EPM Tip; Processes and Tools are Equally Important

Process and tools must be integrated.

I'll say it again.

Processes and tools must be integrated.

I just love when people talk about rolling out an EPM Tool and not expecting to have to revisit, reinvent, or recreate their project and portfolio management processes.

I also love when people take the opposite approach and try to define all their processes (i.e. "the what") in isolation from how they'll be implemented, and expect that any tools will fit nicely on top.

It's fine (and even beneficial) to define processes up front, but don't expect that they won't need to be changed a bit when an EPM tool is rolled out. Ideally, the "what" should be defined with the "how" in mind, as opposed to defining processes in isolation.

In fact, processes should include the "how" as part of the design, from a high level anyway. That's why IDEF (the de facto standard for process design, originally developed by the US Air Force and now maintained by Knowledge Based Systems, Inc.) stands for Integrated Definition.

The operative word is "integrated."

In fact, IDEF integrates Inputs, Outputs, Controls, and Mechanisms. If one of these is missing, it's not a complete process design.

Incidentally, this is also one of my beefs with the latest PMBOK (Third Edition), which lists the "tools and techniques" in the Knowledge Area section, totally separate from the "standard," which only contains inputs and outputs.

Let me repeat it one more time... Processes and tools must be integrated.

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