Supernova Award Category

The Problem

The University of West Florida established stand-alone entities focused on providing K-20 resources, online courses, career training, continuing education, military support and technology enablement. The decision was made to consolidate these initiatives under a single University of West Florida Innovation Institute umbrella. While streamlining made sense, it created an organizational challenge, particularly with regards to cross-organizational project management where teams work must work together virtually.
The Institute struggled with 3 things, all of which were the direct result of having so many operationally-different teams dispersed across multiple locations across Florida working in non-transparent silos:

1) Cohesiveness among various teams
2) Communication using email and phone
3) Consolidation of assets, including intellectual property, best practices and resources

The new executive leadership was overwhelmed with one-off updates of information from more than 100 ongoing projects. The time and energy exerted sorting through hundreds of emails and phone calls to manage projects were hugely inefficient and unsustainable.

The Solution

Planview’s kanban-style Projectplace for project collaboration was the model the Institute was looking for to more efficiently execute projects and bring the disparate teams together.
The organizational use of Projectplace grew organically and rapidly from 20 prototype users to more than 110 users in one year. Development teams used kanban to track their work in progress because it offered project planning with instant and real-time communication. Team members with specialized work tracked activities, like projects, maintenance work, and concurrent work. Product owners, such as analysts, requested Projectplace to track contracts and SOWs within document areas.
The staff culturally adapted to Projectplace as “how we do business.” Cohesiveness grew as disparate work groups learned to speak the same language. Communication improved as teams leveraged it as a document repository and log. Consolidation brings everything into one place and makes it discoverable, transparent and reusable.

The results

1) Reduced rework. With Projectplace, if a new process will likely be recurring work, the process will be documented by hi-level resources so the second execution will be much faster using low-level staff. This frees up hi-level resources. Lessons learned, steps to implementation and resources used are archived in detai.
2) Improved communication and accountability. The speed of implementation has increased by 25-30%. Email and phones are rarely used as the kanban board has become the standard. As they migrate servers or changes databases, as activities are completed or reassigned, communication happens in real time in Projectplace. Every team member from any location can see everyone’s responsibilities, project status and project trajectory – all without the need of a single email or phone call. Each stakeholder receives an alert showing what they are personally responsible for and who is depending on them.
3) Improved resource utilization. Because Projectplace synchronizes with Planview Enterprise, estimated and actual efforts are recorded in Projectplace and reports are generated in Planview Enterprise. Everyone has insight into how much time it takes to build out a project, how long each step took and what resources were consumed. Better visibility into resource utilization helps manage bottlenecks as it tracks resource capacity. It can better plan around resources to know when to release the next activity or launch another project.

Metrics

While it’s difficult to quantify improved communication and resource utilization, there are a set of metrics The Institute has measured.
• The speed of project implementation has increased by 25-30 percent
• Use of email and phone to manage projects has dropped by 95 percent
• Users continue to grow from initial deployment to 20 prototype users to 110 users in 18 months
• There are currently 51 formal projects and 120 active project spaces (projects, maintenance, scrum, etc.) being managed through Projectplace, a 25-33 percent increase in efficiency of project execution productivity
• The time saved in not having to reinvent the wheel with every project is significant.

The Technology

Projectplace by Planview for collaborative work management
Planview Enterprise for managing governance, structure, schedule, and process

Disruptive Factor

Being made up of several distinct organizations and coming together as a single entity with many brands was a huge challenge, one that many large organizations understand. One of the few commonalities the varying groups share is their use of Projectplace throughout organization. The Projectplace tool helped them as an organization during this change, coming together, learning to trust one another by working in one place, creating transparent work, and breaking down the silos.
Projectplace is new within the organization as a whole but it has taken off like gangbusters. There is a shared experience of learning and exploring, making work visible. It has been a huge benefit to The Institute’s development, even outside of its ability to deliver products. Projectplace has become a keystone of who they are and responsible for the speed at which they’ve learned to bond and trust each other. Each team member may not know every person’s areas of expertise, but the socialization nature of Projectplace makes projects open and visible. The social-like environment reveals reputations, activities, comments, interactions, what people are uploading and when to see if that person is proactive and knowledgeable.
This shared culture has improved the ability for each team member to work together and bring products to market faster and more reliably.

Shining Moment

The most interesting part of this project is how organically and rapidly the use of Projectplace happened. When the new executive leadership team set out the initiative to improve project management and collaboration among the brands, an RFP was never issued. Because of the organization’s experience with Planview, Projectplace was modeled to see if it would work. Within months, it became the gold standard for project collaboration and no other solution was ever considered.