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Dartmouth-Hitchcock promotes a whole new way to work with Portfolio Manager

From Team '23

Tempo Team

About Dartmouth-Hitchcock

A person as a vital source of information within an organization represents both a bottleneck and a major risk of knowledge loss if that person leaves. This is one of the things that led Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center to realize that they needed a better project management system.

Dartmouth Hitchcock is New Hampshire’s only academic medical center. It offers primary and specialty care services throughout New Hampshire and Vermont as well as education and research. With more than 8,000 employees, various locations, and a broad mandate, managers at Dartmouth Hitchcock are responsible for thousands of projects at any given time, all of which are multifarious in nature.

Risking project failure

Dartmouth Hitchcock’s web content manager, Ryan Newswanger, understands the challenge of managing multiple projects simultaneously across the entire healthcare system.

In his role, Newswanger supervises eight content producers, three full-time developers, and dozens of web projects. His group began using a content management system and basic project management software to keep track of their various activities. He used this software to manage people’s task lists; however, he quickly realized deeper insights were needed into the entire scope of the projects.

“I lived in constant fear we would miss deadlines and worried whether we actually had the resources to get the work completed on time. One day I realized we had eight major launches in the pipeline and I knew we risked failure if we didn’t get a better solution in place.”

Ryan Newswanger, Web Content Manager of Dartmouth Hitchcock

In addition to the inadequate insights, there was another problem. A bottleneck existed where project contributors would need to meet with Newswanger to get the information and documents they needed before they could begin their next assignment. Throughout the process, Newswanger would need to hold regular meetings with them to find out how they were getting on. This slowed down the entire workflow.

More project control with Portfolio Manager

Newswanger’s team decided to implement Portfolio Manager during this critical phase to give them more control over their projects. Within a period of four months, the entire team was using the solution to seamlessly track their time, assign and monitor tasks, and check progress against projects. Portfolio Manager immediately provided Newswanger with the necessary insights to determine which deadlines would be met or missed based on the allocated resources.

“Portfolio Manager allowed me to oversee a project more than four months out and anticipate problems well ahead of time. The foreboding feeling around my projects was gone because I had so much more insight and control. Now, when a deadline is no longer feasible, I simply adjust the scope or add more staff as needed.” – Ryan Newswanger

Fewer meetings, no bottlenecks

Employees no longer have to meet with Newswanger to get details of what they need to do next. This is because all the necessary information is now immediately available within Portfolio Manager, enabling employees to be self-sufficient and move seamlessly from one task to the next.

This has allowed Newswanger to take a step back. If he no longer needs to brief his staff at the outset, then he no longer needs to manage every aspect or stage of the process either. It means that things get done without Newswanger needing to know all the details. And if he does require a status update, he doesn’t have to hold endless meetings. He can simply check Portfolio Manager.

This has not only reduced the number of meetings in the web content group; it has also changed the tone of those meetings. Now, Newswanger can focus on managing his staff and their overall professional development, rather than checking on the status of specific tasks.

Portfolio Manager for resource allocation

Recently, Newswanger put together a proposal for a significant intranet project. Using Portfolio Manager, he laid out the entire project and assigned the tasks to various team members. When he presented the proposal to his managers, he showed the exact project milestones and visually demonstrated that the project could be completed with four employees, but not with two.

Because of this insight, his managers provided all the resources required for the project to meet the proposed deadlines. During the course of the project, team members referenced their prioritized list of tasks to ensure they were focused on the right priorities. Newswanger relied heavily on Portfolio Manager’s project tracking features to monitor progress.

Although the intranet project was very complicated, there were no unforeseen problems along the way because each contributor knew exactly what they needed to deliver and when each task was due.

Improved project management

The project management process for the web content management team at Dartmouth Hitchcock has dramatically improved since they started using Portfolio Manager.

Portfolio Manager offers a rich framework for forecasting major project milestones and necessary resources, as well as managing changes in timing and scope of projects in order to anticipate problems ahead of time. It also allows team members to be more self-sufficient, with the information they need at their fingertips.

Newswanger relies on Portfolio Manager to give him deeper insights into the progress of each project and to make forecasts several months or even years out. Other groups at Dartmouth Hitchcock have noticed Newswanger’s success and are exploring how they can use Portfolio Manager to improve the management of their own technical projects.