This year’s annual HIMSS Conference will be held February 12- 16, at the San Diego Convention Center in California. In addition to gaining valuable information at the conference, attendees at project management sessions may also file for Category 4 PDUs to be used in fulfilling the continuing education requirements of the Project Management Institute (PMI).

In order to receive credit, PMPs must submit the following documentation: completed registration form, certificate of attendance, and a brochure of course material indicating the subject matter covered and the qualifications of the instructor or content expert to the Project Management Institute.

Among the sessions available for PDU credit is a preconference workshop titled, Project Management Case Studies and Lessons Learned in Electronic Health Solutions.  It will be delivered by Jay Ress, PMP and Susan Connor, MHA, PMP on February 12, from 1 - 5 pm.

The workshop will spotlight effective management and people skills in relation to Project Management and emphasis will be placed on the connection between session content and PMI concepts and methods.

Other sessions focused on Project Management include:

• PM SIG Annual General Membership Meeting, February 13, from 2 - 4 pm in room 26 A/B of the San Diego Convention Center.
• It’s All About Managing The Risks - IT Projects in Healthcare - Lessons Learned, on February 14, from 2:15 - 3:15 pm.  This session will focus on ways Project Management Methodology can be used as a tool to streamline operations, optimize services and increase return on investments.
• A roundtable session, Pearls of Wisdom: The Secrets of Project Management Success, on February 15, from 8:30 - 9:30 am. 

For more information on the HIMSS Conference, visit www.himss06.org.

Microsoft recently acquired software and IP assets from UMT, a company founded in 1989 and headquartered in New York City, which may lead to improvements in MS Project Server.

UMT, a leading project and portfolio management software and consulting firm, connects the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution with UMT’s Portfolio Management Solution via the UMT Microsoft Project Server Gateway.   This combined technology allows organizations to identify and prioritize the right portfolio of projects within deadline, scope and budget constraints. 

“With UMT’s technology and portfolio framework, we will extend the Office EPM Solution to offer an end-to-end enterprise project and portfolio management solution,” said Chris Capossela, Corporate Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.  “Through the acquisition, we will be able to more quickly deliver on our vision of bringing project and portfolio management capabilities to all levels of an organization.”

“UMT founders Mike Gruia, Yorai Linenberg and I share Microsoft’s vision of bringing enterprise project and portfolio management together, and have built the UMT business on innovating to meet customers’ portfolio management needs,” said Gil Makleff, CEO North America at UMT. “We look forward to working with Microsoft to develop solutions that help customers better manage their project portfolios and accelerate their business success.”

On November 16, 2005, Microsoft made a technical beta release of the new Microsoft Office 12 to 10,000 of its customers.  General release of the software is expected mid-year 2006.  

Among the changes were several significant revisions to Microsoft Project. These updates include:

New Client Side-Cache:

• Project Pro interacts directly with the local cache for opens and saves, which means terminal services are no longer needed to support remote Pro users and project opening, closing and saving in Project Pro should be significantly faster.

Server-Side Custom Fields:

• Project Server 12 expands reporting functionality. The changes in this area utilize the strength of the Project EPM Solution in defining fields which are then used for reporting. Project 12 redesigns enterprise custom fields as a server-side feature allowing customized defined enterprise fields using PWA.  With this change, nearly unlimited custom fields are possible.  This support extends to the Project Pro client.

Server Side Scheduling:

• This new feature allows project managers to view submitted updates, preview the impact of changes on a project plan, and then update the plan, all using a web browser and Project Web Access.

Project Web Access (PWA) Built on WSS:

• PWA is a site collection on a WSS virtual server. This means that WSS MUST be installed on every Project Server. PWA is made-up of various webparts that can be mixed and matched with webparts from WSS, SPS and other Office servers.

Reporting:

• Project 12 expands the range of reports supported on Project Server and greatly simplifies the process of building reports on Project Server.

Workflow/Server-Side Events:

• A nearly universal element of EPM (enterprise project management) deployments is the implementation of custom business processes. Each organization has their own methodology for proposing projects, asking for resources to fund or staff a project, taking dependencies, changing dates or scope, etc. Project 12 adds server-side events to support customers in building business processes tightly integrated into Project Server.

Troy Wheeler, Vice President of Technology, EPM2e, can be reached at 800-878-0385.

Many organizations conduct a project lessons learned session, also known as a project post mortem (post vitae for live projects?).  This process can be an valuable to help improve and further develop a project team’s skills, techniques and tools.

Two basic questions should be addressed: (1) If we had to do this project over, what would we do different? and (2) What did we do right?

To identify specific lessons learned, a project team may want to address the following areas:

Processes and Procedures -

• Successes - Identify the management and quality processes, which were particularly successful
• Failures - Identify the management and quality processes, which were not successful. Suggest why this might have occurred and what actions might prevent problems in the future.
• Absence - Identify any processes, procedures or standards, which were missing.

Events - Mention any abnormal events, which affected the project schedule, cost or resource usage. Indicate the extent of any effect.

Techniques and Tools - Comment on methods and tools used to manage the project. How useful were they and was any experience gained which can be usefully passed on.

Project Issues - Summarize the project issues raised, their number, type and position in the project life cycle.

Project Management Recommendations - Identify any weaknesses in the project management method and suggest how these might be addressed.

Resource Use - Summarize resource usage over the life cycle.  Information might include the effort required to develop particular products or types of products.

Another reason to do a lessons learned session, is that it allows team members to vent and express their frustration with a project.  This process can be very cathartic.