You should check out Darryl Taft’s story in eWeek about Serena Application Development Management.  Our recently announced Application Development Management product is one of our our Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Solutions, addressing a key issue that managers and heads of development face: visibility into the development projects they manage.

For Development VPs, the benefit is simple.  All of your applications are tracked in one place. Your development teams can then update project status, track milestones and manage development costs for each product release. Application Development Management combines this capability to track and monitor progress with the ability to present reports on key development metrics for that release. For example, Application Development Management can easily present Serena TeamTrack/Business Mashups reports on issues and defects. In general, Application Development Management can display any report that is URL addressable. That allows Application Development Management to present information from across multiple development systems in one location so that you can see the big picture.

This new offering which is available for both On Premise and On Demand (or in the cloud) uses, and supports both traditional or Agile development methodologies.  The offering is built on our powerful PPM (Project Portfolio Management) engine, with a keen focus on the software development lifecycle.

Application Development Management — yet another way in which Serena’s leading the way in Application Lifecycle Management.

One thing I notice as I chat with business and organizations around the world — most of their development teams don’t sit on the same continent, let alone in the same building.  They have teams spread out from Dallas to Delhi, Paris to Pune, Berlin to Bangkok. Yet many organizations use tools that assume their developers are within reach of each other.   Unlike yesterday’s tools designed for tiny teams in Topeka, Serena Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions are designed for today’s globally-distributed development teams.

Check out these Application Lifecycle Management Solutions:

Agile Software Development

Are you looking to bring Agile (whether Scrum or Extreme Programming (XP) or any other agile methodology) to your organization?  Agile helps organizations burn through the ever-growing application and requirements backlog.   With its iterative approach to software definition, build, test, and release, Agile can help you and your team deliver software that exactly mirrors your clients’ requirements.  Whether you are new to agile, or a seasoned pro, Serena Agile Solutions make it simpler to effectively implement agile practices.

Application Development Management

Serena Application Development Management helps executives and managers keep tabs on the development projects within their domain.  Using Application Development Management you can:

• Get the current status of every development project
• Identify which applications and projects have the most problems
• Access key software development metrics in a single place
• Quickly prepare for executive reviews
• Provide business stakeholders a self-service view into project status

Build Management

We’ve found that build management is often a overlooked aspect of Application Lifecycle Management.  Frequently, builds are managed through scripts and systems, making it very difficult to trace problems, maintain visibility into build status, or support evolving needs.   Whether you are managing builds across distributed systems, mainframes or both, Serena can help you streamline your build and release process.

Software Change & Configuration Management (SCCM)

With our Software Change & Configuration Management solutions, you to synchronize and automate the relationships and dependencies of artifacts through all change and configuration management processes.  Starting with requirements, through modeling, development, build, and testing, to deployment Serena has you covered across global sites, teams, platforms, and methodologies.

Development Process Management

Is it time to update your development management processes?   Serena has created the most-requested applications that you need to manage development across teams and the various SCM repositories they use.  Whether your team is spread around the world or in the same room, working with mixed methodologies or different versions of control tools, Serena’s development process management applications make it easy to manage your changes from request to release.

Check out the Development Process Management solutions:

• Change Request Management
• Incident and Escalation Management
• Issue and Defect Management

Global Development with a Global ALM Repository

Just because your teams don’t sit on the same continent doesn’t mean they can’t use a single repository.  With a single global repository, you can centralize complexity, distribute information and maintain less infrastructure — all saving you time and money.  But, best of all, you get all of these benefits without losing speed.  Serena’s global repository smokes the likes of IBM ClearCase and Subversion in head-to-head benchmarks.

Incident Tracking With Incident Management Software

When you want to keep your service desk running like a well-oiled machine, automating the hand-off and escalation is key.  With Serena incident management software, you can make sure the service desk is updated with the issue’s status any time it changes in the development system, ensuring that everyone has the latest information.

Bug Tracking and Issue Management

Do you feel like software bugs are running your life?  It is time to show them you’re the boss.  Serena’s Bug Tracking and Issue Management solutions provide you with everything you need to manage all of your issues and enhancement requests.

