Working with Project and Portfolio Management

Version: 2023.4

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM Enterprise includes the following applications as part of the solution package:

•Neurons for Facilities

•Neurons for GRC

•Neurons for HR

•Security Operations Management

•Neurons for PPM

Minimum platform version requirements

Existing Ivanti Neurons for ITSM 2023.4 or a new installation of Neurons for ITSM Enterprise.

Installation and Configuration

New Customers

When installing ITSM 2023.4 or later, all the applications (HR, Facilities, GRC, SOM, PPM) are installed too. Customers do not have to do anything with respect to installation.

•Customers without Neurons for ITSM Enterprise licensing: The applications are disabled by default and will not be enabled.

•Customers with Neurons for ITSM Enterprise licensing: The applications are disabled by default but Ivanti Professional Services Organization (PSO) will enable them for these customers.

Existing or On-premises Customers

•Existing ITSM customers who were onboarded pre-2023.4 and wish to upgrade to Neurons for ITSM Enterprise will need to contact Ivanti Professional Services Organization (PSO) to do the install/upgrade. Cloud customers can opt in to automatic updates if desired.

•On-prem customers will need to ask Ivanti Professional Services Organization (PSO) to install/upgrade.

About

Use the Ivanti Neurons for Portfolio and Project Management module to initiate, plan, and manage a variety of IT projects and other projects across your organization.

Features

•Manage Portfolios, and their budgets, and link to Programs and Projects. See Relationships Within PPM.

• Group Projects into logical groups (Programs) or to a specific initiative within the company.

• Manage the health, issues, escalations, and risks for a Project.

•Associate Projects with Phases.

•Use Demand Management to internally collect new ideas, projects, and needs during the creation of a Portfolio.

•Assign resources using Effort and Capacity management.

•Assign tasks to resources in teams across the organization.

•Use Automated Project Tracking to track progress and Completion for each Project, with the Completion % being based on updated Task data and pre-defined weightings.

•Manage and monitor budgets.

•Achieve specific goals within specified time frames to bring the project to completion.

•Create deliverables in the form of Process or Product.

•Use any Project as a template for another Project.

What's New

Neurons for PPM offers several enhancements for 2023.4:

  • NEW Executive Dashboard.

  • In line with all apps now being part of IvantiNeurons for ITSM Enterprise, there is now just one section for Neurons for PPM help in the Table of Contents.

Portfolio and Project Management User Roles

The following roles are available in the the Portfolio and Project Management module. Each role accesses different dashboards and workspaces:

•Portfolio Manager: Manages portfolios of projects. Each portfolio can consist of one or more concurrent projects, and each project can be owned by a different project manager. Portfolio Managers can create a project and assign it to a Project Manager. See Working with Portfolio Management and Getting Started with Portfolio and Project Management.

•Project Manager: Manages one or more concurrent projects. A project can be part of a portfolio, but it doesn't need to be. Project Managers can monitor the progress of a project, track budget allocations and expenditures, and view phases. Project Managers can also create and assign a project, but can't create or change some project specifics such as creating tasks for a phase.

The following workspaces are available to create, view, edit, and manage projects, phases, and tasks:

•Project workspace: Create new projects from this workspace. The workspace lists all projects owned by you as a Project Manager. Once a project is created it can be linked to a portfolio.

•Project Calendar workspace: View projects owned by you as a Project Manager. All projects, phases and tasks that have a status of active are displayed. You can search for a project by project number to display only the tasks and phases for that project. Once a task or phase has a status of active, it is displayed even if the status changes at a later date.

Dashboards

The Project dashboard displays an overview of the projects that are in progress. Select a project to edit or change the project phases and tasks.

About Managing Budget Allocations for Portfolios and Projects

Portfolio Managers can set a budget allocation for each portfolio, but this information is not shared with any of the projects that make up the portfolio. This is because each project can have a different budget allocation and is not tied to the single large allocation of the portfolio.

There are two ways to manage budget and costs:

•You can use a lump sum allocation to the portfolio and for each project connected to a portfolio. This requires that you enter the amounts directly into the Allocated field in the Portfolio workspace.

•You can define and enter a budget plan for each portfolio or a sub-budget plan for a project in the budget fields in the Portfolio workspace. For information on how to enter and define a plan, see Plan information under Adding Information on the Overview Tab.

The budget for a project can only be consumed by the tasks that are created for a project. That is, you must create tasks for each project. The amount consumed by each task on a project is displayed on the Overview tab in the Consumed field. The amounts for the Consumed field are combined for all projects within a portfolio and are displayed as a single figure in the Consumed field in the Portfolio workspace. For information about creating and editing sub-budget plans for projects, see Editing Sub-Budgets.

Example: Portfolio A has a total budget of $20,000.00.

It consists of three projects which have different amounts allocated: Project 1=$6000, Project 2=$5000, and Project 3=$9000. Project 2 has used $1000 of its allocated budget of $5000, and Project 3 has used $2000 of its allocated budget of $9,000. The Consumed field for Portfolio A shows the amount consumed by both projects ($3000), out of the $20,000 that was allocated for all projects in the portfolio.