If Enterprise Project Management is to become a member the Enterprise IT Project community, then the discussion needs to move away from features and functions and toward cost savings. But first a "cost Structure" for the deployment of Project Server needs to be developed. Notice "Cost structure" not costs. Much of the effort in buying and installing Project Server involves figuring out the total "all in" costs. MSFT has positioned this as the role of the 3rd party providers.
In a previous career, I was the Director of systems integration for Filenet. One of our recurring problems was how much the system cost and much fast will it perform with the customers data? After numerous struggles answering this question, we decided to build a modeling tool to answer both questions.
So far it doesn't look like such a tool is available for Project Server, without having to engage a consulting firm.
The next step is to devise a "savings model." The elements of this model might include:
- Work processes in a typical project management environment divided by major industry groups
- Possible labor savings for each of these work processes
- Value assigned to quality, availability, data integrity
I can't think of any more hard saves. By hard I mean can I find the savings on someones balance sheet?