Audit Compliance with IT Governance

Serena’s compliance and governance solutions have been a favorite of IT departments around the globe for years.   Nothing makes an IT guy happier than taking audits from a several week ordeal, to just a few hours of audit bliss.  (if there’s such a thing)  Many of our customers use Serena to support common methodologies such as ITIL, CMMi or COBIT, and to comply with mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) or HIPAA.

• Learn more about how Serena can help you with SOX »
• Learn more about howSerena can help you with ITIL »
• Learn more about how Serena can help with CMMi »

Mainframe Application Development

The mainframe is hotter than ever, and Serena is leading the charge when it comes to mainframe software development.  Serena tools support XML and Web Services, providing you with unmatched extensibility and interoperability.   So, whether you are using a homegrown mainframe software change and configuration management solution, or you’ve implemented a packaged offering you should find out why Gartner says, “Serena has been and remains the leaders in competitive selections for mainframe SCM.”

Software Application Release Management

If it feels as though the gap between your App Dev team and your IT Ops team is growing larger and larger, then it is time to cross the software deployment chasm. Serena release management solutions tie all your release management processes together—including processes that span multiple tools, development methodologies, or platforms–mainframe and distributed. With a unified application release management process, you save time, money, and headaches.

Requirements Management Software

We’ve all experienced this more times than we should.  Something gets missed in the requirements stage which causes big headaches further down the line.  Well, whether you use traditional or agile development practices, Serena makes it possible for your to see how an application will look and function before any code is ever written.  Business users and analysts can visually capture their requirements as wireframes and build out high-fidelity prototypes that simulate the final application.  Requirements management from Serena can help you capture the full requirements and efficiently manage them through your development process.

Software Test Management

Testing software can be a tremendous challenge (and I am always so glad that I’m not the one doing it!)  The multiple points of coordination — from different groups to different systems — make it extremely simple for things to fall through the cracks.   Serena has solutions to help make the development and testing processes work like well-oiled machines.  Instead of treating testing as an afterthought, Serena test management solutions incorporate test management processes into the application lifecycle, cutting costs, reducing manual work and increasing traceability.

Version Control Management

No matter if you need version control for distributed systems, mainframe systems, or a combination of the two — Serena has version control management solutions to help ensure there is only one version of the truth.   Ideal for collaborative team environments and distributed groups, Serena ensures the protection and management of all enterprise assets.

Here we are, the end of another wonderful Serena user conference. I feel that most people are excited about what they saw and are really coming away from this conference energized about what has just been released (Business Mashups on Demand) as well as what is coming (Agile on Demand). The format for this year’s event proved to be radically different than in the past, and although it had a noticeably more “marketing” feel to it, people were by-in-large happy with the technical content in the breakout sessions.

On this final day, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with one of Serena’s key partners, Change Dynamics. Specifically, I was able to talk with Paul Mitchell, Steve Silva, and David Schroeder. Paul, who incidentally had FABULOUS hair, runs the eastern sales region; Steve runs the western region; and David was one of their star Sale Engineers. Change Dynamics’ history is rather interesting and ironically parallels that of Serena’s in that they started off as a consulting business; Serena too started as a consulting business in it’s early years. Due to the consistency of the engagements, the Executive Staff at Change Dynamics decided to “productize” their consulting business resulting in their flagship product, IT Symphony. IT Symphony encompasses an IT Service Desk, Release Management, and CMDB [Configuration Management Database] offering featuring exciting new functionality in the form of a visualization tool. When building the product, Change Dynamics knew that it needed a really robust workflow engine, so they chose to partner with Serena and use TeamTrack.

JB – “So, you’ve been working with Serena prior to the new Business Mashup platform, correct?”

CD – “Yes, our product was integrated with the 6.x TeamTrack product and now it works with the new Business Mashups platform.”

JB – “Are you an OEM of Business Mashups?”

CD – “Yes, we are now; previously we weren’t. When we sold our product there was essentially two deals taking place, but now we are an OEM of the Serena Business Mashup platform.”

JB – “What makes your product unique compared to some of the big boy’s in the space?”

CD – “That’s a great question! One of our key differentiators is that our platform is 80% out-of-the-box and 20% configuration. Compared to the BMC’s, CA’s, HP’s of the world who rely heavily on pro-services to provide custom configuration resulting in a much longer time-to-market comparatively speaking. We really tout ourselves as being quick and easy to implement out-of-the-box!”

