Project-intensive IS organizations often use several manual and point solutions to plan and track progress, create and access project-related documents, allocate resources, communicate issues and more. However, some IS organizations in recent years have been adopting more-integrated packages — driving innovation and growth in a market now exceeding $1 billion. As they use these packages to implement improved project/resource management processes, access to resource utilization, project cost and status data can better support more real-time decisions regarding resource needs and the project portfolio.

Since 1Q01, vendors have had to compete vigorously in a market where growth has slowed or (for some) stopped, and recent years have been marked by a variety of flexible packaging, product discounting and product extensions. Among the extensions has been the significant deepening of resource management capability. Most toolsets now offer resource profiling and allocation. IS organizations, like other groups of specially skilled professionals, are constrained by the availability of those skills. To address this, the approach of mapping resources to project activities and tasks pioneered more than 10 years ago by Intelligent Planner (now Augeo Software), Multitrak and PlanView has been gradually adopted and most recently popularized by professional services administration (PSA) vendors positioning it on the Web, as well as by mobile time tracking and other innovations.

Despite their marketing to IS organizations, most project/resource management vendors have been slow to refine their general-purpose, horizontal applications with specific features and functions targeting the internal IS verticals. Partly as a result, tool providers from other markets, such as application management, are pursuing opportunities. In the last 12 to 18 months, products from such vendors as Kintana (Demand Management), Rational Software (Project Console) and others have added planning and tracking tools to their suites as well as Microsoft Project and other interfaces. As these offerings are refined and others pursuing the IS market respond, replacement of point legacy tools (many homegrown tools such as time-reporting tools) will gain momentum. By 2005, 70 percent of IS organizations will have adopted a mix of project and resource management application services for managing project portfolios, team collaboration, resource allocation, tracking utilization and costs (0.6 probability).

Convergence of Project Management and Services Administration

Despite the new entrants, market convergence has proceeded during the past 12 to 18 months, with the distinction between project/resource management suites, PSA and other segments continuing to blur. The former suites offer stronger scheduling, including resource load balancing, cost estimation, and tracking costs and milestones throughout projects.

A common fallacy is that project management concerns only the scheduling of projects, but products from such vendors as ABT (now Niku), Artemis International Solutions, Business Engine, PlanView, Primavera Systems and others have offered broader, integrated solutions for many years. Centralized resource management has also characterized these applications. Their project tracking features enable strong cost management (with an eye toward capital expense and labor hours), baseline budgeting and earned value analysis (based on project progress).

For complex projects in initial target markets, such as construction and manufacturing from the 1980s, these tools’ critical path analysis was key to estimating project duration based on activities sequenced on the path with the least flexibility (or “float”). Critical path remains a technique in managing large IT and other engineering projects, but calendars and Gantt charts have also been featured.

PSA (or automation) applications, by contrast, initially targeted professional service firms. They also typically feature planning calendars (but not full-featured project scheduling to support accurate estimating and careful tracking). Engagement opportunity and scope management (handling change requests) are among the functional areas of PSA tools.

Some time-and-expense vendors attempt to position themselves more grandly as PSA solutions. It is true, however, that a PSA focus has been on professional service firms’ billable hours for service workers. PSA applications seek to give visibility into financial exposure on underbid engagements by tracking time and expenses against the bid. Some PSA tools further enable performance management (for example, employee productivity, utilization and hours billed) and measures of company health (revenue per consultant, and profitability by engagement and by customer).

With the collapse of the fast-growth dot-com professional service firms, most PSA vendors broadened their marketing beyond the professional services niche. As many of the applications were relatively immature, this repositioning was readily accomplished. Other products targeting specific niches are more entrenched and often neglected in a discussion of the general market. We often advise enterprises not to overlook Niche Players, because, in some cases, they could be a good fit. We discuss the project/resource management market and the vendors that encompass it (see Figure 1). Positioning of vendors in the Magic Quadrant is based on the following evaluation criteria:

• Vendor viability
• Management team
• Track record in delivery and support
• Functional depth
• Support capability
• Sales and marketing
• Vision of technology and market
• Resourcing (including external)
• Consulting and service commitment
• Package breadth
• Platform, database and enterprise resource planning (ERP) support
• Team collaboration features
• IS organization requirements

Figure 1

IS Project/Resource Management Magic Quadrant

Source: Gartner Research

Significant Project and Resource Management Market Niches

Enterprises on the IBM/Lotus Domino platform often seek to leverage it for project and resource management purposes. Some vendors have emerged with a specialty for managing schedules, time and project workflows in the Lotus environment. These include Marin Research with Project Gateway, perhaps the most established; Eden Communications with its ProjecTrak family of products targeting IS organizations (with bug tracker, help desk, asset management, software designer and other modules); and Genius Project from the European (Swiss-based) company Genius Inside, featuring risk and simulation modules.

