Software Assurance Planning Services
Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning:
Delivery Guide
Table of Contents
Overview 1
Engagement Outcomes 2
Role of the Consultant 2
Engagement Process Flow 3
Engagement Summary 3
Deliverable Creation Process 5
Example: Conceptual Architecture 6
Example: Logical Architecture 7
Example: Physical Architecture 8
Example: Project and Portfolio Architecture 9
Engagement Execution Process 9
Sales Phase 9
Partner Readiness 10
Engagement Delivery Phase 10
Engagement Modules 12
Workshops 12
Pre-Engagement Questionnaire 13
Pre Engagement Survey Questionnaire Review 13
Pre-Engagement Kickoff Teleconference 14
Prerequisites 14
Purpose 14
Participants 14
Overview 14
Engagement Resourcing 16
Resourcing Scenarios 16
Roles and Responsibilities 16
Certification Requirements 17
Technical Skill Requirements 18
Engagement Execution 19
Preparing for the engagement 19
Materials to Bring with You 20
Program Execution with Customer 21
5-Day Implementation Planning 21
Engagement Closeout 27
Delivery Completion 27
Completion Report 27
Best Practices 28
Pre-Engagement Preparation 28
Tips and Tricks 30
Engagement Initiation Checklist 32
Overview
This document provides the engagement delivery resource with the requirements to deliver a Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning engagement.
Deployment Planning Services were developed to provide a structured method to help customers understand the process and tasks required to deploy numerous Microsoft products - and in this case Project Server 2013 and Project Online - while providing a cost-effective process to manage risk.
This Project & Portfolio Management (“PPM”) Solution Planning Engagement gives PPM customers an opportunity to envision the PPM solution that best meets their business objectives and needs.
The SharePoint Deployment Planning Services, under which the Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning resides, objectives include:
The engagement will facilitate both business and technology discussions covering methodology, processes and an overview of Project Online or Project Server capabilities. The desired outcome is an implementation plan covering the customer's prioritized business objectives, desired PPM capabilities, estimated timelines and required efforts.
The audience for this 5-Day service includes staff from the Business Decision Makers (“BDM”), Project Management Office (“PMO”), and IT.
Make the Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning your own! Tailor these out-of-the-box engagement materials to fit your customer situation and your solution offerings as appropriate. There are multiple hidden slides in this presentation that you may use to supplement your delivery.
Recommended use of the Microsoft tools
Proposal for follow-on work, such as compatibility planning, mitigation strategy, post deployment staff augmentation or document conversion assistance.
Partners and consultants are expected to adjust both the breadth and depth of the topics covered based on feedback from the pre-engagement questionnaire or from direct customer knowledge. If the customer engagement requires more effort in an area the schedules should be amended by the delivery team accordingly.
Engagement Outcomes
After the close of this engagement, your customer will have a plan for addressing Project Server 2013 issues to enable deployment and to enable environment optimization. Additionally a summary of all working sessions will be provided that will identify next steps for the customer.
Role of the Consultant
The role of the consultant in this engagement is to provide the perspective of a subject matter expert on the steps necessary to begin to upgrade to Project Server 2013. Because of the relative infrequency of a Project Server 2013 migration effort, most organizations are not familiar with the migration process and do not know where to begin.
Engagement Process Flow
The Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning is designed to help customers quickly understand recommended process to analyze and manage concerns when deploying Project Server 2013. The workshop breaks down the traditional compatibility approach and primary reliance on tools to provide the most effective approach to accelerate the deployment.
Engagement Summary
The engagement delivers an agenda leading customers through the complete process. The goal of the engagement is to:
Capture business objectives and facilitate knowledge transfer to produce guidance for a successful PPM implementation
Prioritize customer PPM related business needs
Plan an effective implementation and adoption path
Document guidelines for configuration of PPM solution
Workshops & Sessions
The engagement includes a Project & Portfolio Strategy Briefing presentation that has a 5 day agenda built in. Note that you may need to customize it, based on the needs of your customer or to account for your own methodologies and preferences.
You will see this methodology reflected especially in the agenda, and the Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation.
