Who Does What and By When?
As projects become increasingly dynamic and complex, project management, but above all of the project portfolio, becomes more challenging. CTE has set itself the goal of using professional and digital project management to put customer benefits at the heart of processes in order to achieve the best possible result with clearly defined services.
With the digitalisation of industrial plants, the interconnection of the technologies used is also increasing and thus the need for regular involvement of specialists in different project phases. To meet these challenges, we at CTE have also used digitalisation to create opportunities to maintain an overview for our customers and ourselves and to introduce a dynamic dimension into management. In the field of project management, we have taken significant steps towards complete digitalisation of work in recent years.
From Start to Finish
Project management at CTE accompanies the entire process throughout the project life cycle. Like a project, the project life cycle is divided into various phases that reflect the status of the project. It begins with the inquiry from a customer or the receipt of tender documents and ends with the internal project completion once the project work has been completed. Throughout their entire life cycle, projects are tracked by the Project coordination. The COO and project manager meet weekly to discuss current inquiries and quotations, as well as responsibilities and the next project steps. This ensures that no inquiry or project gets forgotten and that the availability of resources is guaranteed.
Project Management with MS Project
Projects are planned using the Microsoft Project program. The costs for the requested project are calculated in Project. For this purpose, the services and external costs incurred in relation to the project are broken down and the expenditure estimated. This calculation forms the basis for preparing the quotation. The work packages are calculated and estimated at task level. This allows projects to be planned in great detail.
The detailed breakdown has the advantage that no steps are forgotten, thus preventing changes or adjustments to the scope during the implementation of the project. MS Project is also used to create the schedule. The milestones are planned at the beginning.
As soon as the mandate from the customer is confirmed, the exact schedule, including the various project phases, is created in the project plan. Furthermore, all employees involved in the project are booked in the project plan by the project manager. This ensures clarity in the allocation of resources within CTE, thus ensuring the feasibility of customer projects.
In addition, during the course of the project, progress is also recorded and evaluated at task level in the project and communicated to the customer as required.
Task Management with MS Planner
During the project, the individual tasks and work packages are organised in Microsoft Planner. To ensure that this remains clear, an appointed project team member is responsible for the Planner. The employees involved are assigned within the Planner tasks. The tasks relevant at the time are discussed and clarified in a JourFix. This ensures that all work is kept in view, thus ensuring that the project can be implemented efficiently.
Power BI Dashboards and Project Controlling
To ensure that the project data is up to date and correct, project controlling takes place once a month with each CTE project manager. For this purpose, the data is checked using an overview in Power BI. All of CTE's data sources come together in Power BI to create a comprehensive report including different dashboards for the various stakeholders. One of these stakeholders is, for example, the PMO for project controlling or the customer, for whom a dashboard has been created so that the project manager can use it to communicate project information to the customer in a clear manner.
The aim is and remains to make project management as efficient and beneficial as possible for us and our customers in the future through continuous improvements and the use of new tools.
Finally ...
...we have found that internal data science expertise is particularly useful when creating overviews using summarised dashboards and that a consistent interface design also pays off for internal CRM, project and financial data.
