IT Project Management: Process, Templates, & Best Practices

IT departments do more than roll out new software and ensure that users can connect to printers. You support the critical business systems that your organization relies on to move business forward. Your ITSM solution helps make your tactical tasks easier. But how do you manage your department’s projects?

Keep reading to learn about the opportunity to improve your IT projects by leveraging an integrated professional project management solution.

Benefits of Integrated Project Management

Today’s IT department juggles any number of tasks and projects simultaneously. There is tremendous pressure to keep pace with an unprecedented level of business change. ITSM solutions like BMC Remedyforce help you to track your user tickets and change management but how are you managing the projects and investments that result from those requests?

Adding a dedicated project management solution gives you additional visibility into several key components of your IT department:

• Resource Allocation: Quickly see who is working on what, and who is available to work on new projects or service requests.
• Improved Collaboration: Organize all of your project documents and project communications within your project management interface, ensuring the team is on the same page with the project objectives.
• Timeline Management: Project management tools, like Cloud Coach, provide you with additional tools to help you manage project timelines, including Gantt charts.
• Accountability: The improved visibility within project management also provides additional accountability. As an IT leader, you get a clear understanding of what each team member works on, and for how long.

A portfolio-based strategy allows you to measure the benefits of all project investments against their costs and the organization’s strategic goals.

Benefits of Portfolio-Based Planning

As an IT leader in a large business, you juggle requests from every area of the business for allocation of IT resources and funds. Using corporate portfolio project management software, like Cloud Coach, allows you to create a standard process for handling these requests. This standardized process not only makes your job easier, but improves how IT is perceived in the rest of the business.

It can be easy to get caught up in trying to do everything for everyone. Unfortunately, this approach can overextend your limited resources and commit your team to working on projects that do not achieve your strategic business goals.

Cost Benefit Analysis
Before committing financial and people resources to a project, you want to have a firm idea of the benefits of the project to the business. This can include expected direct financial benefits, the strategic alignment with existing business goals, and qualitative benefits, like improved customer satisfaction.

Project Charters
After performing your cost/benefit analysis, then it’s time to move into the execution phase of the project. A common starting point is the project charter, which details the goals and costs of the project, including establishing your project team and manager.

Before committing the resources to the project, you also need to make sure that all of the appropriate approvals are in place. Cloud Coach includes a fully customizable approval engine that allows you to dynamically route completed project charters based on business rules, define the approval steps, and automatically send updated notifications based on the approval status.

Download the Next Generation IT Project Management e-book for more information about Integrated Project Management, Portfolio Planning, Project Execution, Reporting and Dashboards, and more.