Call +61 488 514 111

Archive for category: News

You are here: / / News
Simon Greenland

Mariner PPM, your DevOps controller to deliver efficiently and faster

When your operations, development and quality assurance teams need to all collaborate in real time to develop new markets and products, Mariner Portfolio Project Management software provides the tools to make it possible.

At the centre of the collaboration – or DevOps as it is popularly known – is a plan that covers every project in your work hierarchy, all tasks, resources and work items to make sure your things get done on-time and on budget.

Planning, organising and managing costs, resources and time effectively ensures your projects are completed within the right timeframe, with the right amount of work, and with the right level of quality.

To help you manage the task plan, MarinerPPM shows the critical path graphically so you know when a task (or a series of tasks) must be finished. The critical path is based on the longest possible sequence of tasks, factoring in their start dates, finish dates, dependencies, and constraints.

Sometimes one task must finish before another task can begin so MarinerPPM provides a tool to relate task milestones to each other. This highlights inconsistencies across items and allows you to identify where your organisation can work to resolve them.

MarinerPPM enables your collaborators to participate in discussions related to a particular item as they work together to finish their assigned items. As well, issues and risks can be flagged and work items created.

Documents related to particular items can be created, tracked, managed, updated and stored. A history of each document is kept and users can access older versions.

Capital expenses and operational expenses – and resulting benefits – can be allocated, tracked and compared with a baseline provided by the original budget. When multiple currencies are involved, currency-based data can be viewed.

Mariner PPM, managing your DevOps and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). Collaborating to deliver efficiently and faster.

/by
Simon Greenland

Do the right project, right – and profit more

Imagine treating your company’s projects like the enormous investment in financial and human capital that they are.

You’d consider all of your organisation’s projects and programs against one objective: achieving the business’s goals.

And everyone – no matter how detailed or strategic their responsibilities – would get the information they need to ensure each project’s success. Information they need most must be what they see first. Then they can drill down.

You’d also want fast time to value.

That is what Mariner Project and Portfolio Management software provides for CTOs, CIOs, project managers, and information managers. From company directors and CEOs down to the people working on specific tasks, Mariner PPM is what they need to stay on schedule and on budget.

With MarinerPPM, you can do projects right and do the right projects.

MarinerPPM also tracks the dollar value of your gains.

It manages all scales – from a single idea by one person through to the completion of multiple projects. As well, information is rolled up to enterprise level so big picture people get the big picture.

Staff and management can continue with their preferred mix of waterfall and agile planning. They will be able to quickly generate workflows, approvals and processes to keep projects and portfolios of projects flowing.

The software is flexible enough to cater for ad hoc jobs as well as planned projects in marketing, sales, product development, legal or any department as well as IT and finance.

Behind the scenes, operations and development staff will use many of the same techniques for their systems work. Dashboards and reports use a single source of truth to ensure accuracy. Behind the scenes, operations and development staff will use many of the same techniques for their systems work. Dashboards and reports use a single source of truth to ensure accuracy. As Emily Bonnie says in her article “Complete Collection of Project Management Statistics 2015”, high performing project management offices (PMO):

  • Have 45% more projects aligned with business objectives
  • Increase the # of projects delivered under budget by 28%
  • Benefit from $101,000 cost savings per project
  • Lift productivity an average of 18%
  • Improve customer satisfaction by 31%

Shortest route to value

As well as traditional project management, MarinerPPM can be used another way.

Think of the advantages of having your operations, development and quality assurance teams all collaborating in real time to develop new markets and products.

That’s called devops and MarinerPPM can handle it.

AgileAdmin.com defines devops nicely: “Devops is the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.”

You’ll be creating the shortest route to value and customer satisfaction.

Whether you run traditional project management or agile, MarinerPPM helps you manage your devops:

  • It is highly customisable and flexible,
  • Allows you to determine structure, definition, decision-making and workflow,
  • Integrates easily with your existing systems,
  • Is quick to deploy and get started,
  • Works with other workflow applications such as Serena Business Manager,
  • Addresses all of the essential requirements of a project management office:
    • Portfolio,
    • Project,
    • Demand,
    • Finance,
    • Resources,
    • Users.
  • Minimises training with its intuitive web-based interface,
  • Roll-up views and, combined with your strategic drivers, gives you complete organisational visibility.

Test drive it yourself and see the difference it makes to your business.

Register here for your 3 month FREE trial of the latest online version of the Mariner Project and Portfolio Management software application

/by
Simon Greenland

Get your projects working in sync, working together

Your portfolio of projects working together.

When you have an idea that you want to turn into a reality, you will need project management to ensure it comes in on time and under budget.

When you have a number of projects, whether they be in IT, construction, healthcare, mining or any other field, you have a portfolio of projects that need management.

Welcome to the world of project portfolio management

This is where strategic decision makers and execution teams must work in unison to ensure opportunities fit business objectives, where requests for projects are compared with projects already in the pipeline to get the right mix, and where the pipeline is analysed to ensure enough people and money are assigned every step of the way.

When you think of portfolio project management, it helps to think of portfolios in terms of either an artist’s portfolio or an investor’s portfolio.

In both cases, there is a coherence of the parts that reflect an overall vision or strategy.

The challenge in project portfolio management is that the parts are always moving. There are overlapping life-cycles with new projects constantly being submitted for evaluation and possible commitment of resources.

It would be so much easier if, like an artist’s portfolio, there was simply a collection of artworks or songs, or like an investor’s portfolio where the mix is determined and then the assets are bought and held. The constant flux in project portfolio management means you need a methodology for evaluating what to do and to do it right.

How else will you manage multiple task lists, various approvals, status reports, financial reports, project reports, and templates? How else will you identify and manage risks, issues and changes?

Our flagship software, Mariner Project & Portfolio Management, provides a consistent, comprehensive approach for initiating project requests, creating project plans, collecting project costs, and tracking time, status and deliverables across multiple projects at all stages of their life-cycle.

/by