Solution Development
Solution Development is a customer engagement where participants identify known and latent customer IT and business issues related to their infrastructure and other capabilities. The goals are to qualify these opportunities and to discover others through a capability gap analysis. The Power Sponsor must be identified.
Solution (Strategy) Briefing
A Solution Briefing Session (SBS) uses a structured approach to gain Power Sponsor validation and approval for a high-level, solution value proposition. Participants align relevant supporting evidence, along with high-level specific customer estimates of investment costs and benefits, to refine the value proposition for the proposed solution and stakeholders. This briefing enables the opportunity team to further diagnose issues of business decision makers, explore impact, and visualize solution capabilities. The findings of the SBS are recorded in the Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning: Findings and Recommendations document.
These results will include the following:
Business Goals
Business Problem Statement
Business Solution Statement
Business User Identification
SharePoint Business Services Required
Products Required
The PowerPoint presentations for these sessions include specific slides to guide the recording of these items.
Important Note: When establishing the agenda for the engagement, it is a leading practice to include executive business decision makers and members of the Microsoft Account Team (if applicable) attend the SBS.
Envisioning Workshop
The Envisioning Workshop is a customer engagement that enables the Partner and the customer to jointly design a high-level technical solution that is based on the shared buying vision that is established during the Solution Briefing. This solution is then used to refine the value proposition in the Solution Proposal, and create a deployment plan and bill of materials.
An Envisioning Workshop is intended to identify the requirements and a high-level solution that meets the deployment planning needs of enterprise customers, as identified in the SBS, with an eventual goal of deploying Project Server in conjunction with the Office 2013 client suite.
In general, the Envisioning Workshop should achieve the following:
Increase understanding of the customer’s challenges.
Establish solution requirements based on the customer’s business drivers and infrastructure maturity capabilities.
Remove technical objections, obstacles, and risks (real and perceived) that may keep the customer from deploying Project Server 2013 and the Office 2013 client suite.
Transform the customer’s business challenges into design decisions that will result in a value-based proposed solution that increases product and services opportunities for Microsoft and partners.
The basic flow of the Envisioning Workshop is to describe the features of the technology, elicit the business and technical needs of the customer, map the features to the business needs of the customer, and then describe the supporting physical design that is required to support the business needs. This results in the following organization of SDPS feature topics:
Challenges. Reviews the typical organizational challenges to be met by the technology of focus.
Feature Drill-Down. Provides a deep functional review of the features of focus during the Envisioning Workshop.
Plan. Focuses on mapping the organizational needs to the features and collects the required information to implement the features in the organization.
Physical Design. Applies the information that was gathered during planning to a physical design for the technology.
During each session of the Envisioning Workshop, the PowerPoint presentation guide the session so that you can record these items in the Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning: Findings and Recommendations. (The solution requirements, and the rationale that drives each requirement, should be recorded in the Vision and Next Steps sections.)
SDPS deliverable documents contain additional instructions to guide you as well. Be sure to review the concepts section for important information about key Project Server concepts which will help to drive your design discussions.
Engagement Summary Session
All engagements end with an Engagement Summary Session, which finalizes the design and planned project timelines, resources, and phases. This interactive session consolidates the findings from the previous sessions and summarizes how the SDPS solution could integrate with the customer’s environment and meet the Project Server 2013 business drivers and requirements. The conclusions reached in this session are documented in the Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning: Findings and Recommendations.
You should invite all key stakeholders to this final session, including stakeholders from among those who attended the SBS and the Envisioning Workshop, because the session brings together the technical decisions and the business drivers for the solution.
The appropriate recommendations document should be used for each of the following items:
Use the completed Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning: Pre-Engagement Questionnaire document to gain insight and understanding of how the customer uses, presents, and organizes information in their organization.
Brief the customer on relevant Microsoft Product Roadmaps and discuss how those roadmaps might affect the project.
Review the output of the SBS session.
Finalize and document the high-level solution that will satisfy the business drivers that were identified during the SBS.
Review the requirements of the solution as recorded during the Envisioning Workshop and make any adjustments.
Finalize and document design choices that support the chosen solution.
Establish the project delivery model that will be used, including project timelines, delivery model (such as the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) team framework), and delivery framework by using the project delivery presentation.
