Open-Source – the Next Wave for Project and Portfolio Management Applications

Project management has grown beyond the confines of simplistic canned applications into a discipline that is in large part process, combined with common sense and inspiration. The process of Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) derives from the practices common to project management, as expressed in applications and tools developed to help project managers collaborate with project teams cross-enterprise.
 
Project and Portfolio Management solutions trump pure project planning applications by providing broad visibility into a corporation’s investments in human and material resources. Using PPM, project managers can determine how best to invest an organization’s capital in projects that provide the best return on investment, increasing the efficiency of the corporation’s resources.
 
As the PPM field has matured and proven its value to organizations of all types, it has become increasingly apparent that off-the-shelf project management applications lack the flexibility and customizability critical to ensure acceptance from project managers and their organizational clients. A commercial-strength, open source project and portfolio management (PPM) application can be beneficial across the enterprise, providing an optimal combination of features, cost, customizability, and flexibility.
 
A goal of commercial open source PPM applications should be to allow users to focus on project execution, not just project management. Some 80% of a project’s life is spent in execution, not planning. Typical project management tools are geared to manage the planning phase, and have fewer tools and less capability to help users manage project execution. Since execution determines a project’s success or failure, choosing the right application is perhaps the most critical decision a project manager – or an organization – can make.
 
To date, most commercial-strength PPM applications are proprietary. Nevertheless, a “free” commercial-grade open source solution makes sense. Most companies using PPM spend a large portion their investment in applications customizing off-the-shelf PPM solutions to fit their business processes. These proprietary applications force customers to accept a compromise solution with limited customization, or require the purchase of an expensive source code license to ensure useful levels of customization.
 
Increasingly open source is the right mechanism for delivering many applications – examples include Oracle contender EnterpriseDB, enterprise content management supplier Alfresco project and portfolio management supplier Project.net (see list of additional open source PPM providers at conclusion), and SugarCRM As these powerful, commercial-strength, open source offerings achieve market success, the appeal of open source versions of enterprise applications becomes more clear and compelling to businesses of all sizes.
 
What is commercial open source?
A commercial open source license provides developers and their organizations with an application’s source code, usually without any obligation to share modifications or enhancements with the community. Although the spirit of the open source community supports sharing of enhancements, many businesses that make changes to open source code to suit their business processes choose to keep those enhancements in-house.

Typically open source software is released under one or more license agreements that dictate specific rights and obligations. Open source licenses such as GNU, GPL, LGPL, BSD, Mozilla, and Apache carry with them some uncertainty about what rights, and whose, they protect. This murkiness has slowed the adoption of open source enterprise applications, as companies strive to retain the competitive advantage of changes they have made to open source code. Nonetheless some license agreements require open source code users to provide all of their changes to the entire community.
 
On the positive side, the free access to an application’s source code that many commercial open source licenses provide enables companies to put capital resources allocated for licenses for proprietary systems into customizing an open source application to match their business processes and infrastructure. Often customization of open source applications moves quickly, since developers are motivated to take on the challenge of coding.
 
Advantages of commercial open source PPM applications
Open source has many advantages as a platform for business-critical enterprise applications such as PPM:
 
Adaptable
As discussed earlier, PPM must align closely with an organization’s processes and infrastructure. Open source removes the constraints of a PPM vendor’s choices - development structures and programming choices can be made by the business’s developers, who are free to modify the application to meet organizational needs.
 
Competitive advantage
PPM solutions enable organizations to gain control over projects and give them the opportunity to beat competition to market with innovation. Nevertheless, these benefits may not be realized with off-the-shelf applications, which do not accommodate an organization’s internal business processes. Open source simplifies implementation of PPM applications, spurring competitive advantage by enabling organizations to get to work managing and executing their projects.
 
Cost control
Commercial PPM solutions have many costs – the original license, and any optimization required by the client. These costs are often not recoverable because the solution is too inflexible to gain broad organizational acceptance. Open source carries no license cost. Open source PPM applications can be customized to suit organizational needs. These customization costs can be recovered through the increase in efficiency across the organization. In fact, commercial open source PPM applications may be less financially risky than their off-the-shelf counterparts.
 
Creativity and innovation
A recognized source of innovation and programming versatility and creativity, the open source community is a powerful ally for companies selecting commercial open source applications. Commercial open source elevates the open source model, giving a wide range of constituents – from enterprise customers to their partners, the ability to contribute to an application’s source code, adding value to the application. Organizations may choose to contribute their enhancements to the application. Some developers will sell their enhancements to other users. In either case, creativity is encouraged and innovation accelerated. The PPM application’s users benefit from dynamic improvements to features and functions.
 
Easily customized
From the user interface to custom forms and reports, open source PPM applications can be changed easily to match a company’s Intranet or development environment. This work can be done in-house or outsourced. Since 100% of the source code of commercial open source applications is available to developers, organizations can make modifications or turn to the open source community to test and fix bugs. Gone are the lengthy product development cycles and patch releases typical of canned applications.
 
Stakeholder acceptance
Conventional PPM applications are expensive to customize and difficult to implement. The project teams who use them – project management, research & development, facilities and engineering – may rely on different operational and business processes. Clearly an out-of-the-box PPM solution may not meet the needs of an organization and the varied groups who manage and collaborate on projects. Customizable open source applications, on the other hand, can be modified to meet the explicit needs of an organization. Customization allows more people in an organization to use the PPM application, eliminating the tradeoff of trying to force-fit one unsuitable application across the enterprise, or worse – implement several stand-alone applications that meet some, but not all, of the needs of the enterprise.
 
Characteristics of open-source PPM applications
Look for these attributes in open source PPM applications:
 

• Web-based interface and access – improve ease of use and give broad access to the application
• Runs on a commercial application server – ensure proven, commercial-strength backbone technology
• User-defined workspaces – create personal, project, and business workspaces to speed organization of projects
• Ad hoc tracking databases – easily track and manage a variety of tasks and projects
• Project portfolio visibility and management – see all projects and how they interrelate, including how resources are distributed
• Customizable reporting tools – look for a variety of basic reports, as well as the capability to customize reports to meet the needs of your organization
• Workflow – strong workflow management to manage a portfolio of projects
• Project templates – use standard or customizable templates to suit the project needs of the organization.

Today, commercial open source PPM solutions present a viable solution to an organization’s project and portfolio management needs. Open source PPM offers the benefit of a commercial-strength application in a favorable price structure. Highly-customizable, flexible and robust, commercial open source PPM applications free organizations to look beyond planning to focus on project execution.
 
Open Source Project and Portfolio Management tools
Project.net, other enterprise-ready open source PPM tools include, dotProject and netOffice.
 
For complete listing of open-source PPM tools, including the above, visit the Open and Free Project Management Tools web page at http://proj.chbs.dk .

Roger Bly, CTO, Project.net
Roger Bly is a pioneer in the development of collaboration and project management software based on Internet technologies. Prior to founding Project.net, Mr. Bly spearheaded the development and adoption of product lifecycle management, project portfolio management, and Web-based collaboration applications at Rockwell International's Semiconductor division. Rockwell later spun-off the Semiconductor division as Conexant Systems where Mr. Bly served as a senior manager in charge of strategic information technology planning and project management. Prior to Rockwell, Mr. Bly served in various Engineering roles at Unisys and Brooktree Semiconductor.