JB – “And that is so important in today’s marketplace, right? IT shops want to get things done as rapidly as possible, finance wants quick ROI, and execs want to have that competitive edge.”

CD – “Absolutely!”

JB – “You mentioned that your product has CMDB as a key feature, so does that mean that you guys are pretty heavy into ITIL [IT Infrastructure Library]?”

CD – “Yes, primarily from the service support management side of ITIL. Actually, we are an ITIL alliance solution, we’ve incorporated all the ITIL services best practices into the product which is another key differentiator.”

JB – “Is this your first Serena User Conference?”

CD – “No, actually we’ve been a Serena partner for 4 years now, so we’ve been coming to these for a while. It’s interesting to note that our relationship with Serena is dynamic in that we are not only a partner but Serena also uses our IT Symphony product in it’s own IT department for it’s ITIL effort!”

JB – “Yep, as an IT guy I’m familiar with that! How much of an impact does being an OEM of Serena Business Mashups have on your relationship with Serena?”

CD- “HUGE!!!! With the new OEM arrangement, we can go into new opportunities and sell both Serena and Change Dynamics, offering a great up-sell for the Business Mashup platform or cross-sell of other Serena offerings! Likewise, existing TeamTrack customers are great opportunities for us, even more so now that we support the new Business Mashup platform as well!”

JB – “Of course we love that! How about integrations with other Serena products?”

CD – “We have done other integrations, but we typically handle those as one-off service engagements.”

JB – “So how did you feel about this year’s conference?”

CD – “It was great, we got a lot of exposure, talked with a number of prospects, Serena reps, and other partners; overall it really opened a lot of doors. In one instance, we actually had a customer of ours here that timed their visit to our booth when we were demoing to a new prospect and dynamic of the situation created quite a good opportunity for us!”

JB – “From a partner perspective, would you recommend this event to other partners?”

CD – “Absolutely! I was impressed not only with the quantity but also the quality of the traffic! We had a lot of international interest that was tremendous and we are really excited about working with those folks in their markets as well!”

JB – “Well guys, it’s been a pleasure talking with you and look forward to seeing you at next year’s TAG event!”

CD – “Yes indeed, thank you very much!”

One of the exciting announcements at the Serena TAG conference was the progress and introduction of the forthcoming Serena Agile on Demand product. Although attendees only got a brief glimpse at the product, it was enough to draw a lot of excitement for what it will accomplish in the Agile development space. Agile is a huge part of the company’s strategy, with the Agile on Demand product being the cornerstone of that strategy. It’s interesting to note that this product is also the FIRST SaaS only release from Serena and the third in a series of SaaS products released over the course of this year. While much of the current excitement is around Business Mashups, which was released this week as a SaaS offering, Agile and Agile on Demand certainly isn’t taking a complete back seat to all the attention. Post TAG, Serena is offering a two-day training opportunity on Agile conducted by Valtech. The training, normally $2000 per person, is being offered completely free of charge, and thus has attracted close to 600 attendees hoping to become future scrum masters and agilistas for their respective companies.

In the center of all the buzz and training around Agile is Valtech. Valtech was announced as one of newest strategic partners for Serena. They bring to the table a tremendous amount of expertise on Agile and will be handling a number of responsibilities as Serena’s partner, including a “Live” help type of function where people can request to chat with a Valtech expert, similar in concept to the Apple Genius Bar. In addition, Valtech will also provide expert coaching and training support for the Agile product and Agile in general.

I had the pleasure of spending some time with the Valtech folks on the last night of the TAG conference. Any apprehensions around whether or not I’d have fun with these guys was quickly dismissed. I can honestly say, they were some of the warmest most genuine “tech” people that I’ve had the pleasure to hang with. I already knew that they were incredibly smart, as I’d spent some time previously with two of their most senior Agilistas and was very impressed. But this wasn’t as much of a business meeting as it was a social meeting, and you sometimes wonder if there will be chemistry amongst your new friends. In no time flat, I saw an group of people who not only were passionate about their company, product, and services, they also liked each other, A LOT! It felt more like going to an old reunion of friends or close family. There was playful banter and teasing amongst each other, and since I am no stranger to verbal jabs, I quickly joined in the fun, which was openly received. All-in-all, these were my kind of people. But more importantly, they were Serena’s kind of people; smart, passionate, domain experts who liked to have a good time with each other as well as their newly formed business friends.

