PeopleSoft Program Management Overview

Large enterprises and project-based organizations have long recognized the value of leveraging project management techniques and knowledge across multiple projects. PeopleSoft Program Management enables program and project managers to plan and manage complex programs and projects across an organization by applying common standards and procedures, providing sophisticated tools and analyses, and integrating critical program and project information with other PeopleSoft applications, as well as non-PeopleSoft applications. PeopleSoft Program Management provides the tools for an organization to efficiently conduct the process of managing programs and projects from their inception to their closure.

The main functional areas of PeopleSoft Program Management include:

  • Program management.

  • Project planning and estimating.

  • Project collaboration.

  • Services forecasting.

  • Modeling and analysis.

Program Management

A program is an initiative that is composed of one or more projects. Usually a theme is associated with a program, and all the projects that are within a program support that theme. You establish a tree, which is referred to as an enterprise program tree, to define the hierarchical relationship of a business unit's programs and their associated projects.

The data for all projects that are within a program are summarized at the program level, enabling program managers to quickly and easily assess how well a program is progressing.

Project Planning and Estimating

Project planning and estimating are the building blocks of successful project management. In PeopleSoft Program Management, project managers are provided with the tools to easily copy a project template, list activities, relate activities, build a work breakdown structure, schedule activities, assign resources, and estimate project costs. These capabilities enable the organization to harness and organize the project plan data that exists in users' desktop project scheduling tool files. With PeopleSoft Program Management, project plan data can be aggregated and fully integrated with a back-office project accounting system.

Project management features include:

  • Scheduling activities, assigning resources, assessing project health, and tracking costs.

  • Managing the life cycle of a project, from submission of a project request through project approval and execution to completion.

  • Managing change and tracking issues to process any problems that arise and the changes that are required to resolve them.

  • Creating and using project templates to standardize best practices.

Project Collaboration

Increased project collaboration has a direct relationship with project success. PeopleSoft Program Management incorporates several collaborative features such as issue management, change management, risk management, services forecasting, deliverables, and status reporting into the resource and project portfolio management business process.

Services Forecasting

Forecasts enable you to make better business decisions. With the Services Forecasting feature, you can forecast resource hours spent on a project or activity, compare them to budgeted hours, analyze and reestimate project costs, and review workforce utilization.

You also need to anticipate the supply and demand of resources versus new projects. Once you assign resources to tasks and begin tracking work efforts, you can use the Services Forecasting feature to compare your workforce's actual utilization to the forecast, predict workforce utilization, and determine the best course of action based on the organization's objectives.

Modeling and Analysis

The system enables you to analyze various aspects of programs, projects, and resources including:

  • Comparison of budgeted costs to actual amounts.

  • Resource usage.

  • Earned value.

  • Estimate to complete variance.

  • Resource utilization.