Entreprise Project Management

Many companies nowadays conduct different projects simultaneously in different aspects of their business; each project is managed by the appropriate or the available one. These projects involve different teams with different members and skills, frequently projects are managed differently by each team. Hence, company requires standard project management methods to handle and deal with all these projects and be able to manage and follow the different steps and tasks involved by each project (Landman, 2008).
Companies became ‘projectized’, new means of controlling and consolidating results need to be examined, to allow companies see multiple projects under a common umbrella (Dinsmore,1999).

These definitions mean that the EPM is the set of methods and standards applied to all enterprise’s projects and which provide ways of thinking, sharing information, dealing with tasks…etc. In addition to tools as information systems that help in managing companies’ resources and allocation of these lasts. In 90s, the method that was adopted by majority of companies, is to focus on each project separately by dedicated a PM to each one and dealing with projects as a separate entities. This method proved its inefficacy as projects were interconnected and co-exist in company environment, in addition to the fact that projects frequently share resources. The adoption of IT governance practices, enterprise project management has been pushed to become more specific and adopted as way of thinking about projects by different companies. The governance has been facilitated by being able to track, monitor and manage all company’s projects. These companies which adopted the EPM might use project methodologies as PRINCE2 and set up a Project Management Office. Not only managing projects, EPM evolved recently in a way of creating portfolio of projects (Microsoft, 2012). When we compare EPM to ‘classic’ project management method, we can see that EPM can provide companies with enhancements when dealing with different projects with shared resources which is the case of majority of companies. However, I personally think that it adds an extra level of complexity for project managers and team members as it involves shared resources and planning. In addition to this complexity, I personally think that it can be different to manage all projects the same way. Different projects in different fields might require some specific methods and approaches, so the EPM should be able to provide a little bit of flexibility for projects. I do not think that we can apply the same rules and methods to all projects.

References:

– Hagit Landman (2008). Enterprise Project Management, best practices for implementing and EPM solution. ISBN:978-1-932159-97-4.

– Paul C.Dinsmore (1999). Winning in Business with Enterprise Project Management. ISBN: 0-8144-0420-0.

– Microsoft Solutions Center for Government (2012), Enterprise Project Management. Available online:http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/EnterpriseProjectManagement/default.aspx