Ramona Riestig is the managing director of a Munich travel agency. As one of the largest international suppliers, the tour operator buys the organizer TUI in the portfolio. Through a special booking area called IRIS.plus from TUI, it can submit the various offers of the tour operator to the customers.
Lost in the project jungle
"However, there are often several results for a query, which means that the same flight has five different prices for my own account," says the entrepreneur. Because it is difficult to differentiate at a glance which offer offers which additional services to justify the respective price.
Difficult information procurement
"The customer then often has to wait longer until I have explained to him what he would have to pay for." And because the self-employed businesswoman thinks that she is customer-oriented, she has registered with the TUI Service Center with the request to provide a little more overview.
Proven approval process
When Ms Riestig's mail comes to the service center, the center manager has already made a note - 14 travel agencies have already registered with his team, who have exactly the same problem as Ramona Riestig from Munich: The TUI interface does not yet show all Relevant data. This note then directs the service center to the IT management area. And there the note finally arrives at the desk of the responsible project manager, an IRIS.plus maintainer.
Fast implementation
It was clear that you had to do something here, "reports the project manager, and this new project" More clarity for IRIS.plus "was given the green light in the next meeting with all ITM project leaders, but as Volker Pellny, ITM, finally, the processing of the project, the huge Excel list, which serves the 120 or so team members in the area of IT management for the administration of the projects, he pushes the mouse aside and says: "This can not go on!
The said file already managed more than 250 projects at this time. Each project application was created in a separate Excel file. If the board has released this application, the project has been transferred to the huge "free file" by macro. If you wanted to find things like the project status, the current cost frame, or the availability of resources, you had to call the phone, write an e-mail or personally.
In addition, each project manager had read and write access to his project and could modify and save the data. That is, there were countless copies of this file in different stages of planning. Just as difficult as the information on project status and resource utilization were the evaluation possibilities - to find out how, for example, the costs and benefits of a project to each other behave, was extremely time-intensive
And, of course, no meaningful portfolio analysis could be made, let alone the control of the projects in a portfolio. This is how the new order came into being: Introduction of a uniform project management system including resource control and portfolio analysis.
"Since we've started from zero, and the Microsoft Project Server offers some freedom to customize, such as the definition of customer-specific fields, we've decided on this system, and of course, this decision has made it clear that we already have the whole house With Office 2010, "says Volker Pellny.
Another important aspect of the reorganization of the project management system was to maintain the proven project approval process. This means that the project ideas are first sent to the IT management board before the takeover into the Project Server, consisting of the CIO, the four department heads as well as representatives of IT controlling. There the idea is then checked, approved as a project and equipped with a budget.
Together with the full-service provider TPG The Project Group, TUI Deutschland then implemented, implemented and operated in just eight months. For this, the teams of TUI and TPG laid down a detailed timetable. In addition to the introduction of a company-wide project management system, Volker Pellny should also establish the project portfolio management.
"This should only come in the second step - once a coordinated project management gets into the aisles, then the portfolio tool." Based on these requirements, phase plans were then coordinated in the workshops and a project structure plan was defined.
The system should be set up in such a way that project ideas can be collected outside the Project Client, ie via the Web App of the Project Server. As soon as an idea is approved by the IT management board and approved as a project, the project management is carried out directly in the client.
Challenge project portfolio management
In this case, the project manager can then carry out the detailed planning, for example, to allocate the resources sensibly and to create the scheduling. "This separation and succession has come quite well with our people, because our employees do not have to create a project in the client for each idea, which offers a lot of functions as an expert tool."
With a pilotsam of six users then started the test in February. The newcomers with regard to software-supported project management could be trained in the handling of the new software. TPG also came up with an experienced coach, who then focused on the technical details of the project server.
The company TUI Deutschland GmbH
When the six pilots mastered the theory, they were also a difficult task. You should disassemble the complex Excel table in which all projects have been managed so far, and create each project individually in the Project Server, including all master data and time schedules. During this phase, Volker Pellny trained another 60 employees from the IT management field. The entire project management team has now successfully worked with the new Microsoft solution since the end of the training.
In this way, the team members can not only see relevant data for their project, but the project managers have the opportunity for the first time to work with a shared resource pool, which manages all projects, longer absences and the daily business. This is confirmed by the project staff, which is a significant relief for project planning. For now, they no longer have to perform the adjustments manually, there are no longer different lists.
After the feedback from the employees on the new system was largely positive, Volker Pellny was able to use the project team to implement the project portfolio management. "It was not easy," the project manager remembers.
View
At TUI, there are three strategic pillars that must be taken into account when portfolio management is concerned: firstly the strategy of TUI Deutschland, secondly, the mother company TUI Travel PLC in England and last but not least IT- Strategy. According to the project manager, the solution was to create a portfolio from each strategic column. "But I needed support here again," he says. It was a great challenge to manage these three portfolios sensibly.
In preliminary talks and an intensive workshop with TPG, a viable path finally emerged: "If a project manager now creates a new project, he must already provide information on this project, in addition to usual things such as the start date and resource requirements We have developed a scale for each of our four objectives, such as 'onlinisation', which allows us to determine the extent to which this project fits this goal. "
This means that the project manager must click on one of five boxes and thus indicate whether his project contributes very strongly, strongly, moderately, rather less or not at all to the goal of "onlining". This procedure is much easier than having to determine percentage weightings as the criteria speak for themselves.
The next step is to include and implement change requests and suggestions for improvement. In addition, the positive feedback from the IT management staff in the specialist areas has been spoiled. As a result, a roll-out will be carried out in all other departments in which project work is on the agenda.
The implementation has already been completed in the areas of Business Intelligence, Inhouse Consulting and Flight Single. It is also working on the existing system as a solution for all TUI Travel PLC companies.
No comments:
Post a Comment