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CHAPTER 10.1

THE SEARCH FOR AUTOMATED,
INTEGRATED, ENTERPRISE-WIDE

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Minnesota Smith and the
Temple of Unrealized Dreams

For quite some time (for articles that I have written), I have been following
the adventures of Minnesota Smith. When I last saw her, Minnie was rum-
maging through the Temple of Unrealized Dreams, in search of automated, in-
tegrated, Enterprise-wide Project Management (EPM). I was moved to question
whether the concept of EPM was a fantasy. Was our adventurous heroine, Min-
nie, off on a wild goose chase? Was EPM a dream of a utopian, all-inclusive
system—one that would tie all project-oriented data together in one integrated
process?

What Is EPM?
Actually, the true utopian, all-inclusive system would even reach out to include
nonproject data. The system would be robust enough to support vast numbers of
users and oodles (a highly technical term) of projects. It would be open, yet se-
cure, satisfying the Corporate Information Office (CIO). On the other hand, it
would be so user-friendly that casual, infrequent users, with limited project man-
agement and/or computer savvy, would have no difficulty. Such an all-inclusive
system would serve the financial and business managers with a full-featured ac-
counting tool and would serve the human resources departments, helping them
to manage their human capital. And, somehow, it would also support the needs of
project managers (I would hope).

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