After a delightful evening with my new friends I had a new found level of excitement towards the latest efforts of the company around Agile. We’ve got a tremendous product that, when launched, will be a game changer for Agile development shops all over the world. But in addition, we’ve got an amazing new partner that we can bring into the fold of the Serena family of partners. It’s going to be a FUN year and a FUN ride as this stuff unfolds….be sure to check out the latest news both with Valtech and Serena!

This is post twelve of my coverage of the Serena Tag 2008 conference. It describes Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies discussing how to decide when to go on premise or on demand. THINKstrategies looks at the transition from on premise to cloud computing. Jeff found that the majority of the audience is using SaaS. After this check, Jeff pointed out the SaaS has been around for a while through such applications as WebEx so perhaps everyone has used some form of it.

Jeff asked, why SaaS? The world is changing. Barriers to competition are lowering. There are more distributed workforces. The nature of the workforce is changing and becoming more online. Jeff told us that his son is just going off to college and even his son’s school allowed him to use online productivity tools instead of MS Office. There are also changing economic and ecological conditions. Thomas Friedman’s new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded extends his ‘world is flat” concept to environmental issues and transportation costs. Technologies are also changing. Now we have broadband networks, new technology, and pay-as-you-go business models.

People have now been exposed to simple and effective SaaS experiences through the consumer web with Amazon, Google, etc. At the same time there is a record of failure of large scale on-premise applications with cost over-runs and high maintenance costs, as well as delayed schedules that make the apps obsolete when they come out.

A little while ago, Nicholas Carr wrote the work, Does It Really Matter? It was not popular with IT but touched a nerve with business executives who were spending too much on on-premise hardware and software. PMany business executives now want to move IT from a capital investment to an operating expense. Nicholas Carr has a new book, Big Switch, about moving IT to the cloud. He said that 100 years ago companies stopped generated their own power. They plugged into the grid. Now a similar revolution is underway.

What is SaaS? Networked applications, subscription pricing, enhanced user experience, real-time analytics, continuous enhancements, self-provisioned dynamic toolkits, aggregated data and benchmark studies (within and across companies), encouragement of best practices, and new ideas.

Jeff said to be careful about SaaS claims. Many companies are jumping on the SaaS bandwagon with online versions of tired old enterprise apps. He said to be sure to look for the above qualities. SaaS is not warmed over ASPs. It needs to have these qualities. ASPs did not. SaaS promises easier, faster, cheaper, safer, and better IT service. Jeff next focused on safety from this list. He said that most software security violations today have actually resulted from on-premise attacks and lost laptops. Jeff has not heard of any significant SaaS security violations. He has not read about them either. There have been some reliability issues but not security issues. And the press is looking for them.

Jeff said his research shows that about a third of companies are using SaaS, and a third are considering it. The early adopters moved in 2006. Now the mainstream buyers are moving in. The move is not simply for cost reduction but also about adding new functionality that cannot occur in an on-premise application. One new function is benchmarking, another is anytime, anywhere access, and a third is the ability to easily move up and down in service levels.

There are shifting adoption patterns. In the recent past, the move to SaaS was often triggered by renegades, who then spread the good news to their fellow employees. After this initial success, the CIOs have now gotten involved to retain control. Enterprise-wide acceptance has increased. More large brand name companies are moving into SaaS including Wachovia Bank (who played a big role at Enterprise 2.0 – see Pete Fields of Wachovia on What Impresses Senior Executives on Enterprise 2.0 and what Doesn’t Make Much Impact) and who adopted SuccessFactors (see SuccessFactors: Bringing Web 2.0 to Talent Management).

