As one of the largest global apparel companies – with over $8 billion in revenues – it owns and markets two brands globally as well as a number of US brands. The IT PMO has been using various versions of Microsoft Project Server over the years to manage projects, resources, and timesheets. However, it needed to enhance capabilities related to cost, benefits, and demand management, in order for IT to better collaborate with the business.
Constrained Governance
As the company has continued to grow, both through organic growth as well as through acquisitions, its IT portfolio has grown as well. However, the portfolio governance and prioritization processes were manual and needed to be matured and automated to ensure that investments are aligned to the business. Additionally, the portfolio management approach being used was not comprehensive of all demand and therefore it could not provide full visibility to the management team.
“Having used Project Server successfully for several years, the logical next step was to extend the platform with UMT360 portfolio management capabilities”, says the IT PMO Vice President. Based on the organizational level of maturity and platform capabilities, the following objectives were set:
- Create a transparent portfolio management process that provides a common language and understanding of the business priorities.
- Define a standard set of strategic drivers that all projects are assessed against.
- Build a portfolio governance model with predefined meetings and agendas that enable portfolio optimization.
- Develop project and portfolio dashboards for business sponsors, stakeholders, and the management team to provide on-demand visibility into the portfolio status.
- Create a single-point-of-capture for all IT requests to manage the full demand.
End-to-End Demand Management
UMT360 developed a SharePoint app for demand management that is deployed on the company’s intranet where it reaches a wide audience, including business users such as designers, manufacturing leads, and logistics analysts. Previously, IT leads were assigned to work with business partners, which created silos, but now everybody collaborates on the same platform, following the same process. The solution provides visibility into large, small, strategic, and tactical demand that previously was not visible together. Upon review and approval, requests are automatically copied as projects or tasks into Project Server.
Exposing Strategic Value in Dashboards
With the introduction of UMT360 demand management and financial management capabilities, the IT PMO took the opportunity to redefine types of work based on tiers, taking into consideration cost, effort, departments, and level of process and technology change. Along with the introduction of automated surveys to define strategic value based on business drivers and risk assessments, new executive dashboards were introduced to make portfolio management operational in one of the world’s largest apparel companies.
Having used Project Server successfully for several years, the logical next step was to extend the platform with UMT360 portfolio management capabilities.
VICE PRESIDENT
IT PMO