Managing application development is also a challenging task, balancing the need to manage a number of versions simultaneously, manage and guide a few development teams and execute an endless number of requests, bugs, tests and so on. All this under uncompromising quality requirements, frequent schedule changes and the shortest possible time line.

Microsoft tools provide advanced management platforms to solve each of these challenges separately – but what happens when there is a need to manage both simultaneously?

About Eyeblaster
Eyeblaster develops technologies that enable management, monitoring and execution of online marketing campaigns. The company products are used by hundreds of clients worldwide. The company’s research and development department has tens of developers working on several versions of applications in parallel. The development teams are using the Visual Studio Team Server to manage and support their development process.

The Business Challenge
The people at Eyeblaster decided to implement VSTS (Visual Studio Team Server) as soon as the 2005 version was released and the company is a pioneer in the implementation of 2005 VSTS. The Team System allowed the implementation of the development methodologies that were established at the company.

After a successful implementation stage a decision was made to improve the project management capabilities at the company and several solutions were examined.

At Eyeblaster there are project managers that report to the VP R&D. A solution was required that will allow for better management and control capabilities by these managers of their respective projects.

A solution was required that will make use of all the information and figures managed by the Team System and produce a clear overall picture, suitable for the different levels of management. All this under one strict condition – no increase in overhead costs for the development teams.

Several solutions were examined for the purpose of setting a methodology as defined by the company. The solutions available did not allow better control of the development process by project managers and senior managers without increasing the overall development overhead. Reporting input with two separate tools or compromising on a solution that would not fully support the development methodologies in the company, were the only options.

Yiftach Frechter, VP R&D at Eyeblaster:

“For me, it was unacceptable that developers, my most expensive resource, would need to leave their natural work environment to reveal their progress to management or to get new assignments. For a long time I pondered installing MS Project Server 2007 in R&D because I was concerned of dropping our developers output. I was willing to pay dearly for that decision and preferred to make life harder for the project managers, because there is no substitute for the ability of the developers to concentrate on their world and terminology.”

The Solution
ProjectParty from Orantech Technologies, facilitates full integration between the all versions of VSTS (Visual Studio Team Server) and the project management environment MS Project Server 2007, allowed Eyeblaster to improve the management and control capabilities of development projects without increasing overhead!

It was clear that an EPM solution was needed to improve the management and control capabilities and MS Project Server 2007 was the natural choice. Most of the managers were working with some version of MS Project, the Microsoft EPM solution allows integration with Office without further need for development. As well, the EPM Platform allows for relatively fast and easy development of interfaces for other company systems like VSTS or Dynamics CRM.

After examining ProjectParty’s capabilities it was decided to implement MS Project Server 2007 and connect it to the development environment with ProjectParty, allowing overall management of the company’s development projects.

The solution is based on the intrinsic capabilities of the Team System and EPM environments, allowing the management of time tables, resources and receiving an up to date snapshot of development projects – without extra effort or rising overhead costs.

Yiftach Frechter:

“The Orantech solution paved the way for us to lead the department to new levels of management capabilities. Not only did the output not drop, we saw a dramatic improvement in the quality and quantity of code created since the implementation of ProjectParty and MS Project Server. It turned out that better professional management not only satisfies senior management for tighter control of the work done in the department, but it also allows for improved agility and responsiveness during the project life cycle.
Project managers discovered the power of Project to respond to unforeseen events and plan changes, once ProjectParty provided visibility into the development teams environment.”

The solution is based on multiple (M:N) projects connecting (Gantt) in the EPM environment with projects in the Team System (Team Projects), and with multiple connections of one task in Gantt to multiple tasks in Team System.
As well, the solution supports methodologies and modifications implemented in each of the environments, allowing for quick, simple integration that doesn’t require organizational shake ups.

“Orantech’s ProjectParty strongly impressed the experts from Microsoft, that were exposed to its capabilities in a special presentation held at the Redmond Microsoft Development Center”, says Saar Rosenberg, Marketing Manager for ProjectParty. “Without a doubt, this is a key product in the maturing application development environment. Project managers are asked to define their work with effective business management terminology and value system – these include management and control in real time of all events that occur in the development environment. In this respect ProjectParty is the natural complementing product for connecting Visual Studio Team Server and MS Project.”

Business Advantages
Development management and project management are two central disciplines that contribute to the organization each in its own way. When the two environments are combined to one integrated and comprehensive solution, a single, synergic environment is formed where all the company’s projects are managed.

Implementation of the overall solution allows the organization to increase productivity for the individual, the team and the entire organization, shorten TTM and response times to changes and demands, effectively manage resources from planning to reporting and receive reliable on time status updates on project at any time. All without an increase in overhead costs.

The ProjectParty aggregation capabilities allows to access to information based on the hierarchical management level, so that senior management is not overburdened with trivial information but lower along the management pyramid every given can be examined.

Summary
Using Microsoft infrastructure allows natural connectivity of the development and project management environments to the organizational systems including; Office, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM. Implementing ProjectParty does not require great time or effort and delivers a great added value to the company. Frechter concludes:

“There is no need to manage cultural changes in the development departments, no need to remove any existing process the organization has gotten used to. This is a solution that attaches itself to the existing and is essentially “transparent” to anyone who doesn’t need to deal with project management. The solution comes with standard interfaces that allow it to take its place next to other solutions that the organization is working with.”