Business Value Toolkit and Balanced Scorecard
We’ve discussed this before (see the Business Value category for posts) and now it’s finally here….VyrtuNet’s Business Value Management methodology with tools and templates available for download. Here is the first one with more to come soon….
Understanding the total cost of IT is all about understanding the cost and business impact of new and existing IT investments. Business leaders want to see how IT investments link to business strategy and want to know which investments lower costs and have a higher impact. Strategic alignment, value measurements and prioritization helps company’s make good investment decisions. Don’t waste your money on expensive software! This toolkit covers the first 3 phases of our Business Value Management methodology and provides everything you need to:
- Create a 3G Balanced Scorecard and measure the value of strategic initiatives
- Organize strategic and legacy technologies into project portfolios
- Prioritize projects that have high business impact
- Analyze the value of existing technologies that have low business impact
- Use Cause & Effect analysis to identify all of the work, align new projects and legacy investments with strategy and assess business value for all IT costs
- Complete set of guidelines and instructions
- A great tool for strategy development and PPM
If you purchase this and have questions or need assistance, VyrtuNet provides FREE consultation!
A Message from VyrtuNet…and Thokk
New Year’s Resolution for 2012 Year of the Dragon: Align Your IT Projects to Business Strategy
For IT organizations with tight budgets and scarce resources, new projects are difficult to justify as most of the available funding goes to keep existing applications and systems performing. But IT can enable businesses to meet strategic objectives through innovation and continuous improvement. Today’s IT organization is a major contributor to corporate strategy development and execution through IT as a service.
IT and business managers work together to establish, prioritize and measure business objectives and technology investments to control investment costs and service quality goals. Well managed organizations have existing tools in place to do this: ITIL, Economic Value-Add, Activity Based Costing, Activity Based Management, Balanced Scorecard, Strategic Planning, Value Stream Mapping and FMEA.
More now than ever, business managers want to see how IT investments link to business strategy, insisting these expenditures stabilize or lower costs and have a higher impact to the business. Organizations are able to make the right investment decisions when new projects and legacy technologies demonstrate benefits in terms of impact and cost.
Start 2012 on the right foot. Lead your organization to reach and realize good IT investment decisions. Prioritize and align resources to the right projects to achieve the right results. Download a FREE Balanced Scorecard! It also includes a performance metrics and measures worksheet and templates to establish portfolios for new IT projects and legacy IT investments.
Read more about IT project strategy alignment on VyrtuNet’s PM Innovations Blog.
©2011 VyrtuNet
IT Infrastructure Migration Process
Looking for a lean IT infrastructure migration process and checklist? This one leverages ITIL Service Strategy, ITIL Infrastructure Management and ITIL Service Operations plus real IT experience to shape a rapid, efficient project delivery process & checklist for IT migrations. This document describes VyrtuNet’s IT Solution Delivery component, a process you can use to plan and deliver IT infrastructure migration projects.
- Detailed 5-phase process and checklist of inputs, activities, deliverables, quality checks, PM Snippets & PM Stoplights.
- Perfect for IT infrastructure and network service migration project planning, technical design, build & test, go-live plus access, user and data migration.
Click here to read more or purchase it
Celebrate International Project Management Day 2011
Get $5 off these products November 1st – 4th:
IT Infrastructure Implementation Process & Checklist
IT Infrastructure Migration Process & Checklist
IT Implementation Plan Template
Bonus! Purchase a template or subscribe to Premium Membership on International Project Management Day November 3rd and get this tee-shirt FREE! Go to www.vyrtunet.com
The Phantom of the Firewall
What would you do in this situation? How do you think Thokk fixed the problem? Comments welcome!
This one’s for all the dedicated PMs who schlep day and night to support those IT infrastructure night owls spending countless hours building better networks and systems in the middle of the night. I bet you can relate to this story. But can you figure out what I did to fix the problem?
If you ever managed a firewall migration on a live production network, then you know it can be one of the most complex and time consuming projects. And when you are
responsible for firewalls on the world’s largest data network, it can certainly rattle your nerves. But if you are lucky enough to do this on a well-architected network, it can make a big
difference. That was my experience with this particular project. A huge undertaking that lasted 2 years but we got through it and very successfully too with no service disruptions, no downtime and no screaming customers…until we got to the last firewall.
For reasons I won’t go into here, the last firewall was the most complex. Lots of third-party providers sent traffic through it. Lots of applications communicated to other networks through it. Lots of politics. Endless planning and coordination went into the project. And I got the migration plan down to a science, complete with communications, step-by-step
migration process, test plans and even a back out plan if testing failed. Migration night was set and we were ready to go. About 10 engineers and testers worked the graveyard shift, some on-site and some remote. We had one simple rule…everyone was required to join our teleconference bridge on migration night so we could execute the plan in sync together. And they did…and so did our special guest who we later dubbed the Phantom of the Firewall.
