The new ChangePoint 10 release expands the project portfolio analysis capabilities by improving the ability to account for busy and slack periods of resource consumption in the annual planning cycle.
It also provides better ability to view project and task interdependencies. For instance, while a project might require two full-time equivalents for a year, the actual number of people and the number of hours at any one point in the cycle are likely to change.
Furthermore, depending on where the project is in the cycle, completing certain tasks may be critical to allow other projects to move forward. Consequently, this feature will help program managers more realistically move around resources, based on what stage each project is at.
ChangePoint 10 also adds quality metrics to the health assessment of projects, joining existing capabilities of tracking budget and deadline compliance.
Other enhancements include project document version control, plus the ability to define a variety of demand types such as whether a project is new, an enhancement, or an update; and whether it is driven by specific business requirements such as compliance or new product development initiatives.
Compuware’s moves parallel to those of its rivals. Like Telelogic, which is providing native views of data from other project tools, Compuware is adding a similar level of display integration with the portal that is bundled with ChangePoint.
Within the portal, you can see data from Compuware’s Vantage tools, which describe the status of an application and its performance levels. However, the tools are not yet fully integrated into a governance suite, as Mercury has started doing with its IT Optimization Centers.
Like Mercury, Compuware is moving into the IT governance space, courtesy of the ChangePoint acquisition, but at a more measured pace. Like IBM/Rational and Tivoli, it has assembled tools that combine design, testing, and development with performance tracking after deployment.
Of these initiatives, the most challenging is the IT governance space, which requires a new sales cycle to a new, higher level of end customer. It is also potentially the most rewarding, especially as many organizations outsource actual development, but wish to maintain control of what is being produced.
For Compuware, there are obvious synergies between ChangePoint, which looks at how IT is runs its projects, and CARS (Compuware Application Solution), which analyzes how well IT organizations develop software. For Compuware customers, this is the space to watch.
