Should you implement the Microsoft Project CA PPM connector?

I remember the first time I used Microsoft Project many years ago. It seemed that the application had a mind of its own. Tasks appeared to jump around and nothing worked the way I was expecting. Determined to learn how it works, I ended up buying several books and after many hours of study and experience had a much better understanding of how to get it to do what I wanted.

Many years later, I am helping clients integrate Microsoft Project with Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tools such as CA PPM. The situation is usually the same from client to client. A group of project managers are reluctant to use CA PPM because they feel it does not help them do their day-to-day project management activities. A senior leader or representative from the PMO often makes the call that if the tools could be integrated the project managers will be happy and decision-makers will get the data that they desire. Some clients have been able to deploy this schedule connector, while others found it difficult and ultimately abandoned the effort.

I do have to give CA Technologies credit for the attention and dedication to making sure CA PPM users can connect with Microsoft Project. You can imagine it is not an easy feat to get two different tools with different scheduling algorithms to work together. As you will see below, CA has had to creatively work around some bugs that exist on the Microsoft side that Microsoft is reluctant to fix.

While it is possible to successfully roll out the Microsoft Project CA PPM connector, let me offer some thoughts and suggestions to consider if your organization is thinking about offering its project management community the opportunity of using Microsoft Project with CA PPM.

1.      Project scheduling is just one of the responsibilities of the project manager

First of all, I find it troubling when someone tells me that the project managers in their organization feel that because of some scheduling limitations or lack of integration with Microsoft Project that the PPM tool does not provide the support for them to perform their day-to-day responsibilities. Microsoft Project, or any scheduling tool for that matter, supports only a few of the responsibilities of a project manager. Based on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®), you might agree that the Scope, Time, and Cost knowledge areas are addressed by the scheduling tool. However, can Microsoft Project alone effectively help carry out the other knowledge areas such as Integration, Human Resource, Communications, Risk, etc. at the enterprise level?

Designed effectively, a PPM tool enhances a holistic approach not only to project management capabilities, but program, portfolio, and resource management capabilities. Your organization should not let the myopic view of a subset of individuals prevent the achievement of a complete set of PPM capabilities.

While it is possible to integrate Microsoft Project with a CA PPM, I find that the reluctance of project managers adopting this enterprise tool is often more of a symptom of a PMO not having an optimized and flexible set of project management processes and governance enhanced with a well-designed implementation of CA PPM.

2.      Many project managers do not really understand how Microsoft Project works

If you have a group of project managers asking about a Microsoft Project – PPM integration, ask some of the individuals in that group these two questions:

1. What is the Microsoft Project formula and how do you use it in your schedule?
2. What is the difference between work and duration?

If the majority in your project manager community struggle with these two questions, then most likely you have project managers who are unfamiliar with the intermediate to advanced concepts of scheduling theory. Integrating with a tool such as CA PPM requires that they not only have knowledge about the nuances of the Microsoft Project CA PPM connector, but have a better understanding of Microsoft Project’s more advanced scheduling functions. Let me give you an idea of what I mean.

First, there are several things a project manager must be aware of when integrating Microsoft Project with CA PPM. For example:

• Ensure all recommended global Microsoft Project settings are set appropriately, otherwise unexpected behavior may occur
• Avoid using any of the reserved fields in Microsoft Project such as Text3, Text 4, Flag1, Flag11, etc.
• Not all fields in Microsoft Project are mapped to CA PPM
• Do not manually create resources in Microsoft Project
• If using the latest connector (XML connector) custom views and fields must be saved to the global.mpt file as the .mpp file that is saved to the CA PPM database cannot be merged with the XML data due to a Microsoft bug.
• and more can be found in this presentation from the 2016 CA World conference

Next, project managers must learn how the scheduling algorithms and business rules of both tools interact and sometimes conflict with each other, such as:

• Do not assign resources to summary level tasks—Microsoft Project allows this, but a summary level assignment conflicts with the business rules of CA PPM
• Mark a task complete in a certain order, otherwise Microsoft Project will generate actual hours outside of CA PPM which will be ignored and cause unexpected behavior
• A Uniform Loading Pattern is recommended for the most consistent and predictable work distribution
• The assignment Work Contour field in MSP maps to the Loading Pattern field in PPM
• and more can be found in these technical documents from CA Technologies…

As some of my clients have found, a learning curve exists along with high-touch support at least for the first few months after implementation. Where this has been successfully deployed is at organizations with a degree of maturity with using Microsoft Project beyond the novice user. In the next section, I will describe an ideal persona for project manager that can effectively use this connector.

3.      The ideal project manager persona for using Microsoft Project CA PPM Connector

Over the past few years I have witnessed a trend in the level of Microsoft Project experience across the project management community. A large proportion have very little advanced scheduling experience (basic schedulers), while a minority (advanced schedulers) have a high-degree of scheduling knowledge, theory, and experience. Even groups that were using Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (Microsoft EPM) were using mostly the basic scheduling functions. A group that would fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes is rare to find.

Basic schedulers

In many of my training classes I delivered, I would enjoy working with the basic schedulers. Because these individuals only used a limited amount of Microsoft Project’s functionality they were easy to work with and open to new methods of scheduling. However, they would usually get overwhelmed by the combination of scheduling rules and items to pay attention to when integrating between both tools.

It was not uncommon for this type of group to end up managing a high-level schedule in both tools. A high-level schedule in CA PPM was maintained simply so that they were in compliance with the processes established by the project management office, but their real schedule was maintained in a stand-alone Microsoft Project file.

