EPM, Microsoft Project and You

BY: Collin Quiring

 Microsoft announced new competency requirements – 22 of them were just launched.  From our perspective at PMP Specialists, as a Microsoft Partner, we welcome these new competencies and their requirements. 

 But, why should you, the end customer care at all?  Well, how many times has a consultant (for any product or service) told you how they could do whatever it was that you wanted?  Or, that they have on their business card and brochures that they are experts in everything?  This is particularly true of the really big consulting firms.  There is a natural tendency for them to claim, and for customers to believe, that they are “Jacks-of-all-trades” and can install, configure, setup, train and otherwise help you with any IT or business need that you have.  But, sadly, as most of us have experienced, this isn’t always true.

 I know of one large IT consulting firm that routinely claims they can help customers with various software and then when they sell the consulting to the customer, they get somebody that knows software “similar” to it.  Or, they use the philosophy of “that software can’t be too different from the stuff we know”.  And, I know of and heard about bad experiences from both the consultant and customer side and sometimes those situations even result in lawsuits.

 I am a believer in “you get what you pay for” and in paying for the right expertise (see the three part series of blog entries called “Microsoft Project Certifications – are they worth it?”).  Just like you get a painter to paint your house and electrician to wire it and not just some guy that says he knows wiring or knows painting; you should strongly consider hiring the appropriately certified consultant to help with your business needs.

 When you determine what your Microsoft needs are, I strongly recommend that you review the competency level of the Microsoft Partner and the certifications of the individuals they are sending to you.  You are paying for the services and products and you should have a level of comfort that the Partner is capable of producing the results that they claim.

 And, I think this applies to the business side of the equation as well.  A Supply Chain expert, a Project Manager and a Business Analyst may have some overlapping duties, but they aren’t necessarily experts at all three.  Each industry has a certification path and I think that a customer should “get what they pay for” and have a level of comfort with the ability of the individual.

By:  Collin Quiring

 One of the changes that Project Server 2010 brings is that it requires SharePoint Server 2010 to operate.  While this is great from the perspective of functionality it does mean that companies may have to invest more in software and licensing than they would prefer to do and it means that an administrator that understands how Project Server works will need to learn SharePoint Server as well. 

 In my opinion, if you are going to be an effective Project Server 2010 administrator, I believe that you need to have more than just a casual knowledge of how SharePoint Server 2010 is administered.  I am sure that there are some folks that would disagree but with the level of integration between Project and SharePoint it is going to be increasingly difficult to know where one ends and the other begins.  Without knowing how the two relate with each other, I think that an administrator is going to be frustrated very often!

 I am sure that some Project Server administrators won’t want to take this on as it will be perceived mostly as a case of “more to learn and do” and they will have the hope that there is already somebody else that is the SharePoint administrator that can “do that stuff”.  At first I fell into that camp myself – thinking that learning more about SharePoint would distract me from my real goal of administering Project Server.  However, I have learned in the last few months a lot about SharePoint Server and have become one of the proponents about its capabilities.  The functionality that it will bring to Project Server is highly beneficial.  From an administrators perspective I think that the 2010 version is going to be easier to manage than 2007 – but it still has a number of inter-dependencies upon itself and with Project which cause interesting issues to pop up every now and then.

 In an effort to become better acquainted I was looking for an opportunity to learn the tool better in a real production environment.  To that end, I have recently had the opportunity to manage a large SharePoint Server 2007 Farm with over 600,000 users.  Yes, 600,000.  In fact, we will be installing SharePoint Server 2010 in the next couple of weeks and then migrating over to 2010. 

While I don’t recommend trying to administer a SharePoint Server with that many users, I do recommend that if you are Project Server administrator you start to learn how SharePoint works.  It can only make your job with Project easier and your end users will notice the increased functionality and integration.

BY: Collin Quiring

For those that don’t know, there is a great organization out there called MPUG – the Microsoft Project User Group.  I just wrote a brief article for them in regards to the fact that there is no longer an Active X control in Project Server 2010.  This is one article in a series by various Project Server experts about some of the new features in the 2010 version.

View the article at:  http://www.mpug.com/News/Pages/MicrosoftProject2010FeatureRallyNoMoreActiveX.aspx , or, here is a copy of it:

Project Server 2010 has many new features, abilities and enhancements that make it a great product.  However, there is one modification to the 2010 version that will go unnoticed by new administrators and will hopefully soon be forgotten by administrators that have worked with previous versions.  I am referring to the fact that the ActiveX controls are no longer part of Project Server.  My non-technical explanation of what an ActiveX control does is that it adds functionality to Project.  In the case of Project Server, there are a number of places it is used but the most noticeable is that it allowed you to see the information within Project Center and Resource Center. 

 I can’t count the number of times I would have a user contact me and tell me that they were getting an error message that looked like this one:

The catch?  Well, if the person isn’t an administrator (or high level permissions) on their machine they can’t download the ActiveX control.  And, there are other settings that have to be configured in Internet Explorer as well.  If the client machines were “locked down” by a central IT group, then they had to administer the installation of these controls.  It isn’t always easy to get the controls pushed out from the central IT administration folks!  Then, when some system updates (Project or not) are done, the ActiveX controls have to be downloaded/pushed out again.  At one client of mine, this is a constant issue and there are always a handful of users that can’t access Project Server due to the hardware and software update cycles and I know for a fact that this has slowed the adoption of the tool overall.

With all of the improvements and new components of Project Server 2010 I hope this now defunct “feature” becomes one of those topics of conversation that “old” administrators tell each other about the “old days” and how much better it is now!  

The catch?  Well, if the person isn’t an administrator (or high level permissions) on their machine they can’t download the ActiveX control.  And, there are other settings that have to be configured in Internet Explorer as well.  If the client machines were “locked down” by a central IT group, then they had to administer the installation of these controls.  It isn’t always easy to get the controls pushed out from the central IT administration folks!  Then, when some system updates (Project or not) are done, the ActiveX controls have to be downloaded/pushed out again.  At one client of mine, this is a constant issue and there are always a handful of users that can’t access Project Server due to the hardware and software update cycles and I know for a fact that this has slowed the adoption of the tool overall.

With all of the improvements and new components of Project Server 2010 I hope this now defunct “feature” becomes one of those topics of conversation that “old” administrators tell each other about the “old days” and how much better it is now!