Lower Colorado River Authority PMIS -- Phase 2
Overview
Cognitive Technologies designed and implemented 19 custom Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports in an effort to standardize the Lower Colorado River Authority’s (LCRA’s) reporting practices and tools. The standardization effort followed Cognitive Technologies’ successful consolidation and upgrade of two Microsoft Project Server 2003 environments into one combined Microsoft Project Server 2007 environment.
Goal
LCRA opted to undertake Phase 2 of the Project Management Information System (PMIS) Implementation project in order to:
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Update the fields and values displayed within the reports to match the project and portfolio health metrics with which LCRA was most concerned
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Allow end-users a wider variety of project filters for portfolio reporting, so that end-users could drill-down into the exact sub-set of projects in which they were interested
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Update the look and feel of the custom reports to match corporate branding, increase readability, and reduce the number of pages needed to display project data
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In addition to the report updates, LCRA also wished to integrate overhead financial data with project schedules to obtain more accurate project costs.
Challenges
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Cognitive Technologies faced several challenges during the project:
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Reports required the combination of data from several separate systems, including Project Server 2007 and PeopleSoft
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LCRA did not have accurate or complete system documentation on any of the source systems from which the reports pulled
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Key stakeholders had difficulty agreeing on how to approach earned value reporting, resulting in changes after designs had been finalized
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LCRA project team did not have the ability to update the data within the development environment, resulting in data discrepancies between the development and production environment which affected reports testing
Solution
Prior to beginning development, Cognitive Technologies conducted extensive requirements gathering workshops with key project stakeholders to identify report functionality, source fields, and layout. From this documentation, Cognitive Technologies easily identified areas of uncertainty in relation to source fields. This allowed Cognitive Technologies to escalate source field questions to the appropriate resources early on in the project, thus providing time for this information to be finalized without impacting the schedule significantly.
After implementing the reports in the development environment, Cognitive Technologies designed a comprehensive issue reporting system by which to identify issues, report them to the developer along with specific examples, and status the LCRA project team on their resolution. Cognitive Technologies maintained this involved process daily, making sure the project team was informed of every issue or discrepancy identified with the reports.
When installing the reports within the production environment, Cognitive Technologies followed the same issue reporting process to ensure that any and all variances from expected reporting functionality were documented and addressed before enabling end-users to begin using the reports. This approach reduced end-user anxiety; allowing the end-users to continue to use their existing reports until the new, updated reports were fully functional.
Cognitive Technologies’ Value Added
Cognitive Technologies assembled a team of experienced business analysts and developers to deliver on LCRA’s objectives. Specifically, the team:
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Used the Performance DNA methodology that we helped design to work with key project stakeholders and identify current reporting gaps
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Designed reports to display data in an easily readable format, with the ability to export to a variety of formats without losing functionality or visual appeal
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Utilized a development environment for initial report prototyping, to identify issues prior to implementing the reports within the production environment
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Implemented a daily issue reporting process to the LCRA team to ensure that all team members were apprised of current report testing status and understood which reports were considered finalized and “production ready”
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Created extensive reports documentation to allow system administrators – who were not involved with the creation of the reports – to quickly and easily understand report configurations