Advanced schedulers

It was always challenging to get through a training session with this group. The advanced schedulers were so used to scheduling, reporting, and communicating out of Microsoft Project, so any limitations or restrictions to what they were familiar with, no matter how minor, was a big issue to this group. Any overarching thinking, such as achieving enterprise project portfolio management capabilities, had little impact on assuaging the concerns of this group.

The adoption of the scheduling integration by advanced schedulers would usually mirror that of the basic users—compliance-only in CA PPM coupled with managing the real schedule in a stand-alone Microsoft Project file.

The ideal group for integration adoption

This group is rare, but those that had some level of sophisticated experience with Microsoft Project without relying on many of its advanced features is the group that has the easiest time adopting the scheduling integrator. They are using CA PPM for a variety of project management activities and then using the scheduling connector when they want to efficiently edit the schedule.

4.      The alternative - Workbench

Workbench is the alternative scheduler to use with CA PPM. I have many clients effectively using this tool. The challenge with Workbench is that it does not have the most intuitive interface compared to Microsoft Project. Although new users have a steeper learning curve, Workbench is just as capable and powerful as Microsoft Project for scheduling projects.

For a bit of history, Workbench was, in fact, developed all the way back in 1984, the same year that Microsoft released its scheduling tool. CA Technologies bought Workbench, made it available as a “pseudo” open source tool for a period of time, but has continued to ensure its tight integration with CA PPM. For many companies using CA PPM, if they can get beyond the initial reaction to the UI and a learning curve, Workbench is a much more reliable scheduler to use with CA PPM.

5.      Outside of the box thinking – Agile methods

As more companies are experiencing the benefits of Agile methods, it is worth questioning whether the traditional techniques of project scheduling even make sense any more. Let us assume that those “advanced schedulers” discussed earlier could have everything they desired through the integrator. What is the track record of those projects using the traditional scheduling methods? If the annual Standish report on project success is any indication—not very.

Traditional project scheduling assumes that remaining in alignment with our original plan is preferable. One of my favorite quotes by Dan Reinertsen helps paint a more realistic picture.

"We live in an uncertain world. We must recognize that our original plan was based on noisy data, viewed from a long time-horizon...we must recognize that new information is constantly arriving...we must learn to make good economic choices using this emerging information" - Don Reinertsen

Responding to emerging information is difficult to do with traditional scheduling. Agile methods and techniques have been developed to specifically support the reality that Reinertsen illuminates.

Perhaps rather than making a painful set of trade-off decisions related to the scheduling tools discussed above and exposing your organization to the risk of experiencing the results of the wrong choice, you might want to consider looking at this from a broader perspective. It is quite possible that the solution to the root cause of project challenges is not whether or not to use the Microsoft Project CA PPM connector, but rather a shift in methods for project delivery.

Next Steps

So, if you have still arrived at the conclusion that integration between Microsoft Project and CA PPM is right for your organization, here are some activities and estimates to consider when planning this effort.

1.      Establish the internal point of contact and subject matter expert

You will want to make sure someone internally will take point on this effort and gain a deeper understanding about how the connector works. This person should have a good deal of experience with Microsoft Project and scheduling theory, or at least have the ability and willingness to learn.

2.      Develop and test the installation script (1-3 weeks)

In my experience, about 10-20% of the user population runs into some type of issue getting the connector installed. This is due to some of the various software components and settings required to make the connector work. For example, you must have the correct bit-version of Java associated with the bit-version of Microsoft Project (not the operating systems). Also, the JAVA_HOME path needs to be pointing to the correct bit-version when multiple versions of Java are installed.

It typically takes several weeks to work with an initial group of users to work out any issues that your organization might experience with installing the connector. Most of my clients simply create a detailed installation instructions guide rather than work with their IT department to create an image that could be pushed to user’s workstations.

3.      Pilot the MSP connector (2-4 weeks)

I have found that each company schedules projects a bit differently. Some will keep it simple and might not need to worry about incorporating actuals, while others want to capture assignments and understand the impact of actuals from timesheets. During this pilot, provide high-touch support to the users. This is where the point of contact above plays an important role. This person will begin to understand the types of issues or assistance that project managers need. The pilot will also give you an idea of the volume of support requests to expect, at least during the first few months of a broader rollout.

4.      Go/No-Go Decision

After going through the pilot, the feedback from the pilot participants is important in helping make the decision on whether to proceed. This group should have a good understanding at this point of whether the connector will help or hinder their ability to maintain control of the project.

5.      Deploy/train/monitor/coach (duration & effort depend on the number of project managers)

With a “Go” decision, deploy the connector to the community. Based on the results of the pilot, the team should have a better understanding of the deployment method, cadence, and approach. If possible, I would advocate for a rolling wave approach to deploy, but I have seen this rolled out in a big-bang as well. The level of comfort by the project managers and the number of issues they ran into during the pilot plays valuable feedback on the deployment approach.

Conclusion

As discussed, you are faced with several trade-off decisions and challenges for finding the right schedule integration solution for your organization. The experiences of many other clients looking for the right solution helps us see that the decision to implement the Microsoft Project CA PPM is not easy and will be fraught with risks. There is the alternative of Workbench, but that tool also includes its own set of challenges.

Moving towards Agile methods might be a possible alternative for your company to consider. The Scrum approach with its use of user stories as conversations around user needs and the scrum board has been found to be much easier to track work and communicate progress. There are several Agile tools that can integrate with CA PPM while providing the necessary controls required by project management offices.

Whatever path you choose, it is recommended that you do spend some time up front with an initial pilot of the methods. After all, the choice you make is just a hypothesis that the decision will provide the results you are after. For this, we can reach back to proven methods from history and follow the advice of W. Edwards Deming. The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle used for process improvement will work no matter which path you decide to follow.