ADVISICON Microsoft® Office Project Server / EPM CASE STUDY

Abstract
LAIKA is an award-winning, world-class animation studio that produces feature films, and commercial videos. To meet the demands of producing complex, feature-length films, LAIKA partnered with Advisicon to deploy a customized Enterprise Project Management (EPM) system using Microsoft Office Project and Project Server 2007. This resulted in an immediate improvement in planning, scheduling, visibility, reporting, and project cost control.

Introduction
LAIKA produces entertainment films, feature films, and commercial videos. LAIKA has attracted top management and production talent from across the animation film industry. LAIKA has acquired and built upon Vinton Studios' 30-year history of excellence and innovation as a leading producer of computer generated animation, stop-motion animation, and cel animation. LAIKA boasts an Academy Award-winning director, 11 prime time Emmy Awards, and over 100 international accolades. LAIKA’s creative team, management, and projects are helping it quickly grow into a creative powerhouse in the animated film industry. As part of its ongoing development, LAIKA has branched into two organizations: LAIKA/House, which produces commercial videos and LAIKA/Entertainment, which produces entertainment and feature films. LAIKA/Entertainment’s feature film projects have been an exciting new direction for LAIKA.

In addition to attracting top talent, LAIKA has also focused attention on developing its project management capacity to successfully plan, track, and manage feature-length film projects. LAIKA was looking for ways to consistently overcome the management challenges that come with producing feature length films. LAIKA identified three critical areas that needed to be addressed to support its ongoing organizational development:

• LAIKA had very limited forecasting and visibility of resource demand using FastTrack and other applications and no ability to assess productivity of creative resources.
• Although deliverables were detailed, interdependencies were not clearly mapped and linked, so there was no enterprise-level view of inter-project impacts.
• Project planning was not integrated with budget planning, tracking, and visibility of project performance.
• There was very little reliable current or historical project performance data on which to base decisions.

• Inefficient use of resources due to a lack of control management or monitoring
• Reactionary management caused by a lack of established project risk assessment
• Unanticipated schedule delays

• No timely or systematic way of reviewing the business.
• Business had no mechanism to compare planned versus actual time, work, or cost estimates and no consolidated views of schedules, resource tasks, or availability.
• Lack of data integrity – data not captured accurately or data captured in multiple, distributed tools
• Inefficient meetings due to lack of integration of data and management processes

LAIKA partnered with Advisicon, a Microsoft Gold Certified EPM Partner, to deploy an integrated Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution to support LAIKA’s growing project management needs. This customized EPM system built on the Microsoft Office Project and Project Server 2007 platform resulted in immediate improvements in planning, scheduling, visibility, reporting, and project cost control.

Advisicon delivered a complete EPM solution that provided the necessary functionality, power, ease-of-use, and scalability required by LAIKA’s complex project management challenges. The system automated and centralized many functions including project communications, tracking, and reporting. The EPM system provided a strong platform to support LAIKA’s project planning, scheduling, and management methodology.

• Migrating projects from FastTrack and other applications to Microsoft Office Project 2007 and publishing them to Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
• Development of LAIKA’s project templates, custom fields, and other business specific reporting tools
• Development of an enterprise-wide shared resource pool to reflect LAIKA’s organizational and management structure and workflows
• User training to ensure adoption and effective use of all platforms (Microsoft Office Project Professional and Microsoft Office Project Server 2007)

Once the new EPM system was installed and running, LAIKA began to see benefits nearly immediately. The most immediate improvements to the company included:

• A system for planning accurate and realistic production schedules
• Customized project templates to support LAIKA’s unique project work breakdown structure and processes
• Standardized terminology and references to facilitate more consistent planning, communications, and reporting across the enterprise
• The ability to do accurate bottom-up resource forecasting, enabling management to plan and hire appropriately
• Management visibility to assess and predict productivity of creative resources based on actual data
• Enterprise-level views of project and inter-project impacts
• Integrated project budget, resource, and schedule planning

• The ability to monitor and control resource allocation and management
• Visibility of schedule changes allowing management to anticipate and mitigate schedule delays and other risks
• Systematic evaluation to support timely and rational management decision-making
• Integrated project workspaces to support proactive risk assessment, planning, and management Project Reporting
• Web-enabled views and portfolio reporting on projects, tasks, issues and risks allowing consolidated views of schedules, tasks, resources, and availability
• Capacity to analyze and report on planned vs. actual time, work, and cost estimates
• Ensured data integrity through a single integrated database; productive meetings, management, and decision-making based on integrated, accessible, and reliable data

• Effective management and control of scope, budget, issues and risks, resources and schedule changes
• Reinforcement of LAIKA’s organizational structure, roles, and business rules
• Collaboration and better communication across the organization
• Potential integration and scalability with other SQL-based business systems

• Microsoft® Office Project Server 2007: implementation, consulting, and training
• Microsoft® Office Project Professional 2007: consulting and training
• Microsoft® Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: consulting
• Microsoft® Office Excel

USERS

• Project managers
• Project team members
• Resource managers
• Production managers
• Executives