I interviewed one eLearning vendor who said that in the past few years they have begun to offer their courses and services as an on-demand solution. Now 98.5% of the customers who use their SkillPort learning management system are using SkillSoft’s on-demand service to host their content. The other 1.5 % still host their SkillSoft courses within their firewall. This on-demand hosting is up from last year when 95% choose the cloud. SkillSoft even finds that many clients who develop their own custom e-learning courses are giving them to SkillSoft to host. Since custom learning materials often contain strategic company information, here is one more example of the growing confidence in the security within the cloud. (see SaaS enters e-learning Through SkillSoft)

SaaS Showplace lists over 115 on-demand CRM providers, for example, in addition to the one below. It also has 44 categories of SaaS firms from accounting/finance to workforce/field service management (see Ever Increasing Expansion of SaaS into Multiple Applications). There are over 800 companies are listed. It is a gold rush era. So choices need to made on which vendors will survive. In Jeff’s last survey, over 25% said they were considering SaaS for IT management. The big vendors are also picking up SaaS capabilities by acquisition e.g., Google and Postini, Dell and Everdream.

This SaaS trend is creating headaches for traditional companies. They have to restructure architecture, business models, sales models, etc. The resellers and implementers are troubled also as their role is changing.

Jeff said that the future is moving software services to offering business services, and information services. He provided some key SaaS selection criteria: reliability, security, customization, compliance (SaaS can provide better records), integration, and finally – customer support. Start small, expand incrementally.

This is post eleven of my coverage of the Serena Tag 2008 conference. It covers the keynote session of Carl Theobald, SVP of Products & Customer Service at Serena on Serena Agile at Your Service. Carl runs R&D for Serena and recently added responsibility for customer service. Serena wanted to align product development closer to customers needs. They also do cross training between the two groups. This makes the customer service people more knowledgeable about technical issues and the R&D people more knowledgeable about customer issues. It is a very smart move is also the reason for the session title.

I have seen the good results from such a move as I was involved in a similar cross-sharing between customer service and product innovation but it was with new food products. In 2000, Sainsbury’s launched a business transformation program to move the UK supermarket chain toward a “faster, simpler, and together” approach to customer service. They also wanted to compete on innovation and brought in Jamie Oliver (see Building a Foundation for Innovation at Sainsbury’s). Operating within a new enterprise portal infrastructure, Sainsbury’s created a series of functionally aligned knowledge management sub-portals in such areas as product development, call centers, retail stores, supply chain, etc. The product development group served as the pilot, starting an “Idea Bank.” This common infrastructure allowed for increased communication across functions to promote innovation, especially between customer service and product development. Mashups would make it so much easier to do now.

Carl next described the Serena product strategy. He first showed an American football play chart to counter the Brit theme of yesterday. Next was a global map as they do distributed application development. Serena makes global development teams more efficient and Carl mapped their process and tools across this map. Serena’s Dimensions and ZMF offer a single global instance of code for development teams. Serena mashups make business process more efficient, even in IT. Serena Mariner then provides a view into the big picture of projects. Serena’s Agile SaaS solution then makes development faster and more flexible. It is architected to work with distributed teams with built-in collaboration features. They have also integrated direct assistance and coaching through their partnership through their ValTech partnership.

We now saw a demo of Agile on OnDemand. It allows you to establish an effort, modify it, and make changes to meet changing needs. You can drag and drop these changes. Next we saw he how their Agile scum concept works. The scrum master came on stage in costume. He first looked into the Agile OnDemand dashboard to see if the team is in the cone of confidence and, if not, what adjustments need to be made, either on the product owner side or the development team side. The Agile team has daily 15 minute meetings to stay on track. If questions arise, Agile coaching help is available through the product with their partner, ValTech.

Carl said they use their own development tools. For example, they use Mariner OnDemand to keep track of internal development. You can get an overview of status and drill down to look at the details. Carl showed us his Mariner dashboard with live data on all the Serena products under development. He showed a mashup that visualizes status issues such as the backlog of defects. There is an escalation management feature, complete with request aging, to keep up with customer change requests. You can also see team velocity trends. Carl said he uses the Mariner tool daily. Everyone in Serena has a Mariner account so there is full transparency. This is a great move on their part as it leverages the enterprise 2.0 aspects of this tool.

Carl showed us an Apple iPhone to say his goal is the make Serena products both easy and fun. They want to be the “Apple” of application development. He said there is no reason for business software to be boring. For this reason they are re-designing their interfaces to be more intuitive.

