Whether considering a commercially available PMIS, or an ITSM as a substitute, the selection team should meet with the vendor with the goal of understanding both where the solution is, in terms of functionality, and where it is heading.
For software solutions, vendors typically maintain application road maps, periodically updated as technology advances, to depict where the organization is going to take the product, and/or when it will reach the end of its life. These road maps are typically well-guarded internal documents. Vendors will normally share these documents only with direct customers under nondisclosure agreements and with safe harbor understanding. In some cases, the documents will not be shared under any circumstances.
It is important for a PMO to understand where its support systems are heading. The selection team should scrutinize the road map carefully to verify that priorities are planned for and addressed appropriately. Alternatively, the ITSM may be more focused on service management. In these cases, the needs of the PMO may not be represented at all on a product road map. With IT maintaining its own set of road maps, changes to features and functions to support the ongoing evolution of the organization’s ITSM are unlikely to include the needs of the PMO.
IT will focus on the use of the system as an ITSM, not a PMIS, and IT departments will operate the system at the ITSM criticality level. This has its advantages in terms of uptime and adherence to SLAs.
If the IT department and the PMO are to be aligned, many levels of PM functionality will need to be addressed in the ITSM road map. Because PMO organizational processes and operations are not typically as stable as IT system management, frequent changes to a PMIS will be inevitable. It is thus likely that an ITSM support team will be disinclined to implement frequent changes to its system. Remember, the ITSM supports the most critical system in the organization.
In some organizations, this resistance to both change and testing may flow down to preproduction systems as well. The PMO would need to have in-depth conversations with the IT department to understand exactly how the PMO cannot only use but fully operate inside the ITSM.
When the ITSM or IT department requires changes, it is the IT organization that will move forward as quickly as its members would like to implement the change. If the PMO is given the opportunity to test the change against its configuration, timing will be crucial, and resources will be promptly required. The PMO needs to see that appropriate resources are available to execute testing and maintain the PM functions in any updates. Further, the PMO should discuss with IT ahead of time, and see that defects in the PM functionality will be resolved prior to pushing the update into production. It needs to be understood that a change that breaks PM functionality will not be pushed into production, no matter how critical the defect.
For large organizations, the IT system architecture is very complex. Systems interfacing the ITSM may have their own interfaces with other upstream or downstream systems. Changes to connected systems can impact the functionality of both the ITSM and PMIS. The IT and other business teams need to include the PMO in conversations about upcoming changes and updates so that changes to integrated systems and connected systems do not break PM functionality. The conversations also should address the need to give the PMO adequate time for testing. Likewise, the PMO needs to be prepared to apply resources to testing these changes. This is not to say that this same risk doesn’t exist in a commercial PMIS system, but the inclusion of the PMO could easily be overlooked when using the ITSM as a PMIS.
Applying influence to gain enough organizational support to implement the PMIS is a challenge with standard commercial solutions. While there are likely many individuals within the organization fully prepared to advocate for one commercial solution over another, there won’t be many, if any, individuals in the organization who have used an ITSM as a PMIS and are ready to support the PMO in its decision.
Vendors, system integrators and consultants will all have their own supporting slide decks and materials to help the PMO in its journey to implement a commercial PMIS. In the case of using the ITSM, those same partners will have few to no materials at the ready and will be of little support up and down the organization to help drive the adoption of the system. Within the organization, the pool of influencers and change agents advocating for the utilization of the ITSM is likely to be quite small, and the support they will require from outside parties will be quickly exhausted. The PMO’s decision to move forward with any solution is likely to be examined at every stage in the process. Should the ITSM fail the PMO at any point in production, the decision to use it in the first place will be front and center with the PMO decision team left standing alone to answer for it.