Congratulations! Imagine you have just become the project manager of that great new project your firm has won! You have worked hard to get this project and you want nothing but the best delivery of your solution for the client. You may be the program or practice manager who worked with the project manager to win the business and this is one of your many customers or clients (depending on your terminology). The chief operations officer may be looking at your portfolio as a part of a larger segment of business and thus looking at this new project as a part of a firm's overall services portfolio.

Project Operations pulls together the sales and delivery teams to provide a solution in which both sales and delivery can work. From the selling cycle, project contracts are created, which tie directly to the milestones that will be billed. Further along in the process, invoices are created, which drives revenue recognition in the accounting system.

Now, how do you deliver effectively for the clients that you have worked so hard to bring on board and keep happy? Now the project must be fulfilled to meet the expectations of the client. A hundred thoughts go through your mind. How do I turn an estimating worksheet into a project plan? How do I get the right people with the right skills on my project? What other projects am I competing with internally for the right talent? How can I manage all these moving parts?

Many project managers and others have lost many hours of sleep pondering these questions and trying to figure out how to deliver on the success promised to their client. Our goal with this book is to introduce you to a solution called Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations that will be the tool you can use to relieve your mind and get more rest! The goal of this book is to identify the key principles and concepts for you as a program or project manager or business executive in charge of the profit and loss (P&L) of an entire firm.

First off, what does a project business do for their clients? Well, that answer is wide and varied. In fact, using the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, if you searched on project business categories, you will find a significant variation of business types within almost the same classification. One of my favorite examples from history has been how some firms classify AEC as Architects, Engineers, and Construction. Although classified together, architects, engineers, and construction firms have about as much in common as bakers, butchers, and farmers. They have some things in common but not common business processes. Thus, for the purpose of this book, let's identify the common thread within a project business. Project businesses deliver skilled and certified services by people to achieve a project's purpose.

The following is a representation of the common business sectors or industries included in the project business sector:

Figure 1.1 – The Project Business sector

Within the Microsoft world, we have consultants who are skilled (read experienced) and certified (having achieved Microsoft certification) on services (implementation and training) to set up and implement software for their clients.

Other examples are management consultants who provide business strategy and tactics to grow and build the performance of businesses as a result of a merger or acquisition or simply to grow the business. Information technology (IT) implementation firms may specialize in setting up cloud computing solutions for their clients. Furthermore, some Point of Sale (POS) or security solution companies may have massive hardware configurations they prepare for their clients to be deployed at a retail establishment that requires purchasing inventory, combining it with project business and onsite deployment.

These are only a few examples of what project business is. Let's also determine what project business is not. Project business is not personal services, automotive services, health services, or private services. These do not fit into the category of project business primarily because they do not have the project orientation that requires a level of management not readily available.

Some outliers that fit into the overall services category but may or may not fit into this category of project business include legal services, educational services, and membership organizations. If these businesses need to manage projects along with costing or pricing information they could benefit from Project Operations.

So, what is this Project Orientation that is so important to identify whether an industry is a project business or not? Well, it begins with the basics of a project itself. From the earliest moment of human history, we have been working on projects. From the Pyramids to the Great Temple to the Great Wall, projects have been the backbone of great achievements! I sometimes have mused about the project plan for the Great Pyramid… how many laborers of stonecutters would I need to cut a certain amount of stones to achieve the result of not just an architectural monolith but also an engineering achievement!? Oh, and to add pressure, it has to be done with relatively simple tools and within the lifetime of the Pharaoh! Now, talk about some pressure!

The Egyptians were some of the earliest recorded project managers and with the results of their projects, I would say they have achieved a lot, to their credit. They would have had to be concerned with the overall project (a pyramid), the timeline to get the project done, the labor, and the organization thereof. The resulting pyramid project also had concerns over materials and environmental concerns, emphasizing their achievements. Their projects took on a life of their own, very much like our projects, and a ton of support systems to achieve their desired results. There were support workers building roads and equipment, baking bread, and generally supporting the direct labor to the pyramid.

This is like a commercial construction project as constructed today. Commercial construction projects have very much the same concerns of the timeline, labor, and materials. Let's see what a Gantt chart of a commercial construction project looks like:

Figure 1.2 – A commercial construction Gantt chart example

Therefore, dear readers, this is a challenge for you as you have won this new project and built an additional business for your practice and your firm. I can imagine in that first project, someone was very passionate about their idea and project plan that they were selling to the client. This is not that different from you. You have a passion for what you are doing or you would not be successful and reading this book. Let's capture that passion and turn it into the burning heart that delivers upon your success.

If you are like most of the project management world, you are probably well immersed in the Microsoft world and use many of their products in your day-to-day life. One of the first applications you will interface with in your day is your calendar and your email. You will likely begin your morning (if you are honest with me) by looking at your smartphone and seeing what meetings you have on your calendar for the day or looking at emails that were delivered overnight. The infrastructure that supports this is what Microsoft calls its Microsoft 365 framework. We will go deeper in the next chapter into the overall infrastructure. However, just like you do not really think much of your electricity supplier when you turn on the lights, you really do not think much of Microsoft when you turn on your phone and see that someone put a 7:30 a.m. meeting on your calendar!