Serena plans to take this concept of fun and ease-of-use further. They now have Mashup Exchange to help users get started by drawing on the work of others. Carl showed us a new interface under development in their R&D labs for Mashup Exchange that is very visual with tagging options and mouse overs. You can also rate the mashups, enterprise 2.0 style. This is a prototype of the type of interface they plan to go across other products.

Serena is making a major move into SaaS with three products: Mariner OnDemand was released in March; Mashups On Demand was released recently; and toward the end of the year there will be Agile On Demand. They are also focusing on increased customer service. We saw the new support web site. There are no login requirements, which got applause from the audience. The knowledge base is updated and expanded with better search. Over 35,000 new or updated documents have been created in the last twelve months. User profiles now reduce the need to repeat your context when you ask for help. You can also create enhancement requests more easily. Subscriptions to technical news are offered.

The new knowledge base has been out since May with 10,000 hits per month and a 94% success rate for self-service. This goes along with an 18% reduction is cases for help beyond self-service.

Carl said the road ahead will be largely determined by their customers. They have set up a booth for customers at the conference to record their requests.

Carl Theobald, SVP Products, has just taken the stage and is wearing his trademark, all black. After a brief introduction of who he is, he explains his change of focus to encompass R&D and Support and how that mix works to the benefit of the customer.

On to the Serena game plan. Carl quickly addresses the most common questions around the investment into ALM, Dimensions, etc. The answer is, YES, Serena is still focused as much as ever on those products. Furthermore, Carl went over how Business Mashups, Dimensions, and ZMF provides Demand Management, Incident Management, Defect Management, Change Management, and Release Management. Over the top of all this, Mariner brings visibility to the processes. Finally, Agile on Demand provides a means to manage the Agile development process.

Paul Dupuy takes the stage to demo the new Agile on Demand product. The application is very rich, employing drag and drop features, editing done in a push-button “edit” mode. Navigation around the application seems to be easy and intuitive. When working in the Release Planning View, the person can do some “what if” scenarios as needed to bring a schedule back into the green. Again, when looking at a sprint backlog you can move things around in a very Web 2.0 drag/drop fashion.

John Scumniotales has just sprinted to the stage, get it…sprint…to act as a scrum master. After logging into the application, the scrum master sees things in a slightly different views. Another interesting view of the application that John goes into is the “card wall”, which simulates a real “card wall” but in a globally collaborative way. Since many people are new to Agile, the Agile on Demand product has a collaborative contextual help system. This is where the Valtech relationship really plays out. Valtech is the expert on the process and as such can be reached through a live “ask the expert” feature that actually puts the user on the phone with a Valtech rep to answer your questions. This is very similar in concept to Apple’s Genius Bar, where you schedule an appointment and get help with your issue.

Now John is showing how a senior manager can see a dashboard of activities. Again, the charts are nice, rich and easy to understand.

Serena is its own customer, so Carl is now going to show a real production view of the internal instance of Mariner. The audience gets to actually see high level information on initiatives that are in progress, so if there were any questions around ZMF, Agile, etc., they are now dispelled. Carl has now transitioned to show the left side “tree” navigation which emphasizes that are tracked internally. Carl continues on with showing the various screens which are extremely informational.

Next stop, comparisons between previous versions of the applications to now. This is a pretty interesting comparison that shows where the company has been and where it’s going. Carl is now showing the next generation of the Mashup Exchange. Very cool interface that includes things like tag clouds, ratings, etc. Not mentioned when it’s coming out, but looks like a big improvement over the current Mashup Exchange.

Mir Derakhshan is going through the Dimensions demo by showing how the developer might work inside of Eclipse. What’s really slick here, is that there is a tie through Business Mashups to route the work to the developer, but the developer doesn’t have to leave Eclipse, everything is at the developers fingertips. All actions are very fast as they point out, there is no replication so you don’t have the normal delays associated with that.

At the beginning of the year, Serena announced there would be three new products launched as SaaS offerings. To date, Serena is on schedule; launching Mariner and Business Mashups in the cloud. Agile on Demand will be launched later in the year. Further updates have been made to serena.com, the support site, and knowledgebase. Peter Sianchuk is introduced to demo the new sites. First and foremost, single sign on (SSO) makes it easier for a user to use the site by not needing to log on frequently, always a HUGE plus! Peter moves on to the KnowledgeBase (KB) system and how it’s been completely revamped and updated, to the tune of > 35,000 documents. The interface, like most of the Serena interfaces, has been given a completely new look/feel that is much more fresh. Along with a better UI, information that was previously hard to get at is now much easier to view and use. The results of the new solution, over 10,000 hits with a 94% hit rate, meaning that people are finding what they need more often. Furthermore, 18% fewer cases have been filed and fixes have been delivered 35% faster!

