InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
January 25, 1999
Bank's Dividend Is Resource ManagementBusiness Engine software helps UMB track IS projects, resource allocation
By Philip Gill
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mproved quality and better on-time performance may sound like airline slogans, but for UMB Bank, they're the goals of a businesswide quality-improvement campaign that has had a profound effect on many aspects of its business operations--especially on application development efforts.About 18 months ago, UMB launched a companywide effort to improve the on-time closing of application development projects. According to Tom Cox, the Kansas City, Mo., bank's process-control manager, a key part of that effort was establishing and enforcing consistent project-management processes throughout the bank's many departments, especially IS.
Because so much in banking and financial services today depends on delivering computer-based services, both aspects of that effort have had a direct impact on the bank's IS organization. "Many of the products that financial services companies like UMB offer are computer applications," Cox says.
To help accomplish its goals, UMB has deployed an enterprise project- and resource-management package from Business Engine Software Corp. The system has been in use for a year and has become a key tool in standardizing development processes and improving the number of projects that come in on time.
UMB is the lead bank of UMB Financial Corp., a diversified financial services holding company with $9.6 billion in assets under management and retail branches across six Midwestern and Western states. Like most companies its size, UMB was already using the leading project-management software, Microsoft Project, to help manage its many ongoing application development projects. But the IT department thought Project had reached its limit. "Microsoft Project didn't give us the global view across projects that we needed to plan our resources," Cox says.
Like other desktop project-management packages, Microsoft Project is limited to tracking one project at a time. A large IT organization such as UMB's often has 100 to 120 projects going on at any given time, not to mention those waiting in the queue. Without a view across multiple projects, it was impossible to gauge the impact of a delay in one development project on others and to correctly allocate scarce resources across multiple projects.
As part of UMB's overall initiative to improve on-time closings of application development projects, the bank decided to evaluate a number of more sophisticated, enterprise-level project-management packages, many of which are usually called project resource management, resource management, or portfolio-management software for their comprehensive capabilities.
After comparing several packages, UMB selected Business Engine for a pilot in its Internet services department. That department develops and maintains all of UMB's external, online Internet banking and financial services products, as well as all intranet applications.
Business Engine requires an Oracle database and uses Microsoft Project as its client-side front end. Both were already standards at UMB. Information entered into individual project files under Microsoft Project are extracted and aggregated into the Business Engine resource-management software, which uses the Oracle database as its data store. Users can track projects, monitor resources, perform ad hoc SQL queries, and generate reports from the Oracle database.
Mike Wade, manager of UMB's Internet services department, says that before installing Business Engine, he had nothing that provided a similar top-down view of the projects and resources available in his group. UMB has a mainframe timekeeping system, but it doesn't perform project or resource management.
Microsoft Project was used by individual project managers, but Wade had nothing but paper and pencil to track multiple, simultaneous projects, their use of resources, and their schedules. The department typically has 20 or more application development projects going on at any one time, plus another 30 to 40 projects on backlog awaiting assignment of resources.
To chart where department resources were going at any given time, Wade says he had to obtain the Microsoft Project file for each project, write down the information, and then go back and forth between those files. Doing it manually was a slow, time-consuming process that simply wasn't practical, Wade says.
Because Wade couldn't get a view across projects, he couldn't tell somebody who requested a new project whether the job would take three months or three weeks.
The biggest benefit of Business Engine is that Wade can now track all projects going on in the department, then drill down to see what resources are in use on what projects. In that way, for instance, he can tell if the department's chief Visual Basic programmer is overcommitted--or if he has free time to work on other new projects.
"With Business Engine, I can view the project plans up a level and see how resources are being used across the department," he says. "Now I can get back to my customer and tell them I can do that job in 30 days or three months."
Business Engine's high-level view of resources also helps Wade reschedule and reprioritize projects when delays occur. For instance, if one project misses a deadline or is put off for a management reason or budgetary concern, Wade can shift resources to fill the gaps. And Business Engine's integrated timesheet, deliv- ered via E-mail, helps keep more accurate records on developers.
Business Engine also lets users integrate third-party applications, a feature Wade says he finds helpful. For instance, the Internet services department uses Platinum Technol- ogy's LBMS job-estimating templates to create perfect estimates along with the Business Engine.
Wade says he wishes Business Engine supported a Web interface rather than its standard Microsoft Project interface. Says Wade, "All our other systems use a browser interface."
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