Working with Project and Portfolio Management
Role: Project Manager, Portfolio Manager
Minimum Version: 2020.4
Use the Ivanti Neurons for Portfolio and Project Management (PPM) module to initiate, plan, and manage a variety of IT projects and other projects across your organization.
Installation and Configuration
This section explains the installation and configuration process for ITSM Enterprise in both cloud and on-premise environments, for new and existing customers.
New Customers - ITSM Cloud
Neurons for ITSM Enterprise Line of Business (LOB) is included with ITSM deployments for all new ITSM customers. No additional installation or manual upgrades are required. ITSM Enterprise license or Enterprise solution package are required to access ITSM Enterprise Workflows.
Contact Ivanti Operations to activate LOB content if upgrading licensing from standard ITSM to ITSM Enterprise.
Existing Customers - ITSM Cloud
Existing ITSM cloud customers who wish to activate Neurons for ITSM Enterprise will need to engage Ivanti Professional Services (PSO), Certified Ivanti Partner, or Ivanti Operations in order to enable the additional content.
New Customers - ITSM On-premise
Neurons for ITSM Enterprise is included with new on-premises ITSM installations and can be activated for customers who have the required ITSM Enterprise licensing.
Contact Ivanti Professional Services or a Certified Ivanti Partner to enable the additional content.
Existing Customers - ITSM On-premise
Existing ITSM on-premises customers who wish to upgrade to Neurons for ITSM Enterprise will need to engage with Ivanti Professional Services or a Certified Ivanti Partner.
Features
•Manage Portfolios, and their budgets, and link to Programs and Projects.
For more details, refer to 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.
User Roles
The following roles are available in 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.
For more details, refer to 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 project in the budget fields in the Portfolio workspace.
For information on how to enter and define a plan, refer to Plan information under Adding Information in the Overview Section.
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 budget plans for projects, refer to Creating a Project Budget Plan.
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.