Enterprise project management (EPM) is what it sounds like: project management, but for huge businesses. But it isn’t always simple to implement.
Large corporations sometimes have hundreds of projects going on at once. That means that they need a centralized way to manage all of them effectively. That’s where enterprise project management comes in.
Enterprise Project Management vs. Traditional Project Management
You are probably already familiar with project management as a concept and job. A project manager puts together a plan for their team to reach certain goals and perform certain tasks on a timeline in an organized and efficient way.
By tracking progress, the project manager can identify bottlenecks, motivate their team, and update upper-level management or stakeholders on progress.
But when it comes to enterprise-level businesses, which are huge corporations with hundreds or thousands of employees and large-scale projects, there are some issues with traditional project management that start to arise.
For example, in an enterprise business, there are many (sometimes even thousands of) projects happening simultaneously. That means that the business’s teams, resources, tech stacks, and more, are all spread across multiple projects.
Enterprise businesses and enterprise projects also usually involve many different project managers. Those project managers might all have their own management styles, opinions, software, and goals.
As you can imagine, this gets convoluted and messy quickly. When there are issues, project managers might not know where to escalate. One project might be using an Agile method while another project might be using Scrum. That means that when the C-Suite checks in on projects, they can’t compare the same data because it’s all been recorded in different ways.
To solve this, enterprise businesses usually either create or contract an Enterprise Project Management Office, or EPMO. This EPMO comes together to manage a large number of projects across various offices and resources.
Here are a few ways that an EPMO solves problems presented by traditional project management:
- Enterprise project management focuses on value creation more than task completion.
The traditional model of setting up tasks and checking them off can be convenient for breaking down big projects, but it can also quickly move away from the original goals of a project or business.
When managing an enterprise project, the EPMO must define the value creation and standards for value creation across all ongoing projects.
- EPM is more centralized.
The existence of many different projects and project managers calls for the development of a centralized decision-maker, which is the EPMO.
With traditional project management, each project manager is in charge of setting the standards and goals of each project. With enterprise project management, there is one central party that defines and tracks all of the projects’ goals.
- Enterprise project management only uses scalable tools.
Enterprise-level businesses and corporations need more: more tools, more users, more projects, etc. Their options for tools that they can use for project management are limited. Sciforma enterprise project management, for example, is a great choice for large corporations, and also for small businesses planning on scaling.
The Seven Main Elements of EPM
The enterprise project management office will use enterprise agile frameworks or other types of project management to perform the following tasks:
- Analyzing Risk
Analyzing the risk of any given project is complicated enough with a traditional project management model, but when there are hundreds of projects happening simultaneously, it is even easier to let risky projects fall through the cracks. That’s why EPMOs establish guidelines for determining risk and apply that framework to all projects.
- Budget Estimating
An EPM office is also usually tasked with budget management and estimating scope across all projects.
- Periodic Project Reviews
Like individual project managers, enterprise-level project managers host timely check-ins on all projects to see how they are progressing, identify bottlenecks, and ensure that things move along smoothly.
- Coaching the Project Managers
Because an enterprise-level business involves many separate project managers, an EPMO makes sure that all project managers are on the same page by engaging in coaching and training. This aspect of enterprise project management helps with the goal of enterprise-level businesses to be more cohesive and centralized in their project management methodologies.
- (Big) Problem-Solving
If there isn’t an EPMO to respond to, then project managers might not know who to talk to when there are problems. The EPMO, to solve this, takes care of all project management issues that individual project managers don’t know how to solve.
- Tracking Time
All time tracking is usually managed by the overall EPMO as well.
- Implementing Enterprise Project Management Software
As we mentioned earlier, traditional project managers all have their own preferences and ideas– and that also includes the software they use. An EPMO will choose one, scalable enterprise project management software or create their own, and apply it to the whole business.
Enterprise Project Management with Sciforma
The benefits of enterprise project management are clear:
- It allows for a pre-determined plan of action when problems arise.
- It centralizes and standardizes the data collected and methods used across all projects.
- It gives corporate a macro-view of the business and how all projects are going.
If a large business wants to incorporate enterprise project management software, they can either try to build their own from scratch, or they can get in touch with a company like Sciforma that creates scalable, intuitive, easy-to-use software. With Sciforma, companies can grow to their full potential.
