Managing Internal and External Projects Effectively

As is the current trend, most countries in the US use offshore or onshore models for project implementation. This consequently results in an incessant interaction between the deployment centers and the project offices.  A secure and easy access is crucial to all users regardless of the geographical barriers, and difference in the physical location. In order to automate task generation, it is exceedingly essential to have an enforceable workflow management. It is also imperative to have a top quality application that complies with all internal and external requirements.

How to overcome the challenges?

The challenges can be overcome by adopting a solution that is ideal from the point of view of reliability, security and backup. A single tool can not only cut down maintenance costs and deployment, but can be advantageous by  

Facilitating customers to know relevant information in real time-
Requirement changes are a reality in any project. A well defined and consistent process is the best way to review a change. Adopting a Global lifecycle change management will help in addressing issues during the implementation of projects. Internal regression and integration testing and enhancements requests can be captured in a single location. It enables the planning access to customers that can be controlled. As requests can be changed directly into the system, issues can be prioritized, and the success of a project can be closely monitored.

Effectively managing and mapping requirements-
As project deliverables are shared by various team members across the globe, it is essential to have a global lifecycle requirements management solution that can help in the implementation of requirements gathering, intelligent reporting, methodology etc., thereby enabling the project teams to efficiently manage and map requirements. This in turn, enhances the collaboration with service partners and control of offshore projects.

Simplify task management-
As most management tools do not come with a built in process engine, it is best to adopt a solution, like Global Lifecycle Process management,  that has the capability of simplifying task management across time zones. The solution has the ability to provide seamless collaboration thus eliminating emails and phone calls and coordination of tasks across different time zones, and ultimately increasing productivity.

A complete and comprehensive, product support and maintenance can assist in managing the development for internal and external projects.  A sound requirements management tool provides a rich and configurable, global platform for capturing a set of requirements. It ensures that all users are working from the same playbook, irrespective of where they are located. Implementation of these tools facilitates easy reporting of projects, and enhances the productivity.

Read more about IT service management here.

Top ways to achieve true IT governance and compliance

IT Governance and compliance have assumed grave importance for senior managers across enterprises since it involves the overall control and health of a large corporation. And every enterprise is aware that IT governance and compliance are abilities that can determine the enterprise’s stature in the global technology-centric environment. Public companies are mandated by Federal laws - including section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 - to establish effective practices such as reporting and operational controls such as Change Management. Generally the management implements these procedures with a number of standards and frameworks that include IEEE 12207 lifecycle processes, ISACA Cobit 4.1, SEI CMMI and the itSMF ITIL v 3. But sometimes managers face certain framework problems wherein more information on what needs to be done and also how one should implement certain procedures is required, but not provided within these frameworks. In this article, we focus on ways and means to achieve true IT governance and compliance.

• An IT service management solution that can provide tools and processes to remove ambiguity and bring about enhanced productivity through the proper implementation of the Cobit 4.1 framework can definitely help an enterprise in achieving the objectives of IT governance and compliance.
• IT SM solutions that can help define and communicate change procedures including emergency changes, assess, prioritize and authorize changes as well as ensure total tracking status and reporting on changes can be an asset for any enterprise that aims to achieve IT Governance and compliance.
• Enterprises in their goal to accomplish true IT Governance should choose such an IT service solution that can develop, document and promulgate a change management framework that can specify policies and processes effectively. It should establish and maintain version control over all changes. Such a solution would also be able to implement roles and responsibilities that involve business process owners and appropriate technical IT functions. Additionally it can ensure appropriate segregation of duties.
• An IT service solution that can establish appropriate record management practices and audit trails to record key steps in the change management process is an added bonus for any enterprise. It can ably provide timely closure of changes and assist in elevating and reporting changes to the management when they are not closed in a timely fashion

Implementing IT Governance and compliance is all about confirming that all the elements have been accomplished in the right manner in the right time and through the right way. It’s also about traceability and providing visibility to all of the stakeholders involved. A robust automated process workflow solution that can help any organization successfully implement IT Governance and compliance best practices, we hope the afore-mentioned tips can be useful in your quest towards achieving true IT governance and compliance.
 

Also read about enterprise service bus (ESB) at Wikipedia.

Top tips to meet project management challenges

Every enterprise faces diverse project management challenges as far as tracking and managing their deliverables from different technology vendors is concerned. Problems such as tracking the status of each deliverable, implementing and following processes, responding to vendor’s claims on time and lack of a proper alerting system often plague project managers. What project managers require is an effective and sophisticated solution that can meet all their challenges and pain points efficiently and here are some tips that provide some ways and means to such these challenges.

