portfolio Management, PSA - Professional Services Automation, Software Development, Software Vendors

Tags: Changepoint Corp., Compuware Corp., Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Management, Brian Sommer

Compuware made a number of announcements re: Changepoint yesterday. Changepoint is the company’s project portfolio management solution. Changepoint is primarily targeted to mid-to-large IT organizations. Briefly, the company outlined a number of product directions for the near-term as well as showcased its Accelerator for agile development projects.

The agile development announcement was interesting as the company now has new functionality to support IT projects that are using the fast, repetitive agile development methodology. The software includes needed templates, best practices, reports, etc. to support agile development efforts.

This accelerator is also interesting because it works in concert (not standalone) with the core Changepoint product. In this manner, top IT and business executives can evaluate all projects regardless of the development approach used (i.e., agile or conventional).

Compuware also outlined a product roadmap that is focused on newer technologies and the effect these could have on project/IT management. The new solutions will support technologies such as Silverlight 2.0, W3C (non-IE) browsers and more. The company is

I was pleased to see these announcements as much of the focus from PPM/PSA (project portfolio management/professional services automation) vendors have been on delivery model (e.g., SaaS) or down-market versions of existing products.