Primavera Advances IT Project Management

Veteran project and portfolio management provider Primavera Systems on March 6 will advance the goal of helping IT executives make the right decisions for their IT investments with the introduction of a new release of its ProSight portfolio manager.

The Web-based ProSight, considered a leader in the portfolio management space according to Gartner, includes a series of new features “that make it much more possible for IT managers to manage the strategic impact of [projects],” said Margo Visitacion, industry marketing manager in Bala Cynwd, Pa.

For example, ProSight Version 7 includes drop-down dependency values that allow for more accurate analysis of project impact. At the same time, dependency tables can be customized according to the specific IT environment.

That feature, requested by beta testers at The Salt River Project, an Arizona utility, helped users make faster and more informed decisions based on greater insights into the root causes of problems, according to Eileen Ahles, principal analyst in Tempe.

“In the previous release you had to use their attributes in a dependency table. For our use, many of those made no sense to us. We asked to be able to tailor those for our needs,” she said.

The Salt River Project, which has used ProSight for over two years, has used the tool to “see how many duplicate applications we have performing the same function and bring that to the attention of management and get them to institute standards,” Ahles said.

ProSight Version 7, which competes with CA’s Niku project management software as well as with Planview, also adds new alerting functions to keep users informed on the health of IT projects. In addition, it adds new Web entry forms that help improve data compliance and accuracy.

ProSight Version 7 is available now from the privately held company in Philadelphia.