Some
bad and ugly things about
Project Server (EPM)
Enterprise
Reporting: Some of the
data you want at you finger tips you have sit
around and wait for in Project Server and even
after the wait the data may not work right.
Maybe it is just us but we don't like waiting
for information in an enterprise product and
that is just what you have to do with a major
component of Project Server reporting or what is
called the Portfolio Analyzer in Project Server
2003 or Data Analysis in 2007. Second, if we are
going to basis our business on a system then we
want it to work right and all of the time,
without requiring a lot of maintenance.
The Portfolio Analyzer or
Data Analysis is
the closest thing we might consider a built in reporting
tool for Project Server or what you might think
about going to first in Project Web Access to
meet your reporting needs.
(We don't count the
ability to print the grid in Project Web Access
or the reports in
Microsoft Project as enterprise reporting. Don't
get us wrong, printing or exporting the grid is
great, just not what we think of as reporting. Nor
are we counting the reporting database included
with
Project Server 2007 - at least not when you have
to write your own reports. The reporting
database in 2007 is great to have but we
have always been able to write our own reports
against the data in the database.)
The problem with the data
for the Portfolio Analyzer/Data Analysis reports
is that it is generated on a schedule and is not
real-time. Most people generate this data once a
day, some once a week.
In addition, and this may
not be your experience, but this SQL reporting
service has been the most difficult feature to
get up and running and to keep running in both
2003 and 2007. Probably not a feature you
would want to depend on unless you have a warm
body in the wing willing and able to fix it when
it breaks so you can maintain your reporting
schedule. The frailty of this reporting service
is reason enough NOT to build your business of
such a week tool regardless of what it seems to
promise.
 Pretty amazing when you
think about it given the fact that project
management is all about improving project
communication, but if you are going to be using
this EPM system one of the things you need
to vary into you deployment budget is the cost
for developing a reporting model. You will need
to write a standard set of reports to match your
reporting cycle sooner or later and those
reports are going to cost you a chunk of time
and money to get what you want. |