Review and record any outstanding questions, to ensure proper follow up.
Deliverable Creation Process
Creating the Conceptual Design, Logical and Physical Architectures
The output of the 5 Day Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning engagement provides you with users, business services, and information worker (IW) products necessary for the solution. With these elements, you can derive a conceptual design. When you create a conceptual design, consider including the following information: Users/Actors (persons and systems; products required, Project Server 2013 business services required, and so forth.)
Example: Conceptual Architecture
By using components from the conceptual design and the output of the engagement, build a logical architecture tailored for your customer’s solution and reflects their current environment. Consider including the following information in logical architecture illustrations: URLs for entry points (//portal, //projects); classifications/taxonomies for site collections, and so forth.
From the logical architecture, detail the components that make up the infrastructure of the environment. Consider including: Domain names; Ports; Application Pools; Server Names; IP Addresses; Passwords; Database Roles and Names, and so forth.
Example: Logical Architecture
Example: Physical Architecture
Example: Project and Portfolio Architecture
Engagement Execution Process
The engagement process flow is broken down to individual phases. This section describes the process flow for each phase. The process flow diagrams describe the various steps in the process and the associated deliverables.
Sales Phase
The following figure outlines the engagement sales or assignment process to enable the partner to deliver the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning) to the customer using Deployment Planning Services benefits.
The four key steps in the sales process are outlined below to assist in planning a sales approach with your customers. These can also be used for closing leads in the partner's new and existing customer accounts.
Prepare - Learn about the customer, prepare conversational goals
Probe - Take the time to understand the customer's business pains and determine the impact on their organization
Prove Value - Identify and convey the business value of deploying the desktop within the customer's organization
Qualify - Ensure that the client is eligible for the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services/Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning
The provided service is based on field proven best practices from Microsoft. The objective is to help reduce the cost and time to migrate to Project Server 2013.
Sales and MarketingPhase / Content / Summary
Sales Lead / Datasheet / Sales Datasheet for Marketing SharePoint Deployment Planning Services Program
Sales Prospect / Customer Presentation / High level presentation designed for BDM or TDM for the: Architecture and Design for Proof of Concept Jumpstart offering.
Partner Preparation / SOW Template / Example SOW for Partners to help them frame their own proposals.
Partner Readiness
The partner readiness phase assembles the appropriate partner resources to enable a smooth engagement delivery. The provided materials enable understanding of the program and how to effectively deliver it.
Partner ReadinessPhase / Content / Summary
Partner Recruitment / Partner Overview / Overview of the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services program from a partner perspective.
Partner Preparation / Engagement Delivery Guide / Provides the partner team with an overview of the tasks required of the project team, the customer, and vendors to successfully deliver an Office Compatibility Workshop engagement.
Engagement Delivery Phase
The customer engagement delivers workshops over the course of 3 – 15 days, and in this case 5-days. The engagement focuses on building understanding of the customer’s needs and should position you to have a good understanding the next steps you can take with the customer to develop a longer term engagement. The following figure details the recommended engagement delivery process.
Engagement MaterialsPhase / Content / Summary
Pre-Engagement / Agenda / Slides are available in the Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) Solution Planning: Kick-off / Agenda
Pre-Engagement / Requirements Introduction / PPT to gather prerequisite information for an engagement.
Pre-Engagement / Engagement FAQ / Provides answers to common question about the engagement and supporting resources.
Pre-Engagement / Pre-Engagement Checklist / Customer questionnaire template used to gather information about the customer environment. The questionnaire should be sent to the customer before any design workshops are conducted. Give team members insight into the customer environment and serves as a benchmark to the customer by identifying numerous areas of the enterprise that will be integral to the success of the engagement.
T – 1 week / Engagement Kickoff / PowerPoint presentation template used to set ground rules for the engagement team. Shares the vision, interim milestones, schedules, and approach. The PowerPoint will also serve as the project plan for the engagement.
Engagement / Presentation Template / Template to be used when designing engagement materials.
Engagement / Document Template / Template to be used when designing engagement materials.
Engagement / Closeout Presentation / Presentation to prompt discussion and drive decisions for inclusion in engagement deliverable as well as highlight opportunities for future partner engagements.
Engagement Modules