CA Clarity - Rolling Up Projects

As I stated in my earlier post, I'm going to write about my experiences with CA Clarity PPM.

One factor of solid customer service is being able to establish deadlines, and then deliver results.  This can be in software development, engineering, or any of a host of disciplines.  It's critical if you have a portfolio of products to be able to provide your customers with an overview of how you are using the resources.  This may be to reinforce billable hours, justify resources, or to help you develop your skills at being a better estimator of efforts required for projects.

My department has the following:

• Multiple customers who we support.
• Multiple partners who assist in testing, training, and support of the systems.
• Two main types of projects (development vs. maintenance).
• Four main separate systems.
• Multiple projects / phases of development work going across each of these systems.
• Insufficient staff to dedicate multiple resources to each system.

If you're like me... then you really need to know and understand how effective you are in allocating and utilizing your resources.

Here's my plan...

1. I'm going to create discrete projects for each phase of development efforts.
2. I'm going to create annual buckets for each system for maintenance efforts.
3. I'm going to combine all of these "projects" into multiple programs.
4. There will be an overarching program for all efforts from my team.
5. There will be a program for each of the five major system which inculdes all projects for that system.
6. There will be a program for maintenance which includes all maintenance projects.
7. There will be a program for development which includes all development projects.
8. There will be a programs for each customer which combine all projects by customer.
9. There will be additional programs at higher levels of the organization to pull these together further.

What do I know about programs... not a lot at this point.  I've spent a couple of days, and it looks like it pulls the underlying projects together in a single schedule for the program.  This permits reporting against the program.  The nice thing appears to be that the same project can exist in multiple overlapping programs.  If this pans out, it should really assist with planning.

Good night for now!