“With the size and complexity of our IT project portfolio, it was critical that we had a sound project management methodology and supporting toolset in place. After looking at many different approaches and products, we chose BrightWork pmPoint because it fit well with our enterprise-wide SharePoint strategy, was very easy to implement and provided us with a tool that could be mastered quickly by our project managers."
George White, CIO
Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General
Each year, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General (PAOAG) – Information Technology Section (ITS) prepares an update to its IT strategic plan. This update establishes an aggressive agenda of technology projects for the agency consisting of both on-going and new projects. These projects include the development and implementation of critical line of business applications, enhancements to existing systems, upgrades and expansion of the agency’s core IT infrastructure, end-user training programs, and proof of concepts aimed at researching and evaluating new technologies.
The complexity of these initiatives, project interdependencies, resource demands and expectations of the end user community make it imperative that the ITS Program Management Office manages its project portfolio in an effective, efficient and well coordinated manner to ensure projects remain on schedule, within budget and meet established quality standards.
ITS required a comprehensive project management tool that could be implemented in a relatively fast time frame that would support the management of projects and facilitate communication and collaboration among its project managers. Additionally, having already made a substantial investment in Microsoft SharePoint 2007 as the foundation for its knowledge worker infrastructure, ITS was interested in implementing a tool that could be effectively integrated with SharePoint.
After completing a number of in-house efforts as well as evaluating a number of off-the-shelf solutions, ITS made the decision to implement BrightWork pmPoint as the system that would be used to manage all IT-related projects. Key considerations leading to this decision was the ability to integrate pmPoint with the organization’s SharePoint-based intranet and leverage SharePoints collaboration features. pmPoint also represented a solution that could be implemented in a relatively short time frame. Additionally, pmPoint’s dashboard interface provided ITS with a highly effective means for communicating project status and progress to upper level management at different levels of detail. ITS is currently in the process of loading all existing projects and new initiatives into the system and finalizing custom workflows to ensure project participants and key stakeholders provide decisions and input in a timely manner and are kept abreast of all project-related issues.