• Rather than jumping at a commercial off the shelf (COTS) solution, enterprises should look out for such software that can provide them with automated customized views, filters and reports for all their project management processes. A solution with doesn’t require any coding, scripting, database knowledge or web programming or the involvement of any IT resource.
• Such an application lifecycle management solution should follow multiple processes for different entities and automate their various functions such as action items, change requests, configured items, deliverable transmittals, issues tracking, etc.
• The solution should essentially be user friendly and its configurations should allow users to implement business applications easily. So be it implementing an application with various inter-dependent processes that requires custom fields, views, filters and reports via a simple drag and drop browser based interface that doesn’t require a database schema changes or coding.
• ALM solutions that can reduce an enterprise’s overall organizational uncertainty level and increases productivity can prove beneficial for any enterprise. Such solutions ensure that deliverables need not be tracked manually and it encourages a proactive rather than a reactive mode of tracking deliverables.
• There should be zero issues falling through the cracks, therefore the solution you finally opt for should take care of all the housekeeping and overhead tasks and improve the predictability of the deliverables.
• The solution should provide enterprises with a detailed audit trail of every change in the processes, therefore a transparent and open system where every person knows where and why a particular process is held up and what can be done to move it.
• The solution should improve the efficiency and productivity in processing the deliverables considerably, both in terms of cycle time and the manpower effort for the enterprise.
• An optimized solution can bring about overall reduction in errors and omissions due to the workflow tasks were at least 10%. It workflow process automation solution should reduce time required to monitor and supervise other users for enterprises.

Also read about enterprise service bus (ESB) at Wikipedia.

Enhancing IT Services in Banks using Omni process and Omnibus Integration.

IT services and IT applications managed by banks are critical tools as they provide products and services that improve a bank’s profitability competitiveness. In any large organization, especially an IT department at a bank which is distributed over a number of locations managing production incidents for evaluations and resolution is amply significant. It is therefore imperative to have‘process automation’ in place, taking into account the dynamic business situations as the success of any process depends on the adherence to perform with minimal errors.

Major Challenges

• Managing employees across various locations – Without sound process automation, all processes will have to be done manually. There are many limitations in a manual process, as even with the best of intentions errors can occur. And these errors can be expensive to correct.

• Communication - In a large corporation, communication between different groups is minimal, and consequently information does not move in a timely manner without manual intervention. This could lead to segments of process automation within an individual tool, and the information within an individual tool is replicated manually, and can be inconsistent at times.

• Access to the travelling managers –In a critical production environment, it is imperative to the to the incident management process, not to hold up any processes.  High priority incidences cannot be put on hold, if managers are travelling. As all sign offs need that a manager has clear has to be traceable and auditable.

Overcoming the challenges
IT Service Management (ITSM) provides a workflow based global platform for implementing processes distributed over multiple geographic locations.  Adopting a functional solution that is highly advantageous to all kinds of organizations, like an adequate global lifecycle product support  (with built in process and integration technology) can help in overcoming these challenges.

Omniprocess, Process technology  

• Eliminates the risk of manual process implementation by enforcing and automating processes.
• Eliminates the need for consulting resources.
• Can manage complex processes accurately.
• Eliminates continuous training of participants
• Brings down the cycle time in state based processes.

Omnibus, integration technology  

• Eliminates manual errors, and expensive manual data transfer.
• Connects and locates among data and objects.
• Enhances instant visibility across groups.
• Creates and manages business rules by end users.

Global Lifecycle’s active mobile access

• Can be accessed easily while anytime
• No compromise on security

An efficient IT service management solution, allows banks and other large organizations to create and manage processes without the need of expensive IT resources. All important tools are integrated to avoid costly mistakes and effortlessly create an extremely easy integration management.

Also read about enterprise service bus (ESB) at Wikipedia.

Top tips to optimize incident management systems for banks

Most banks face different challenges when it comes to their incident management systems. Primary challenge remains in efficiently implementing the incident management process. This includes managing a process across diverse groups of employees and contractors spread across multiple domestic and sometimes overseas as well. Next is the problem of integrating various legacy and 3^rd party vendor tools used by different groups within the bank. That’s not all, banks often have to ensure that their managers who travel, should have access to the incident management process so that any process is not held-up if any particular manager doesn’t have access to any information owing to firewall procedures.

To manage and route ‘production incidents’ in real-time to the right personnel for evaluation and resolution is highly essential for a bank. So while some banks do this manually, the actual success of the process eventually will depend on the adherence of discipline of each process participant to ensure an error-free process. And if the bank then opts for various tools from different vendors to automate such processes, the issue that they face most often is that these disparate tools don’t talk to each other! The after-effects of these disjointed tools become very apparent when every tool operates as a silo and remain largely isolated from the larger ecosystem of tools. This means that inconsistencies and duplications are guaranteed.

So while the answer to all these problems most people would say is process automation, yet for an entity such as a bank, an automated process solution comes with its own set of complexities. Here are a few tips that can help such banks with their incident management process, these include:

• Opt for optimized issues management tools: The tool that should be chosen should achieve all configurations and their processes through simple drag and drop mouse clicks without any coding. It should be equipped with multi-level role resolution to enable proper implementation of complex processes.
• Have an effective application lifecycle management tool in place that can handle parallel simultaneous activities and cut down overall cycle time. It should enable efficient multiple tool integration, which means that right from a test management to an internal release management tool, the tool should give the bank freedom from avoidable mistakes.
• Your incident management solution ought to allow for effortless management of information that is trapped in disparate tools.
• ALM solution should enable active mobile access: Active mobile access allows users to be involved even when they are on the move. The solution should be secure and see that users can access and review data, edit items, complete tasks and approve works not just from their email capable mobile phones, but from any email system even if they don’t have access to the browser.

