P6 EPPM Strengthening the Capacity of the Leading National Cancer Center in the US
Iryna Mykolayenko
Emerald Associates Inc.
Jennifer Koh
City of Hope
Abstract
As a leading national health care center, City of Hope (COH) has been transformed due to the effective implementation of P6 EPPM. This case study demonstrates how P6 has become COH’s primary tool for achieving operational excellence, as well as increased profitability and sustainability. COH is leading the way on improved project delivery and this project, as well as its lessons learned, needs to be shared with the rest of the industry.
About City of Hope (COH) and Emerald Associates
COH is a leading research, treatment and education center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Designated as a comprehensive cancer center, the highest honor bestowed by the National Cancer Institute, and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, City of Hope's research and treatment protocols advance care throughout the nation. City of Hope is located in Duarte, California, just northeast of Los Angeles, and it is ranked as one of "America's Best Hospitals" in cancer by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a pioneer in the fields of bone marrow transplantation and genetics.
Since 1995, Emerald Associates has specialized in implementing and integrating Primavera. As the exclusive Primavera Oracle Platinum Partner in Canada, Emerald’s dedicated full-service team host, implement/design, integrate, train and support all Oracle Primavera’s tools for our clients including P6, Risk Analysis, Unifier, Contract Management, and Portfolio Management. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada we specialize in complex Enterprise rollouts for large Oil & Gas, EPC, Mining, Health Care and turnaround type projects. With 19 years client facing experience, Emerald has built a unique toolkit of add-ons and enhancements we sell. From streamlining updating with CAPPS or TAPS, to data loading with P6-Loader, and flexible snapshotting with P6-datawarehouse and easy to use pull-planning with P6-Reporter we offer tools that bring immediate ROI to your P6 investment. We also offer PCMArchiver or migration tools like PCM-Unifier Migrator to keep your PCM investment working for you.
Background
City of Hope’s Facilities and IT PMOs are using the Oracle Primavera suite of products for their project portfolio management system. P6 EPPM is used throughout the IT group to manage projects including weekly timesheet tracking. The PMO’s goal was to improve their project selection process and resource management to maximize IT’s ROI to the organization by following their governance model more rigorously. To ensure ongoing portfolio management was being carried out management reporting on portfolio and project were required. To achieve these goals, additional Phase 2 rollout efforts enhancing the P6 EPPM usage were required.
In the summer of 2013, COH engaged Emerald Associates as their Phase 2 P6 implementation expert. By fall 2013, COH had a P6-EPPM environment with Stage and Phase level resource and deliverables management that allowed the senior management and project managers to select and report on project status that followed the COH governance model.
P6 EPPM Improving Project Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling
In the summer of 2013, during the intensive and incredibly productive five weeks of joint work, the COH/Emerald team was able to rework the P6-EPPM environment to give the COH IT-PMO the tools to select and manage their IT-portfolio from long-term Capital projects, to sustaining or enhancements projects right through to ongoing support projects. To do that we focused on developing a strong foundation of standards, templates and reports to allow for immediate improvements in management and to launch COH’s IT-PMO on an ongoing path for project management improvement.
Portfolio Standards – EPS and OBS
The EPS and OBS structures were overhauled to establish a robust security model and improve user navigation by department/group. This ensured that confidential projects were secure while improving reporting and overall management. User administration was also improved and security profiles reworked ensuring proper access to the right projects for the cross-functional team access.
Project Standards – Project Codes, UDFs, metrics, WBS Phases, etc.
Project level coding was completely revamped to allow multi-level user driven visibility, reporting and portfolio filtered views with metrics that matched the COH governance model right through to phase and stage resource and milestone reporting.
Delivery Standards – Templates, Phases, Timelines, Roles, Effort
Scalable phase based templates were developed in accordance with the Project Delivery Method (PDM) adopted by COH. The templates brought immediate efficiency by allowing the PMs to track governance and project deliverables by phase and stage and budgeted cost and resource requirements to the phase, stage, deliverable and work type allowing for real lifecycle planning and management. P6 EPPM Successfully Supporting Resource Planning, Usage & Reporting
Team Standards – Resource and Role Dictionaries, Resource and Role Teams
Resource and role dictionaries were developed across the internal and extended COH IT team. Resource codes and UDFs were used to ensure flexibility in forecasting resource requirements and potential prioritization conflicts and better decision making. Better progress reporting and timesheet compliance reporting was also carried out to streamline the weekly statusing and management reporting functions. Department managers and program managers now have a real view of project and support team commitments and prioritization.
Reporting Standards – CIO Dashboards, Business Unit Management Dashboards, Project Management Dashboards
KPI dashboards were developed and used real-time in meetings to provide the CIO, Business Unit Leaders and Project Managers better discussion and decision making tools. Some of the most commonly used dashboards include portlets on Earned Value Performance, Schedule Performance, Index Performance, Portfolio and Project Statistics, Project Health, Resource Analysis, Open Requests for Resources, etc.