Who was this Phantom? We had no idea and frankly it was kind of spooky. Here we were trying to perform one of the most difficult projects in the company’s history with lots of money at stake knowing that an unknown person was listening in. Made me nervous. Made others frustrated. Take heed o’ fellow night owls. There are clever specters out there and you
never know who may be lurking and listening. The team was spot on, never divulging sensitive information over the phone.
So how did we realize the phantom was lurking on the call you ask? One simple (yet stupid) slip in this phantom’s plan to remain hidden instead turned into a bad premier night in
Vegas. Sure it was funny at first but not so funny after things started going wrong. About 4 hours into the migration, we heard the wretched sound. Not singing, laughing or talking. Not the sound of fingers on the keyboard vigorously working away. He started snoring and snoring very loudly, sound asleep. He outed himself big time and we tried everything to get him to stop. He just wouldn’t wake up.
With hours still to go, the team demanded I do something. But I was at a loss. Not knowing who or where the phantom was, I didn’t have many options. But I had to do something to help the team. So what do you think I did?
International Project Management Day 2011
Did you know that November 3, 2011 is International Project Management Day?
Our friend and former guest blogger, Frank Saladis, PMP founded IPM Day in recognition of you! It is a chance for project managers and project organizations to host or attend local events to celebrate project accomplishments and to help others learn the value that project management brings to the workplace. Click on the image below to register your IPM Day event or find out who is planning to host an event in your local area.
Website URL: http://www.internationalpmday.org/AboutIPMDay/IPMDaySpecials/tabid/589/Default.aspx
Frank Saladis, PMP, owns the website and URL above. He is a Consultant and Instructor / Facilitator within the project management profession, a senior trainer and consultant for the International Institute for Learning and has conducted numerous project management training seminars domestically and internationally. He is a Project Management Professional and has been a featured presenter at the Project Management Institute ® Annual Symposiums and World Congresses and many other project management events. Mr. Saladis is a graduate of the PMI Leadership Institute Masters Class and has held several positions within The Project Management Institute including President of the NYC Chapter, President of the Assembly of Chapter Presidents and Chair of the Education and Training Specific Interest Group. He is the editor of the internationally distributed newsletter for allPM.com, and is the author of several project management books and numerous articles about project leadership. Mr. Saladis is the originator of International Project Management Day and was recognized as PMI Person of the Year for 2006.
An Eeyore-A-Day Keeps Progress-At-Bay
As Project Managers, we do our best to remove barriers, not construct them. For every project we hope for the best, brightest people on our team, but sometimes we get stuck with Eeyore. Eeyore tends to look at the gloomy side of things every day, often expressing negative comments or even going so far as to make you feel sad. Constant exposure to all things gloomy and you start feeling like you have the drag yourself out of bed in the morning just to go to work.
Do you have Eeyore on your project team? Start with this simple team evaluation to recognize and help kick start a change from the negative to the positive.
September Blog Carnival: Solutions that Shape Project Excellence
Welcome to the September 20, 2011 edition of our blog carnival. Many thanks to everyone who submitted articles this month!
CA presents On estimating project tasks posted at Project Management – The Kanban Way, saying, “The post talks about issues surrounding project task estimates.”
Brad Egeland presents Defining the Cloud for Our Projects posted at Brad Egeland.com. Brad’s article talks about the importance of PMs working with their IT department when planning and executing cloud migration projects. The benefits of using IT’s knowledge of the environment can make or break your migration.
Brad Egeland presents Tips for Successful Virtual Team Management posted at Brad Egeland.com. Brad’s included great tips to help PMs work successfully with virtual teams. Very good article.
Anna Farmery presents 6 Tips to Reinvent your Next Meeting posted at The Engaging Brand. I found this interesting because it gives readers a different look at meetings.
Jonny presents 14 ways to remain committed posted at Smart blog, saying, “In this post I’ve discussed the techniques you can use to help with commitment to a task. This is a quality that a project manager must have and is beneficial for them to learn. I wish you all the best for the future. Yours sincerely, Jonny.”
That concludes this edition. Our next blog carnival will take place on October 25. Let’s see how creative folks get with Halloween right around the corner. Submit your blog article to the October 25 edition using our carnival submission form. (Our next carnival is moving to our new blog PM Innovations at www.vyrtunet.com.)