I am blogging much of the Serena Tag 2008 conference. This is post ten, covering the session, PPM – Ask the Experts. It includes Harvey Levine, The Project Management Group,  George Star, Serena, and Fred Gottelaro, Serena.

Harvey began with defining the difference between project portfolio management and simply enterprise project management. In the past we did the wrong projects well. Now with portfolio management we need to make sure that projects are strategically aligned with the organization’s goals. You also need to look at value and benefits, as well as resource demands. You need to balance these three aspects.

An audience member asked about best practices on using Mariner. His firm just rolled out Mariner. Acceptance has been good so far. They need to make it standard practice. Fred asked if they have reflected the use of PPM into individuals’ performance objectives. This has been successful in organizations he has worked with. Harvey said to start with a pilot with teams who are the most forward looking. They become the evangelists with their success. George added that senior managers need to ask for the type of reporting that PPM generates. Resource management needs to be put in place to enable PPM outcomes. You need to understand skills requirements and monitor performance.

Harvey talked about the difference between allocation and assignment. People are allocated to a project and their actual assignments may change. Do not assign people to tasks in a non-flexible ways. George said that Mariner allows you to look at skills and how there are allocated and assigned.

Another question – how to implement cross-training, especially when there is not time to do it. George said that project managers need to set the skill requirements upfront and ensure that allocations are based on this. People need to know the skills needed and training needs to be applied as necessary.

Another question – how does Agile interact with PPM? Fred said that there are specific metrics that need to be introduced. George said there is a difference in milestones when doing an iterative approach and you need to recognize this. Harvey said there is no reason why PPM cannot be applied in an Agile world. There is a culture change with PPM. A project can now be dropped. There does not have to be death marches to nowhere so the simple metric of failed projects is obsolete. Just because a project is approved, it does not have to be completed if a better project for these resources comes along.

Another question – what about R&D projects. How to avoid stopping innovation? Harvey said there needs to be a balance between maintenance, growth and enhancement, and transformational projects in a portfolio of projects. There needs to be different metrics for each of these three types of projects. The acceptance of risk needs to be higher in transformational projects.

Harvey said that doing ongoing metrics throughout the project is a key to success in PPM. Do not wait until the end. Otherwise there can be no mid-course corrections. An audience member pointed out that with a benefits case, managers need to sign up for those benefits in their business plan going forward. Harvey said the business case is the baseline for PPM. Fred said you need to do a business case for all projects and have them consistent, but not identical. Within these cases there needs to be financial and strategic benefits, as well as costs and risk. There are many models and one size does not fit all.

Another question – how to get senior execs involved? Harvey said there needs to be a PMO with a governance board made up of senior management. They need to buy into this PPM process or it does not work. They need to make decisions and sign off. Without a governance board, PPM will not work. The board does not require adding new people to the organization but rather new roles.

I am blogging much of the Serena Tag 2008 conference. This is post nine about Dr. Shan Rajegopal from Serena and Himanshu Agrawal from HCL on Portfolio Project Management: The science of making decisions. Shan is the author of Project Portfolio Management: Leading the Corporate Vision. This session is part of the Serena Mariner track. Serena Mariner is a SaaS PPM solution. Shan began with a thinking outside the box exercise which is a theme of his session. PPM is still in its infancy and thinking outside the box is a requirement.

Many organizations are a decade old in their thinking about project management. You need both a vision and action. Neither is sufficient by itself. Shan introduced the SIO model – strategize, implement, operate – which is in line with this thinking. How do you convert vision to action? Shan said that a systematic framework provides the bridge from strategy to operation. The bridge is the theme of his discussion and it is made concrete through program and project management.

The portfolio level provides the overall view of programs and projects. This concept needs to be established at the beginning, not as a roll up after you start. Shan was involved with research at Stanford that supports this conclusion. Start with process, engage people and then bring in technology.