Many IS organizations with substantial application delivery capabilities have not only scheduling resourcing and tracking needs, but requirements specific to estimation, software metrics, developer workflows, quality/defect rates and more. Computer Associates' (CA's) Project Planner, part of its AllFusion product line also featuring modeling and process/methodology tools, is one important and established product in this segment. Rational Software's new Project Console begins to provide project monitoring in conjunction with its modeling, requirements and change management tools and its Rational Unified Process. Software management vendor Kintana has extended its offering beyond automated configuration management to include modules for work request management (Kintana Create), for scheduling and tracking (Drive) and for reporting (Dashboard). Quantitative Software Management (QSM) continues to offer advanced tools in its Software Lifecycle Management (SLIM) family for software project estimation, control and metrics collection, benchmarking and trend analysis, as well as its current QSM Database of 6,000 software projects.

Other vendors targeting specific platforms and databases include Advance Management Solutions with Realtime Projects on the Linux platform, and Systemcorp, whose new Enterprise PM Office shows effective breadth of functionality (although it relies on third-party schedulers), an accurate view of market requirements, including resourcing and collaborative features, while focusing on the DB2 platform of its partner IBM Global Services.

In the European market, Artemis has been strong. With its latest owner, Proha, headquartered in Finland, an Artemis comeback may begin in Europe based on the consolidation of its joint ventures there and on its new Portfolio Director and Viewpoint products. Augeo's Intelligent Planner, with strong resource management, remains a popular PSA solution in Western Europe, although we expect some challenge to it there from vendors such as Changepoint and PlanView. However, the emergent Paris-based Planisware, with the OPX2 Suite, may pose a greater challenge. These and other project and resource management vendors also target high-tech and product development or R&D segments. Integrated Development Enterprise (IDE) with IDweb, however, goes further, embedding the Pittaglio Rabin Todd McGrath stage-gate process into its application's project workflow, and Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC) extends its PRO/Engineer product design application into the project/resource management arena with its ProjectLink module.

In the construction segment, Primavera remains strong, along with Welcom. Welcom, with its powerful OpenPlan schedule and COBRA cost management tool for earned value analysis is retaining its position in construction and similar segments (for example, energy, transportation and manufacturing), and with its new, multilingual Welcom Home collaborative tool is realizing a vision of extending project communications and control. Primavera, however, continues to lead in the segment with its legacy Primavera Project Planner (P3), and Primavera Enterprise. The supplemental PrimeContract offering, with Web-based contract management, design approval and collaborative features (leveraging the LiveLink platform of Primavera partner OpenText) is positioned to become a de facto standard with its recent recognition by the Association of General Contractors as its recommended e-commerce communication and control solution for members. Other vendors of note include ViaNovus with Paragon, taking a project owner's view of program management, and Citadon, the company formed by the combination of Cephren and Bidcom, with tools to automate construction project processes, documents and collaboration.

New Developments From 3Q01 to 2Q02

Perhaps the main new development in project and resource management has been the introduction of Microsoft's MS Project 2002, with MS Project Professional and Project Server. Incorporating recent Microsoft acquisitions of Enterprise Project (see "Microsoft's Alliance With ELabor.com Expands MS Project Capabilities," FT-11-9540) and Sharepoint, the new offering enables flexible resource allocation and collaboration by distributed teams (see "Got a Plan? Microsoft Project 2002 Preview," P-15-9794).

CA's revamping of its AllFusion product line, featuring not only Project Planner but also other application life cycle tools for change management, software process management and modeling, is also significant. CA's continued commitment to its product line, although moderate, confirms Gartner projections, supports a substantial installed base in internal IS organizations and offers CA's substantial sales force a viable, coherent product line.

Notably, the redevelopment of almost all of the project and resource management application packages for Web delivery has been completed. Although vendors continue to prefer large, enterprise sales, pressure from midmarket vendors will drive flexible packaging of project and resource management applications to meet market needs. By 2005, more than 50 percent of all project and resource management functions will be packaged as flexibly configurable, modular Web services (0.6 probability).

New market entrants continue to appear, even as acquisitions occur, indicating a market still on the road to maturity. In addition to Microsoft, ERP II vendors (for example, Lawson Software, PeopleSoft and others) have begun to target the space defensively and offensively. Although mainly offered to extend established implementations (for example, SAP Project System and Oracle Projects) with project accounting and reporting functionality, some have made significant acquisitions (for example, Lawson of Account4, AXS-One of Tivity and PeopleSoft of SkillsVillage) and development (such as PeopleSoft in resource profiling and allocation). Smaller new entrants include Tenrox and OpenAir, growing out of the time-reporting space. Acquisitions of small, private firms with cloudy financial positions have resulted from the downturn in the business cycle, especially in 2001. Examples include the acquisitions of Novient by Solution 6 and Portera by Exigen.

Bottom Line: Project/resource management applications, which feature functionality well beyond scheduling and online communications, are vital to reliable project delivery in a complex multiproject environment, especially in "projectized" organizations with semi-matrixed resourcing. Many enterprises that are burdened with multiple, legacy point solutions should consider more-integrated project/resource management packages.

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