Microsoft Project Server 2013 for Enterprise Project Management was developed for people who will be utilizing Microsoft Project Professional 2013 in conjunction with Microsoft Project Server 2013 to build and maintain project schedules in an enterprise wide project planning and management process. The book is divided into the following Chapters:
• Project Initiation and Schedule Management — the initiation actions provided by Project Professional 2013 to start the process of creating successful project schedules. This includes complete details on all of Project Professional 2013’s Options.
• Project Schedule Development — a comprehensive 8-step process for the development of project schedules using Project Professional 2013 combined with Project Server 2013. This includes Task Dependencies, Constraints and Deadlines, building your project team using both enterprise and non-enterprise resources. It also covers all aspects of assigning resources to tasks and resolving resource allocation issues, as well as baselining the schedule.
• Communicating Results with Project Professional — the capabilities, which Project Professional 2013 provides, project managers to understand their schedules. This Chapter includes a Section on the new Report feature that is the major change between Project Professional 2010 and Project Professional 2013.
• Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) — the Project Server 2013 capabilities for unified Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). This Chapter also clearly outlines the differences between Project Professional 2013 and Project Server’s Project Web App (PWA) for project schedule initiation, development and management. It includes details on using the power of SharePoint Task Lists to start the process of creating comprehensive projects / proposals.
• PWA For Analyzing and Communicating Results — capabilities of Project Server’s Project Web App (PWA) to communicate both project and resource information. The Chapter also covers the Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities of Project Server 2013. BI is a very powerful part of Project Server 2013 for communicating information on all or a subset of the organization’s projects / proposals, as well as resources.
• Artifact Management — the use of Project Sites — specialized SharePoint sites — to facilitate collaboration and communication within project teams. It covers the management of the documents associated with a project plus the issues, the risks and the deliverables.
• Tracking Progress and Reporting Status — time and task status reporting by team members. The role of the project manager in using the progress data from the team members to update their project schedules is also presented. The last part of this Chapter covers all aspects of Project Server 2013’s Status Reports capabilities.
• Program Management (Master Projects) — how to create masters projects, which are the foundation for programs in Project Server 2013. It covers Cross Project Linking as well as a detailed comparison with project Deliverables. This Chapter also covers budgeting — for cost, work and material — in Project Professional 2013 / Project Server 2013.
One of the major changes that Microsoft introduced with 2013 was Project Online; it is a multi-tenant version of Project Server 2013 hosted by Microsoft. This book was developed using Project Server 2013 not Microsoft’s Project Online, therefore the author cannot guarantee that the Project Server functionality will work as described when using Microsoft’s Project Online. Microsoft also released Project Pro for Office 365. This is a subscription-based version of Project Professional 2013 — pay a monthly or per-year fee as opposed to purchasing the software, which gives a license in perpetuity for Project Professional 2013. In terms of Project Professional 2013 and Project Pro for Office 365, the only differences are the method of payment and ownership of the software. Based on this everything described in the book regarding Project Professional 2013 should apply to Project Pro for Office 365, but the author has not used the later software and therefore makes no guarantee.
To enhance the learning experience readers of the book can get access to a fully configured cloud-based Project Server 2013 instance hosted by BeMo — www.bemopro.com — the exact same image used during the writing of the book. The BeMo Content Pack provides:
• Eight (8) users with active login ids — one Executive, one Portfolio Manager, three Project Managers, two Team Members PLUS Jan Kotas who is a Project Server Administrator, Project Manager, Team Member and a Portfolio Manager.
• An Enterprise Resource Pool (ERP), which has over 120 work, material and cost resources that, can be assigned as enterprise resources. The work resources are all assigned RBS codes, they all have a Position Role Enterprise Resource Code that allows skills matching when building project teams.
• All of out-of-the-box Project Server 2013 Enterprise Custom Fields plus 23 more project and task fields / codes.
• Nine Enterprise Project Types (EPT) all of which can be utilized from Project Web App (PWA); four of the nine generate highly customized Project Sites.
• A complete Project, Portfolio Management (PPM) strategy. This includes a Driver Library plus Driver Prioritization. There are four cost-based scenarios utilizing eight schedules.
• There are 27 Project / Proposal schedules distributed between the Head of the PMO and the four project managers.
• Five of the schedules exist as SharePoint Task Lists. Two of these schedules are being managed as Enterprise schedules and the other three as SharePoint Task Lists.
• Two complete Programs both of which include complete program and project Cost and Work Budgets.
• The out-of-the-box Project Server 2013 Business Intelligence (BI). It has been extended to include a number of custom reports that use the Project Server Reporting table data.
Readers of the book can get access to the BeMo Content Pack on a subscription basis as an addition to a single-user BeMo Project Online combined with a Project Professional connection subscription.
To assist the readers of this book the author developed a comprehensive set of labs tied directly to the chapters in the book and the BeMo Content Pack. Details on how to access the Lab manual is provided in the book itself.