She continues: "We had a number of entities reach out to us and ask to use the toolsets, which we've made available to them." (MGM Mirage uses CA's Clarity project portfolio management software.)
The effort to transform the IT PMO into an enterprise PMO isn't as far along as Soto would like it to be. She says it's only about 20 or 30 percent underway, having been sidelined by other corporate priorities, including the construction of CityCenter. But she's setting the groundwork: Soto has piqued the interest of some marketing, development and corporate strategy executives in IT's project management framework. She hopes that those functions will pilot it in 2009. She's also sold them on Clarity. She says the groups that have used the tool see how easy it is to configure reports and to use it to communicate in real-time. The software also allows them to manage capacity and demand, accurately track capital and expense costs, and use forecasting models to green-light a new project or re-prioritize a portfolio.
What Soto still needs to figure out is how the enterprise project management office will be structured and whether it will report into the finance organization, the office of the CEO or another office inside the company. Working with others, she also has to figure out ways to adapt IT's project management practices and framework for non-IT projects.
"Our methodology and framework needs to adapt to different projects being done," says Soto. "Even in IT, managing a project is not one shoe fits all."
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