Professional Services Work Management

Enablers and Business Value

Planning and Scheduling

Provides work managers with the ability to view and manage all work details. They can develop the schedule or plan by defining the timeline, milestones, activities, and resources required to deliver the work. Resulting business outcomes include:

We can implement a standardized work planning and scheduling process for projects and other planned work.
We can plan work milestones and categorize these milestones to drive project status reporting.
We can define the phases of work or activities at a detailed level that supports resource forecasting and planning.
We can forecast the effort required to deliver the work, expressing this demand against the relevant organizational and resource type.
We can use schedule templates to apply planning standards and to drive consistency and efficiency.

Changes, Risks, and Issues

Supports the definition and classification of change requests, risks, and issues and the tracking of any subsequent actions, approvals, or escalations. Resulting business outcomes include:

We have a standard and consistent method for capturing and managing project change requests, risks, and issues.
We have a single organization-wide repository of change request, risk, and issue information, which can be automatically consolidated into project status reports.
We can measure the volume of project risks and group and categorize them to understand their impact on the successful delivery of projects.
We can measure the volume of project issues and categorize them to identify projects that could deliver late, over budget, or outside scope or quality.
We can understand the impact of change requests on project schedules and financial plans and approve or re-baseline accordingly.

Execution and Tracking

Supports the project manager to manage the project through the execution/delivery stages and to report on the overall status and health of the project. Support the management of all work types, whether project-based or lights-on work. Resulting business outcomes include:

We can monitor actual effort reported to timesheets and determine how this effort has contributed to project progress.
We have a single, timely, and accurate organization-wide view of project status, with all reporting needs being met from this single version of data.
We can view portfolio level status reports based on project status information.
We can compare the performance of a project against financial and schedule baselines and schedule variance alerts, ensuring that remedial action takes place.

Best Practices

Match the work to the business model

When operating in an externally focused model that bills customers for work, maintaining margins is vital. Create work that is optimized for the type of business model being used, such as assigning less costly internal resources for fixed-fee projects or more expensive contractors to engagements using time and materials to ensure profitability.

Prioritize visibility and tracking

Provide access to relevant, accurate, and timely data to ensure projects stay on track and on budget. Use visual tools such as easy-to-understand reports and dashboards to compare performance to financial and schedule baselines, enabling upward and downward transparency and alignment throughout the organizational hierarchy. Actively work with customers to capture key performance indicators that can quickly identify the need to pivot, adjust funding or capacity, or pull back.

Templatize

Utilizing templates captures methodologies, helps streamline project initiation, and allows work to be easily created based on the type of work or billing model. This ensures engagements can be repeatably optimized for profit in a way that is scalable across the organization.

Centralize information

Centralize project information to monitor work progress and health, coordinate execution, and ensure timely delivery. Provide a single source of truth for all project details to enable visibility into project dependencies, risks, shared commitments, and overall profitability.

Proactively manage and collaborate with customers

Understand what your customers need to know about the project and provide accurate and timely updates. Keep an open line of communication with customers in a centralized location to avoid confusion and minimize the financial impact of any changes.

Standardize processes

Standardize the process for defining work and associated timelines, milestones, and activities. Create a formal and standard process for creating and closing a new change, risk, or issue (CRI) to provide transparency into how work is defined and CRIs are received.

Enable multiple ways of working

Different customers will work in different ways, some preferring agile boards and cards, while others need a more traditional approach. Ensuring your teams are able to deliver work to the customer in the way they need it will facilitate the engagement and foster future opportunities.

Empower teams

For optimized delivery, teams must be empowered to plan and execute work. Execution today is a mix of technologies and hybrid methodologies, that when aligned, provide a single line of sight that ensures effective delivery. Use these tools to give teams the autonomy to estimate and sequence work, and pull from prioritized backlogs when work stalls or must be abandoned so teams can continue to deliver value while maintaining visibility.

Processes and Reports

PS work management.png

Professional services work management provides project managers the ability to develop a services work plan or schedule by defining the timeline, milestones, activities, and resources required to deliver the work. This capability allows work managers to define and classify risks, issues, and change requests, track and manage project execution and delivery, and report on the overall status and health of projects.

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Planview AdaptiveWork

Planning and Scheduling Process Steps

AW - PS Work Management - Planning and Scheduling Process Flow.png — Planning and scheduling process flow

