We are considering adding IT Planning.  We currently have Cost Transparency and Benchmarking.  We use Project Server for our PPM and would look to be able to import hour extracts to IT Planning.  As for Material/Contractor estimates, we would like to be able to build these within the IT Planning tool.  Currently, our Material/Contractor estimates are build via numerous spreadsheets.  I'd love to hear feedback from any current IT Planning users.  Thanks in advance.

Doug, 

Not sure what specifics you're interested in. Eliminating spreadsheets and the manual reconciliation is one of the low hanging fruit benefits, since PMs build their forecast in the tool directly it eliminates the need for reconciliations.

Importing PPM data is not a big deal once the tool is correctly set up. This set up takes a bit of work and guidance.

I'd be happy to describe our experience if you have questions.

Hi Juan- I would love to hear more about your experience with integrating MSPS and Apptio. We are in the process of rolling out Apptio PFP. We are looking for guidance on best practice.  

Sure, but what is MSPS?

Sorry, Microsoft Project Server (our PPM).

Our project portfolio management tool is Planview, but for the sake of best practice I don't think it makes a major difference.

The basic guide is: Microsoft Project Server is the source of truth for project data. As a result TBM gets multiple data feeds for projects in scope, time cards, mapping of projects to services/applications, approved project baseline/forecasts.

I can talk for days about our experience. Anything specific you're curious about?

Do your PMs manage their project financials in the PPM or Apptio? If Apptio, how do your PMs use versioning vs. forecasting capabilities. We are working on creating process documentation for PMs utilizing Apptio.

Great question? for simple projects PMs are managing the forecast in PPM. For complex projects they need to keep the official number in PPM but Apptio provide the detail and what if features PMs need.

A complex project is defined as a project that has more than internal labor as part of its resources. Projects that rely on consultant/contractors, and those acquiring software and/or hardware.

One of the data feeds we have from PPM is the labor actuals and forecast (labor and non labor) data, weekly. In this "complex" scenario, PM comes to Apptio sees the actuals and forecast (loaded weekly) edits the forecast as needed, and then the PM takes the Apptio forecast data and updates the data in PPM.

PMs may have reviews of forecast with portfolio managers etc, those are facilitated by the versioning. The TBM office does not get into that part of the process.

Each month when we load actuals from Oracle, we generate a new monthly cycle.

For Quarterly forecasts, once approved (at the portfolio level) we create a baseline version of the plan (From Hyperion) in the planning tool for easy reference by PMs.

IT Planning does not have any analytical possibilities. In case we need analysis on planned data we transfer them to Cost transparency and do it there. If you need only analysis on existing data I would recommend import them directly to new table in Cost transparency and build analysis/reports there. You can refresh data there with new imports as many times as needed and final number easily transfer to correct table by actions within Button.

And IT Planning does have good export capabilities. For a 'quickie', we sometimes export to Excel and slap a pivot table on top of the data.