The Issue Office template is for groups that want to manage across projects by just managing the problems – or management by exception as it is sometimes called.
This template crawls through the nominated project sites and brings back Project Status and Issues to a central dashboard. The projects being reported may have more detailed project information but the cross-project management approach selected here is only interested in project status and challenges to projects (expressed or flagged as issues).
The Projects Tracker templates are for projects that require less management, for organizations that want to just focus on the high level information of each project, such as dates, key indicators, costs, etc. Unlike with the other BrightWork Program Management templates, the Projects Tracker templates do not aggregate data from selected or subordinate projects – project data for many projects is maintained in one site.
The Project Office and Project Office Portfolio templates are for situations where you want to report on key items (e.g. status, issues, risks, milestones, deliverables, etc.) from multiple projects in the hierarchy. Essentially, this is a cross-project reporting template that includes multiple collections of reporting dashboards (Projects, My Work, Work, Issues and Resourcing) that aggregate and roll up data from multiple sites.
The key difference between the two versions, Project Office and Project Office Portfolio, is that the Project Office reports on all the sites located beneath it in the project heirarchy whereas the Project Office Portfolios do not actually exist in the project hierarchy, they exist outside of the hierarchy and will report on only the projects that you tell them to.
The Program Management Office (PMO) template includes all the reporting and aggregating power of the Project Office template but also facilitates the management of items specific to the PMO itself.
This template was designed for the quick establishment of a PMO where the team wants a process to manage the PMO as well as roll-up selected items from multiple projects. This template includes multiple collections of reporting dashboards (Projects, My Work, Work, Issues and Resourcing) that aggregate and roll up data from all the sites located beneath it in the hierarchy.
Manage Portfolios
BrightWork includes a number of templates for managing across many projects. As with the SharePoint project management templates, each template delivers a certain amount of management and can all be customized to suit local needs and practices.
The key value point of these templates is the manner in which the class-leading SharePoint reporting infrastructure enables them to provide windows into the health of multiple projects. Some of these templates have a small amount of cross-project management support and are very suitable for light-touch approaches, while some have a large amount of cross-project management more akin to full program management.
All of these templates can co-exist in the same SharePoint environment, allowing you to create a project office hierarchy with the right amount of program management for each point in that hierarchy. Templates with small amounts of management are to the left of the line while templates with more management are to the right of the line.
The Program Management templates available with BrightWork include: Issue Office; Projects Tracker; Project Office and Project Office Portfolio; and Program Management Office.
Click on a Template on the image below, or a link above, to see a screenshot and learn more about the Template.
