HP Updates Project Portfolio & Management Software

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How does your organization decide where to invest and prioritize projects?

With competing interests, budget and staffing and a host of other factors, projects can easily go off course and end up over-budget or fail altogether.

To paraphrase a popular saying, stuff happens. There’s no way to ensure every project will come in on time and on budget or that every investment will play out successfully. But HP (NYSE: HPQ) said that the latest version of its Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) software released this week can help minimize risk and head off costly surprises in advance.

“You want to know things in resource management like ‘Do we have the capacity we need?’, ‘Do we have the skill sets?’ and ‘When will the resources be available?’ That’s the kind of resource management the 9.1 release provides,” Bruce Randall, director of product marketing for HP’s Project and Portfolio Management Software, told InternetNews.com.

“Then we also do all the project management stuff, the Gantt charts and activities and then also all the overall financial management of a project, including the value to the enterprise, not just the cost,” Randall added.

HP has traditionally targeted the IT market for PPM solutions and continues to do so with this release while also adding features designed to appeal to C level executives. Randall said HP PPM 9.1 covers everything from helping an industrial manufacturing company decide whether to invest in consumer goods to helping a technology company decide whether to embark on a new product line.

“We can help you get a better handle on the viability of any idea, whether it comes from employees or elsewhere,” said Randall.

HP PPM 9.1 includes a new, integrated Executive Scorecard and Financial Planning and Analysis modules that HP said provides near real-time data in line with its “Instant-On Enterprise” initiative. The Instant-On Enterprise has been a theme of recent HP releases in the areas of cloud computing and security.

“The Executive Scorecard is a new executive view so, for example, if you’re a COO you can see all your responsibilities,” said Randall. “It’s absolutely a different view than we’ve offered before for IT.”

The new version also includes what HP calls out-of-box reporting, analytics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and more flexible capabilities for ad-hoc reporting.

On the collaboration front, HP said PPM 9.1 integrates with the HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) system, giving project leadership better insight into the status of requirements and testing for each project. The integration is also designed to let Business Analysts and QA professionals focus on their ALM projects without having to learn PPM.

David Needle is the West Coast bureau chief at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.