Myths – PPM is the management of multiple projects. This is too literal, tactical, and old school. PPM needs to be more strategic to look at the contribution of the projects to the welfare and success of the organization. We do not need to efficiently build bridges to nowhere. You need to look at the investment value of projects, as well as their efficiency.

Through PPM you may shuffle the order of projects depending on their contributions to the organization. There needs to be a conscious alignment between projects and strategy. As you analyze projects, provide strategic weights to your criteria. If market share is a main objective then look at your projects in relation to achieving this objective.

Most companies do not have effective processes for making decisions about their portfolio of projects. They also do not have the processes and tools that provide the right information to enable informed, fact-based decisions. Half of Global 2000 companies have tried some form of PPM. However, only 5% were able to drive portfolio value up through this method. Reasons: people aspects were not recognized – culture and skills were not there. There was also not executive buy-in. PPM was not made a priority.

The consequences of not implementing PPM: too many projects and this causes execution suffers. Higher costs are also incurred. New projects tend to suffer the most, even if they are strategic. Decisions are made more on emotion and politics. Shan offers master classes on PPM based on his book. I came away with a good overview of PPM.

I am blogging much of the Serena Tag 2008 conference. This is post eight about Serena’s moves into Agile by the Agilistas. While waiting for the start, I am listening to the Stones mashed up with Queen. Nice job. Now there is a video of some local high school kids creating graffiti style backgrounds for the event. Serena also gave us cow bells – with the More Cowbell! label. Rene kicked off the program designed to squash some Agile myths.

Jeff McKenna, above, came on to the sound of cow bells to deal with these myths. He introduced the Agilistas from Valtech and Serena. Myth one: Agile means you never have to write documentation. Both sides were briefly covered. The audience was asked. 79% said it is false. This is also the position of Serena and Valtech. However, now it is documentation at the right time when the system is ready. There is less editing and revisions.

Myth Two: Agile is more disciplined than other methods. Again, both sides were briefly covered. The audience was asked. 43% – false – 41% true. Serena and ValTech believe that Agile is more disciplined but it is bottom up discipline rather than imposed discipline. There is more feedback and engagement. This is a common, and counter intuitive, aspect of enterprise 2.0. With transparency you get accountability and more discipline. It results in greater productivity. I have seen many examples of the switch to more transparent project management leading to significant increases in productivity. Below you can see one of the debates.

Myth Three: Agile means I can change my mind whenever I want to. Both sides were briefly covered. The audience was asked. 79% said it is false. This is also the position of Serena and Valtech. There needs to be some stability. Within the sprints in development, change needs to be on hold. Then there can be times for change. 

Myth Four: Agile works on all sizes of projects. After the initial debate, the audience was asked. 59% said true. This is the position Serena and Valtech take but you need to recognize that there are greater needs for large projects for them to succeed. The key differential is that you can keep Agile teams small and link together these teams to handle size. One large project had 27 teams successfully linked together.

Myth Five: Agile means teams cannot be controlled by management. The audience voted and 72% said false. Serena and Valtech agree with this. Agile is about control through planning, monitoring, and adapting. Management is about getting more done by removing obstacles. There is a different style of management.

Myth Six: Agile requires detailed architecture and design. This time 55% of the audience said true but Serena and Valtech disagree with this. There is less architecture and design. You need architecture but it is not the driver. The architecture comes out through dealign with the problem and should not be a guiding factor. Let architecture emerge and be open to change.

Myth Seven: Agile is just the latest hype.  The 62 % of the audience said false. Serena and Valtech agree with this. It has been around for a while. There are demonstrated successes. Most employees like it and there are productivity improvements.

Myth Eight: Agile works on complex projects. As with all the myths, both sides were briefly covered. The audience was asked. 71% said true. Serena and Valtech agree with this. However, it does require more management.

Myth Nine: Agile teams do not work hard, they just play foosball. The audience was asked and 75% said false. Serena and Valtech agree with this. There is balance of work and fun required. Focus is key. But developers can sleep better at night knowing there are fewer errors to worry about.

Myth Ten: Agile is only used for mission critical projects. Again, both sides were briefly covered. The audience was asked and 95% said false. Serena and Valtech agree with this.