Read more about Incident Management at Wikipedia.

Tips to solve IT Service Management challenges

IT service management is essentially about investigation and resolution of issues and problems reported by a geographically distributed user base. The processes that enable IT service management generally have complex business rules. These rules are based on Service Level Agreements (SLA) and further technical guidelines. This means that processes can become even more intricate when diverse other departments ranging from service, engineering, finance and legal teams also get involved. Usually these departments use diverse information silos called point tools that are deficient in data integrity and are seriously devoid of cross-functional collaboration elements. Owing to this quality of service can be severely impacted. Most IT service management personnel want efficient ways and means of proper resolution of user-reported problems and also ensure that such information are entered into a knowledgeable base for future reference.

The broad IT service management challenges that any IT enterprise has to face include:

• Classifying and employing automated business processes
• Updating users about the developments in problem resolution
• Ensuring problems if not resolved in time are escalated to ensure its full fledged resolution
• Having an integrated IT tools ecosystem
• Offering global access
• Enabling knowledge base management

Top tips to solve IT service management challenges

• Get IT service management solutions that can automate processes for you and effectively generate tasks based on previously designed business rules. So have the freedom of having escalation notifications generated automatically to ensure that your resolutions are done as per the SLA. Thus you can easily eliminate manual errors while being ensured of complete visibility into all your processes.
• A web-based interface that can be accessible from anywhere, anytime for all your internal groups consisting of finance, service and legal is a great bet for any enterprise. It assures event-based, two-way, real-time communication between tools. This kind of a solution ensures greater data integrity and reduces inconsistencies.
• Your ITSM solutions should enable a knowledgebase for you which should contain resolutions of known errors and should also incorporate lessons learned from past
• Resolution efforts. This will reduce time spent on issues/problem resolution and will also eliminate duplication of efforts in problems that have been resolved in the past.
• Your solution should provide you information in a single repository; this ensures that you can easily refer to diverse pieces of information.

Thus an optimized ITSM solution can provide multi-entity functional capabilities and can effectively serve all inherent security aspects to serve enterprise needs efficiently.

Read more about  service level agreement at Wikipedia.

Best practices for Integrated project management

Almost every industry has inculcated the practice of project management to overcome the snags of managing. Project management is nothing but the application of knowledge and skills applied to project activities to meet the stakeholder’s needs and expectations from a project from a project. Most of the project management solutions are designed to meet the enterprise goals which include cost estimation, automated process aligned to the business, managing resources, allocation of tasks to resources, timesheet to capture time details of task execution, reporting, and management visibility through Dashboard etc. Good project management provides the facility to integrate the solution with third-party or vendor neutral solutions by applying the some of the following practices.

Task management- When working with limited resources, it is easy to manage and follow up Tasks. On the contrary, as the organization grows it becomes imperative to obtain a tool for managing tasks. An effective tool will allocate the right task to the right resource at the tight time.

Timesheet Management- A project is planned with estimated start and end times. As and when a project starts, resources get involved in accomplishing the tasks. To evaluate the time spent on resources on accomplishing tasks, a timesheet is required. Timesheet was originally used to determine the employee payroll of an organization. In project management, timesheet is used to track the actual effort spent be resources to accomplish tasks. The timesheet provides the actual breakdown of actual time spent on the tasks that are accomplished throughout the lifecycle of a project.  This allows the project manager to get information about the effort spent on the project, enabling him to create analysis reports for the management analyze the different ways the actual effort spent by the resources involved in a project.

Resource management- Optimized allocation and planned involvement of resources determine the success of a project. Planning with resources is a huge task for project managers as they have to consider the estimated budget and duration of a project. Whenever a resource gets involved in a project, the management has to estimate the cost of the particular resource.  Projects have numerous requirements and these get deployed through several releases. It is the project manager who has to determine the key requirements that need to be implemented in the first release. Manual distribution is appropriate when you are dealing with a small list of items. But in cases where there are a large number of requirements, it would be a mammoth task to do this distribution manually. A suitable application performs these requirements distribution automatically, based on the constraints defined and the rank assigned to each of the requirements will make resource management much simpler.

Reporting and dashboard capabilities Dashboard is a planned and combined display of information for users to take a quick decision on the performance of various departments. As management usually prefers to view reports from a centralized location, the dashboard is a popular tool to generate various types of reports and making decisions.  – easy to read information at one place, display of different sets of data in multiple formats, visual clarity, access to real time data, and something not easily achievable with other means of data analysis. It helps the decision makers or the management with ideas as to how to go about implementing potential improvements and solutions.

Best practices for integrated project management helps to give development groups the freedom of choosing their own project hierarchy. Applications like application lifecycle management, work to provide unprecedented advantages to a development organization to implement ALM in the most optimal manner. An Integrated enterprise service bus allows for a unique process automation of each of these applications thus allowing the users to implement any development methodology including a proprietary one.

Also read more about Project management at Wikipedia.