Enterprise Project Management, in broad terms, is the field of

organizational development Organization development (OD) is the study and implementation of practices, systems, and techniques that affect organizational change. The goal of which is to modify a group's/organization's performance and/or culture. The organizational chan ...

that supports organizations in managing integrally and adapting themselves to the changes of a transformation. Enterprise Project Management is a way of thinking, communicating and working, supported by an information system, that organizes enterprise's

resources ''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically feasible and Culture, culturally Sustainability, sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and want ...

in a direct relationship to the leadership's vision and the mission,

strategy Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "troop leadership; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the " a ...

, goals and objectives that move the organization forward. Simply put, EPM provides a 360 degree view of the organization's collective efforts. In recent years, with general adoption of ( IT) governance practices, Enterprise Project Management has become more specific: whereas in the 1990s focus was generally on the management of the single project, in the subsequent decade, the focus lay more on the fact that a project is likely to be not the only one in the enterprise. The project co-exists with many other projects in the enterprise, or may be part of one or more programs. It may utilize (human) resources that are shared among other projects. In order to facilitate

governance Governance is the overall complex system or framework of Process, processes, functions, structures, Social norm, rules, Law, laws and Norms (sociology), norms born out of the Interpersonal relationship, relationships, Social interaction, intera ...

, it has become essential to be able to manage, monitor, and assess the status of all projects (and other assets, of course) in the enterprise, through a set of (preferably uniform) Enterprise Project Management processes, methods and application packages. Typically, organizations that adopt an Enterprise Project Management way of working, might set up a

Project Management Office A project management office (usually abbreviated to PMO) is a group or department within a business, government agency, or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardiz ...

(PMO)/ Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO), which is said to be more successful than a traditional PMO in addressing the priorities of the organization as its scope is enterprise-wideThe Strategic Importance of the Enterprise Project Management Office
Accessed: 2010-05-02), might select and adopt a Project Management Methodology like

PRINCE2 PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) is a structured project management method and practitioner certification programme. PRINCE2 emphasises dividing projects into manageable and controllable stages. It is adopted in many countries wor ...

PMBOK The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is a set of standard terminology and guidelines (a body of knowledge) for project management. The body of knowledge evolves over time and is presented in ''A Guide to the Project Management Body o ...

(or create a proprietary method) or follow the concepts o
IPMA
Competence Baseline as a foundation for development and certification of

project manager A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the Project planning, planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined star ...

s and their knowledge, experience and behaviour. They might even select and implement a software system to support Enterprise Project Management. An even more recent evolution in Enterprise Project Management is to not only plan and track the ''existing'' set of projects, but to create a portfolio (per budget size, per calendar year, per budget year, per business line, et cetera) of existing and future (demand) projects. This is called

Project Portfolio Management Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on n ...

. Just like the management of a portfolio of shares, Project Portfolio Management is the activity of selecting which projects to keep in portfolio (because of their anticipated value) and which ones to discard (because of their obsoleteness or because they will not yield the value that was initially calculated). Project Portfolio Management includes the creation of various scenarios to decide which is the best portfolio (for a certain year, business, budget, etcetera). Once the contents of the portfolio are agreed upon, it is key to constantly scrutinize how the individual projects are evolving in terms of quality, cost and

schedule A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such thing ...

. Implementing an Enterprise Project Management toolset needs to be considered in the light of the organization's Project Management Maturity and the methodologies, processes and governance structures that are currently in place. There are many consulting organizations that can support such implementations.

References

Network management Project management by type

See also

References