Process Step	Description
Initiate project	Create a new project for the engagement. Utilizing predefined templates can optimize project creation by allowing you to efficiently create work in the formats required to support specific business models. Documents used for billing, such as quotes, statements of work, or contracts, may be included in a project or work item by adding a file. If a project or milestone used to create a template includes documents, those documents will be included in the template. For more information: Create a New Project Using a Template Template Module Management and Usability
Set billing type	Set the billing type to align with the business model being utilized for the engagement: Fixed Price – expected revenues for the completion of the work are agreed to in advance and do not change. Fixed Price Milestones – expected revenues are agreed to in advance based on the achievement of certain milestones. Time and Materials – expected revenues are earned with the performance of work, even if work packages are not completed. Mixed – a combination of these types. The billing type controls the planning and tracking of revenues and provides time-phased visibility into billable work items based on the type selected. For more information: Project Billing Types for Revenue Forecasting and Recognition
Define work breakdown structure and schedule	Build out the work breakdown structure (WBS) in the Work Plan by adding work items such as sub-projects, milestones, tasks, and sub-tasks. As part of this step, you can define the project start and end date, duration, and dependencies. Project work should be aligned to the billing type set. The project schedule consists of any elements in the WBS that exist below the project level in the hierarchy. These may include milestones and tasks, as well as effort, dates, and durations. The WBS can be displayed as a grid or as an Interactive Gantt view; this view also provides alternative project schedule views in the Gantt settings, such as critical path, baseline, or baseline versus actuals. For more information: Work Items Overview Use the Relations Panel Building Projects and Templates
Determine durations and relationships	Determine the dates and durations of work items and establish logical relationships between work items in the project schedule you defined in the previous step, such as establishing a successor or using Shortcuts to add inter-project dependencies to the plan. As a best practice, update the Work (effort) or Duration column in the Work Plan for each work item, and have the system automatically calculate the work item start and due dates. For more information: Shortcuts
Plan resources	Estimate the effort required to deliver the work at the project-level or for individual work items; define resource effort in the Work (effort) column using the Work Plan grid view. Use the Work Plan Resource Planning view to check resource availability and assign resources to projects. For more information: Plan Resources at the Project Level Planning, Staffing, and Activation
Baseline schedule	Create a Work Plan baseline to capture a snapshot of the project's schedule as it proceeds into execution. This schedule baseline provides a record of the planned work tasks, milestones, dates, and durations to be monitored and compared to actual progress. To view baseline values and variances, add them to Work Plan columns, or search for them in the project Property card. Baseline variances can also be viewed on the resource level in the Resource Planning view in the Work Plan.
Assign resources	View resource availability and assign resources to work items using the Work Plan Related Panel, or the Resource Planning view, where project managers can detail out resource assignments by day, week, or month. If multiple resources are assigned to a work item, by default effort is spread equally across the resources, but can be adjusted on an individual basis. The project work load is automatically assigned to the project manager until it is assigned to a resource.

Change, Risk, and Issue Management Process Steps

CZ Change Risk Issue Management Process Flow.png — *Change, risk, and issue management process flow*

Process step	Description
Add risk	Risks identify and track things that may happen, including their impact and likelihood, and require a response or mitigation plan to address them. Create standalone risk case types in the Risks module. Add details to the Risk Properties card to describe and categorize the risks (e.g. risk rating), then associate the risks to one or more work items in the Add Related Panel. For more information: Basic Case Management
Add issue	Issues identify and track things that are happening now that require an owner to take action. In the Issues module, create and record the issues associated with the delivery of the work, including additional details to describe and categorize the issues.
Convert to change	Changes are alterations to a project's scope or expected deliverables. Changes can be the result of addressing a risk or an issue, or the result of changing needs from the customer or management. In the Requests module, create requests then associate them to the delivery of a work item in the Request Properties card. Include additional details to describe and categorize the request. Requests that capture changes to project scope, timeline, or budget can be converted into a change request once approved. Requests that are used as an idea intake can be converted into a project request once approved–however, the most efficient method is to create a new project then mark its state as Requested. Managers can view all projects by type such as requested or approved.
Transfer or move	Convert a change, risk, or issue from one case type to another (for example, from a change to a risk) or move a change, risk, or issue from one project or work item to another as needed. Risks, issues, and changes can be associated to projects or work items as well as converted to other case types in the Property card.
Resolve/Close	Close changes, risks, and issues when appropriate in a timely manner to help maintain a current overview of the factors affecting a project's progress. Establish automatic workflow rules to automate resolving a case once a work item is complete. Use the following guidelines to close changes, risks, and issues: Changes – When all associated actions are finished. Risks – When they are no longer determined to be risks and have not been escalated or otherwise changed. Issues – When they have been resolved or mitigated.

Execution and Tracking Process Steps

CZ Execution and Tracking Process Flow.png — Execution and tracking process steps

Process step	Description
Do work	Resources carry out the work that has been assigned to them.
Capture data on the progress of work	As work progresses, resources' actual time spent on work is tracked, and project managers update milestones and other dates as needed. Resources' time can be captured the following ways: Resources submit timesheets or report time directly on reportable work items. Resources can also update progress by entering % complete, actual effort, or remaining effort directly on work items.
Review progress of work	Track and monitor work progress using baselines to compare the current status with planned progress, or use Project Roadmaps and the interactive Gantt tool for planned versus actual, critical path, or other views of the Work Plan. Multiple baselines may be saved in Planview AdapativeWork. For example, project managers can monitor the scheduled and actual dates and track the variance against initial expectations, such as an initial baseline, to obtain a full understanding of the project progress. Then, they can save the Work Plan as a new baseline to compare against a baseline taken at the start of the project. This helps project managers have a clear understanding of how a project is progressing in relation to the original baseline and identify where dates have slipped or been brought forward. Any variance from the original project baseline may have financial implications or require the proactive reassignment of resources in order to negate any negative impact on the project.
Plan/re-plan remaining scheduled work	Manage the schedule for the remaining scheduled work, adjusting dates and durations if necessary.
Manage exceptions and report on project status and progress	Ensure the project/work status and work details are correct and current, evaluating and reprioritizing any items that aren't going to plan. Review and update the status of work in the Work Plan, and generate related status reports.