The practice of project management has matured and evolved a great deal over the past half century; however, it remains a significant challenge to efficiently bring projects in on time and on budget, and realize expected results. This is particularly true for organizations that manage a portfolio of large, materially-intensive programs and projects. Many software tools and solutions are available that support Portfolio and Project Management but very few fully model the interdependence between projects and material supply – a key project resource.
This paper describes an integrated approach to project management, which enables an organization to:
Model all their projects and their entire supply chain together in one environment
Model the payment terms, penalty and bonus clauses of a contract to fully reflect the impact a project schedule will have on expected cash-flow
Perform 'what-if' simulation to enable project planners and sponsors to understand the implications of various project planning scenarios under consideration (such as allocating more resources to one project versus another or mitigating the impact of a supply disruption).
