WHITE PAPERS – Western Principles

Please see our updated White Papers page here.

Your COVID-19 Resurgence Plan

Key Points:

COVID-19 will make a comeback through resurgent outbreaks.
A resurgence undo all the hard work you’ve done to get back into business.
Plan now to be ready for a variety of potential COVID-19 events.
In here you’ll find a discussion paper and a Microsoft Project template to help you prepare.
Western Principles can help you with a plan template, and hands-on help if you need it. (Contact us if you need help.)

Your COVID-19 Return-to-Work Plan

Key Points:

Get back to operations, safely.
Coordinating the work to do this is a project.
Coordinating multiple return-to-work projects falls under a program.
Project Management and a great plan are necessary to help you get your team back to work and successful.
In here you’ll find a discussion paper and a Microsoft Project template to help you with your return-to-work plan.
Western Principles can help you with a plan template, and hands-on help if you need it. (Contact us if you need help.)

New Product Development needs Project & Portfolio Management

Key Points:

Dramatically improve your New Product Development Return on Investment and time-to-market with Project & Portfolio Management.
Select the right product ideas
Do your product development right
Drive higher ROI from your new product development
Western Principles can help you get your New Product Development system up and running, fast.

Microsoft SharePoint Designer – End of Support

Key Points:

SharePoint Designer (SPD) was very popular for creating automated workflows in the SharePoint environment.
SPD is coming off support soon, and you need to make plans now to keep your environment fully supported.
Replace and improve your SPD flows with Power Automate. Also, you can enhance how it works with Power Apps and Power Automate at the same time.
Western Principles can help you with this through a simple 3-step process.

Also – check out our related video.

Microsoft Project Server 2010 – End of Support

Key Points:

Project Server 2010’s support ends in 2020. If you are on an older version, your support is already finished. If you are on 2016, the end is coming soon too.
Upgrade to Project Server 2019 or Microsoft Project Online.
Also consider the opportunity to use Microsoft Project better, to use more of it, and to extend it to other functions or to handle other integrated business capabilities.
Western Principles can help you select the right PPM platform, and move to it quickly.

Also – check out our related video.

Microsoft InfoPath End of Life

Key Points:

InfoPath is coming off support in 2021.
Now is the time to move to Microsoft’s Power Platform.
Western Principles can help you move through a Discover, Design, and Deploy process.

Also – check out our related video.

Top 10 Challenges Facing BC Municipalities

Key Points:
• Large overlapping and competing priorities from infrastructure development, job creation, homelessness and environment.
• Constrained budgets and resources require selecting the most impactful projects and executing on them efficiently.
• Selecting and configuring a project and portfolio management system will help you ensure you do the right projects, do projects right, and have visibility into the programs, resources, risks, costs, interconnections, and progress for the entire portfolio of work.

Top 10 Challenges Facing Alberta Municipalities

Key Points:
• Large overlapping and competing priorities from job creation, funding cuts and economic development.
• Constrained budgets and resources require selecting the most impactful projects and executing on them efficiently.
• Selecting and configuring a project and portfolio management system will help you ensure you do the right projects, do projects right, and have visibility into the programs, resources, risks, costs, interconnections, and progress for the entire portfolio of work.

Top 10 Challenges Facing the Electric Utilities Industry

Key Points:
• With limited budgets and resources to address pressing challenges, utility companies need to make complex decisions to prioritize projects and programs.
• Once projects and programs are selected, firms need to have processes and technology in place to help manage projects successfully to completion.
• Selecting and configuring a project and portfolio management system to meet your needs will help you ensure you do the right projects, do projects right, and have visibility into the programs, resources, risks, costs, interconnections, and progress for the entire portfolio of work.

Extend and Integrate Microsoft Project with Power Platform

Key Points:
• Microsoft’s Power Platform is a collective term for three application development solutions – Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Apps..
• Microsoft Project Online can be extended with Power Automate to integrate with other systems, such as a finance system to pull actual costs into projects. It can also be used to push information from Project back to other systems.
• Extending functionality can include adding business processes, document approvals, synchronization with financial and inventory systems, cost controls and synchronization to other systems like SharePoint.

Move Up and Tune Up – Project Server Upgrade

Key Points:
• The Microsoft Project ecosystem is constantly evolving to meet and exceed user requirements.
• You are likely not accessing all the powerful functionality that is available.
• Upgrading to the latest Project Server version or migrating your project environment to Project Online can offer significant savings and opportunities.

Microsoft Introduces Project for the Web

Key Points:
• Microsoft introduces Project for the Web, a new way to manage simple projects.
• The release of Project for the web reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to the Project family, allowing people to work the way they prefer to work.
• Western Principles recommends that current Microsoft Project Online users optimize their current environments and test use cases for the new Project for the Web.

Primp Your Project and Improve Project Delivery

Key Points:
• Building a schedule is easy. Building a GOOD schedule is another story.
• How does your schedule rank against the Defense Contract Management Agency 14 Point Assessment?
• Western Principles and UMT360 can help you run reports and real time evaluations of your schedules to find the weak links.

Project and Portfolio Management for Financial Services

Key Points:
• Financial Institutions face a variety of complex challenges, that all cluster around profitability.
• Portfolio Management solutions can help a Financial Institution optimize the selection of critical projects considering both constrained budgets and resources.
• Selecting the right projects will reduce organizational risk and drive higher returns.

Learning from your Lessons Learned

Key Points:
• Capturing Lessons Learned from project experience is critical to future success.
• Lessons Learned must be owned by the PMO/EPMO and actioned to drive continuous improvement.
• Only what is measured can be managed, a Lessons Learned business process can be measured and managed.

Digital Project & Portfolio Management

Key Points:
• Digital Project and Portfolio Management is about transformational change
• Pull information from disparate systems into a single-source-of-truth to drive better and faster decisions
• Improve the quality and efficiency of project work with new technologies working together

• Make a plan, create a vision, start now.

2019 Project and Portfolio Management Resolutions

Key Points:
• Natural time to re-evaluate your PPM Initiatives
• Look at how to best improve your organization’s project delivery performance.
• Maximize Return On Investment for your 2019 Project Portfolio

• Attached White Paper Includes 11 Possible Ways to Improve Your Projects in 2019

Portfolio Management and Your Annual Budget (Budgeting Reinvented)

Key Points:
• Budgeting is a painful process, dominated by spreadsheets and squeaky wheels
• #1 goal must be alignment of investments with strategy
• A repeatable system, made up of people, processes, and technology, can accelerate your ability to select the right investments and drive higher ROI.

“Executive Engagement” is more than a line in your charter

Key Points:
• Keep your Executive stakeholder engaged
• Communicate, Collaborate and Accelerate
• Drive higher ROI

What’s the difference between your projects and the Invisible Man?

Key Points:
• If you can’t see it you can’t measure it (and if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it)
• Metrics drive performance improvement behaviours
• Publish and respond to strategic and tactical key performance indicators