Once you have had a cup of coffee (or two), you will bravely fire up your laptop, surface, iPad, or Mac to begin the work of your day. You will likely open Microsoft Outlook for your email, calendar, contacts, and other functions. During the day, you will use many of the Microsoft Office 365 solutions, such as Microsoft Teams for meetings, files, collaboration, and messaging. Further, you might use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, and maybe Microsoft Project to manage project plans.

Disclaimer:

There is no judgment in how you manage projects today. I just mentioned Microsoft Project and some of you may be playing in your mind the most erudite of thinking. Oh, yes, I should be using Microsoft Project but because of whatever limitations I cannot use Microsoft Project. Hey, there is no judgment here! I have managed many projects in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and many other tools, so do not feel any need to level up to Microsoft Project before you read on! This is a safe place for all of us who are working hard!

Now that we have that out of the way, let's turn our attention to how we can grow through our project management capabilities. We know that we grow from level to level (or level up) throughout life. Where we are today is not where we will be tomorrow and we will grow from level to level as we progress in our careers. Thus, we should look at ways that we can grow quickly throughout the discipline of project management. We do know that to achieve more for our clients, we must focus on delivery processes and repeatability of success to continue to succeed from project to project. It is here that we do need to interject with some structure and tools to achieve the business objectives your firm has.

The value statement of Project Operations is to provide the overall framework together for you and your firm to connect your various systems and processes together to grow from one level of maturity to another. This is the value of Microsoft Project Operations.

Looking at projects in a more modern way takes a modern solution approach. Furthermore, it requires collaboration, communication, and flexibility in the project delivery to be successful in tomorrow's world. In order to work best together, we need to have more modern tools and capabilities. This is the value of Project Operations.

The following screenshot shows what a project plan in Microsoft Project Operations looks like:

Figure 1.3 – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Like Neo in the movie The Matrix from 1999, you are about to swallow the red pill. The red pill represents an awakening that could be difficult and painful. Your world will be totally changed with the red pill and you will see the truth in the success you can have in your career with the right tools in place. You can take the blue pill if you want and go back to the cold comfort of believing that you have all your projects under control and you are delivering profitability to your firm. The choice is yours, Neo!

Welcome to the project awakening! Now that you are here, let's talk about some of the facts of the projects you have been managing. You have been doing a great job over the years and that is why you have been promoted so many times. However, the underlying understanding of your purpose is something that may be missing. Your purpose for the delivery of projects on time, on budget, and meeting your client's needs has been to meet and exceed the performance expectations of your firm.

With the tools you have used, you have achieved much success. However, you are now on the verge of realizing your full potential by connecting with your firm's purpose. Let's get that out of the way first. In a most capitalistic circumstance, your firm may be engaged to make a profit from every project, every time to a profit margin that is prescribed by the firm. In other firms, the purpose may be to provide the highest quality services and solutions to the clients within a given industry or solution segment. In other firms, you may be directly connected to the welfare of your customers and your ability to deliver will directly impact the success of real people and their lives and livelihoods.

Let's now connect this with the tools we use to gain more success and align more tightly with the end-to-end processes in your firm. Microsoft Project Operations is an end-to-end solution built upon the Microsoft Dataverse utilizing Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) for project sales, resource management, planning, scheduling, time and expense entry, billing, and project accounting functionality in one solution. The end-to-end integrated environment combines the power and functionality of the CE Project Operations solution with the accounting power of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

Embedded into the Microsoft 365 framework, Project Operations provides an all-encompassing solution to the project professional's daily life! The reason this is important is that when a solution is designed to work together in your daily life and support the end-to-end processes of a project, it provides the infrastructure needed to succeed.

Imagine, if you will, your home. Would you tolerate different settings on your faucets in different rooms? Hot on the right, cold on the left in one room while the opposite is true in another? How about your light switches? What if, randomly, they were different in different rooms? More so, what if your kitchen was wired for 230 volts while the rest of the home was 110/120 volts and had different plug configurations? Sounds like a mess, does it not?

Technologically, this is what businesses tolerate every day when they use one solution for the sales team, one for project task management, one for billing, and yet another for accounting. Yes, you can produce a best of breed integrated environment but the results are highly dependent upon the technical skills to pull this solution together. Furthermore, the solution is only as good as its weakest link and will break (not may break, will break) at the most inopportune time! These solutions proliferate through businesses today. Small armies of technologists support these solutions to keep them running and even at the best of their performance, they simply ensure an end-to-end transaction works through the system without error.

Building the right solution for tomorrow's project manager requires decades of innovation combined with the latest technological foundation. The entire solution must work seamlessly together while continuing to improve as workforces change, technology improves, and technical capabilities increase at exponential rates. Let's check how an end-to-end solution with Microsoft 365 works.