Enterprise Project Outline Codes help you to track, report, and roll up cost and effort data for projects according to different parameters. Organizations can use Enterprise Project Outline Codes to determine whether a project portfolio is in alignment with strategic objectives. Enterprise Project Outline Codes often reflect an organization’s portfolio management techniques. For example, if you use Balanced Scorecard, you can create Enterprise Project Outline Codes that reflect customer, financial, internal, and learning/growth data so that you can measure projects against the scorecard. If you introduce a new product, consider adding an attribute for this product to your project so that you can report on the overall functionality of the new product. If you use Six Sigma, the Six Sigma Accelerator from Microsoft provides a set of Enterprise Project Outline Codes that can help you apply Six Sigma quality to your projects.

The following are some examples of types of Enterprise Project Outline Codes that you might create for your organization.

Strategic Alignment Enterprise Project Outline Codes

The overall success of a business strategy depends upon the projects that you establish to execute that strategy. For example, if an organization is running 15 projects to improve customer satisfaction, but 14 of them are going poorly, then it is likely that customer satisfaction is not improving. You can use strategic alignment Enterprise Project Outline Codes to create direct relationships between projects in your organization and your organization’s high-level business strategies. Strategic alignment Enterprise Project Outline Codes can be simple lists of high-level business strategies that projects are related to, or they can be more complex hierarchies of subinitiatives that are related to high-level initiatives in the organization.

The following is an example of a strategic alignment Enterprise Project Outline Code.

1.     Improve Customer Satisfaction
   1.1     Improve Customer Support Response Times
   1.2     Improve Customer Service Representative Knowledge
2.     Improve Financial Position
   2.1     Reduce Costs of Goods Sold
   2.2     Improve Cash Flow Position
3.     Improve Employee Morale
   3.1     Provide Better Training
   3.2     Provide Better Working Conditions

The success of the initiative that projects are associated with is directly related to the success of the projects.

Sponsor and Performer Enterprise Project Outline Codes

Many organizations use sponsor and performer Enterprise Project Outline Codes. Projects typically have both a sponsor who covers the cost of a project (a corporation funding a new plant, for example) and a performer, or an organization responsible for the project outcome (for example, the engineering organization that is designing the plant). In many organizations, the sponsor and performer are part of the same structure, and that structure typically reflects the organization’s department or reporting structure. You can use sponsor and performer Enterprise Project Outline Codes to collect data that you can use to answer questions such as the following:

• How are the projects that I am sponsoring doing?
• How are the projects that my organization is working on proceeding?
• Which groups within my organization best execute projects?

Location Enterprise Project Outline Codes

In all but the smallest of organizations, the location in which a project is occurring is important. You can create location Enterprise Project Outline Codes to create a regional outline (for example, Country.Region.SubRegion.City) that describes the locations in which an organization does business.

Project Type Enterprise Project Outline Codes

Organizations typically have defined project types, such as research project, engineering project, software development project, and so on. By creating project type Enterprise Project Outline Codes, you enable executives to use Portfolio Analyzer to look at the cost and work associated with each type of project. This also enables any user to look in the Project Center and filter for specific types of projects, group projects by project type, and so on. Project type Enterprise Project Outline Codes are applied differently in every organization.

Market Segmentation Enterprise Project Outline Codes

If your organization conducts business with different market segments, it might be important for you to understand how much effort your organization is putting toward projects in each market segment. You can use market segmentation Enterprise Project Outline Codes to help you to differentiate projects that are associated with different market segments.