Diebold Nixdorf – Portfolio management and regular project budget planning/control with Jira

Excel was the project controlling tool used by Diebold Nixdorf until recently, but it was showing increasing weaknesses: “With seven locations, the processes in monthly budget forecasting became less accurate and the quality of the content fluctuated. Both the project managers and the PMOs that evaluate the projects all had to access it at the same time. Excel was not suitable for this,” explains Steffen Lechte, describing the initial situation. They wanted more transparency and control during the forecasting phases so that any potential correction effort could be kept within limits. Based on these points, Lechte specified the requirements for better collaboration across different time zones: mappable real-time status of forecasts, integration of standardized workflows, display of change history, transfer of structures to the following year, and support for multi-user access. Since there was already successful collaboration with catworkx regarding Jira in other areas of the company, it was clear to the IT colleagues that this would now be expanded. After a test implementation with Jira, it quickly became clear how many possibilities this tool offered for mapping both portfolio planning and forecasting.

Across the company, there were around 400 projects that were carried out at one or more locations worldwide. These location projects could in turn be realized in several phases, for which a monthly forecasting was then required. The initial challenge was to map the data structure in which each element contains specific information, but for the purpose of evaluation also had to show the project master data and aggregated project values. The solution was to define four issue types (Project, Sub-Project, PSP, Forecast), assign the fields and define rules for calculating the values (Portfolio Baseline, Project Baseline, Actuals, Forecast). In addition to the data structure and calculation rules, the workflow was an essential component of the implementation in Jira: By transferring the status model and configuring the status transitions, the clear specifications for status and role-dependent authorizations for entering, changing and transitioning the various elements could be operationalized. The agile implementation took place in a team of two. The project steps and issues were regularly discussed by phone between Steffen Lechte and the catworkx team. “catworkx's response time was always very short and it was always clearly and transparently described which decisions I had to make and when, and what the scope for doing so was. This not only helped me a lot in terms of time,” says Steffen Lechte, praising the collaboration.

Instead of waiting for figures from the following month, the status can now be viewed in real time at any time, with the option of sending an e-mail reminder for the monthly forecast. Where previously only 85 percent of projects were budgeted on time, this change brought an increase to 95 to 99 percent in a very short time. The tool is designed for multi-user access, so parallel access is possible. Standardized dashboards and reports reduce the effort required to interpret data. In addition, changes can be traced and assigned to both a point in time and a person. Clear roles and authorizations for status-dependent processing of the various elements created structure and commitment. However, it is not only in day-to-day work that effort is reduced and efficiency increased: at the turn of the year to 2019, all ongoing projects in the company were automatically transferred to the new fiscal year for the first time – the manual work between the holidays is no longer necessary.

Since Diebold Nixdorf primarily uses SAP for controlling, it currently still needs the support of its colleagues from controlling to synchronize project data from Jira. “Here I would like to see an interface in the future so that we no longer have to import and export Excel files, but rather that there is an automatic connection between the two systems, updated daily,” says Lechte, outlining his plans for further collaboration with catworkx.

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