News and Events
Process Mentor® Increases
its PPM Credentials
Posted on 7th March, 2011
Process Mentor version 6.5 has pushed further into the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) domain by integrating with Microsoft’s Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution. Providing the ability to export Process Mentor projects, in their dynamic / tailorable form, has extended the functionality of Microsoft’s EPM for fast, very fast, set-up of project sites, schedules, and document repositories.
Subsequently Process Mentor increases the productivity of PMOs and Project Managers whilst also building PPM governance into every project. For further information refer to Accelerator or download our pdf on Enabling Projects.
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
There is no such thing as an IT project,
it’s a business project
that has an IT component
Posted on 14th September, 2010
Brent Cahill, Process Mentor Product Manager, is quoted in The Project Manager– "Why IT projects fail" August/September 2010 edition. Read about how benefits realisation is fundamental to increasing project success, whilst being cognisant of other projects likely to impact from a technical, shared resource or stakeholder perspective and understanding the risks in IT projects. Process Mentor provides Project Managers and PMOs with the tools and techniques required to conduct successful projects and deliver value from portfolios. It also supports broader enterprise issues such as governance and compliance.
Click here to download "Why IT projects fail" PDF
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Object Consulting makes Gartner’s
‘Cool Vendors’ list
Posted on 20th May, 2010
Object Consulting, one of Australia’s largest enterprise solutions developers announces that Gartner has named its Process Mentor methodology in its Cool Vendors in PPM Method for 2010 research report. Process Mentor is one of only four – and is the only Australian platform – in the Gartner report of ‘interesting, new and innovative’ approaches to project and program management.
According to Gartner, "Roughly half the PMOs we talk to are considering developing their own [project and program] methodologies,"[1] at the expense of delaying other, more important activities.
Gartner instead recommends that companies adopt a methodology such as Process Mentor to help achieve "high-quality solutions, often at less cost than most organisations can develop internally."[2]
The research company says that Process Mentor is defining a unique corner of the market: "Process Mentor first made our list as a result of satisfied clients. Process Mentor’s prepackaged content ranges from templates to support small projects, agile projects and larger programs. Compared to other companies reviewed in this research, Process Mentor occupies a special niche that makes it a good fit for organisations that are slightly more process-oriented. While the other vendors focus on templates and practices, Process Mentor leads with solid process modeling."[3]
Process Mentor synthesises Object Consulting’s 20+ years of application development, into applications that help developers create, modify and enhance process architecture.
Object Consulting’s Brent Cahill, Product Manager - Process Mentor said, "Process Mentor gets the whole team on the same page."
"Object Consulting is delighted that Process Mentor has been recognised as a ’Cool’ methodology. And more importantly, we’re delighted that it has achieved a significant track record in helping businesses of all sizes generate the shared vision and practices that lead to successful project outcomes," Cahill commented.
About Process Mentor
Process Mentor helps accelerate project ramp-up and implementation, development productivity and consistency, continuous improvement, greater visibility and the rapid take-up of ‘lessons learnt’, with features including:
- Accelerator: Process Mentor helps project practitioners increase ramp-up speeds on new projects, with rapid ‘criteria based’ roadmap selection and auto-generation of key files and portals.
- Project Roadmaps: Readymade project roadmaps - covering lifecycles for particular size/styles of project – with tools to guide the initiation and subsequent approval, gating and audit of projects.
- Advisor – identifying inherent risks: This configurable survey tool helps organisations determine best of breed approach based on their risk appetite – including a customisable questionnaire addressing the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of a project, and highlighting the most appropriate project roadmap selection.
- Project Enactment: Enabling practitioners to ‘virtually’ enact the process, adjusting phases, activities, tasks and deliverables to produce a project-specific breakdown.
- Authoring and publishing tools: Including approved modified processes to be incorporated into the Process Asset Library for future projects. This ability is crucial to all organisations seeking Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level three compliance.
- Ease of integration: The platform is simultaneously shipped with the new Microsoft Visual Studio platform, and also integrates with Microsoft Project, Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Compuware’s Changepoint.
1 Gartner ‘Cool Vendors in PPM Method, 2010’, April 2010, (Research ID Number: G00175296, retrieved May 2010 from http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=1338718), p1.
2 Ibid
3 Ibid, p3.
Tracy Pendergast
Pentica PR for Object Consulting
Process Mentor to attend the inaugural ALM conference
Posted on 25th March, 2010
As part of Process Mentor’s continuing support for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Process Mentor shall be attending the first ever ALM conference. Located in Sydney’s historic Luna Park the ALM conference incorporates the launch of Microsoft’s Visual Studio ALM tools. Process Mentor has historically been a large supporter of the governance built into Application Lifecycle Management and continues to do so along with its elements of Project Portfolio Management (PPM).
The ALM Conference is a unique event in the Australian IT Calendar. It is designed to explore ways that ALM and Visual Studio tools can reduce costs, reduce development time, increase quality, and improve project manageability. Two full days, 18 sessions and industry leading speakers will arm you with essential knowledge to effectively manage applications through their entire life-cycle from idea, through development, deployment, testing, maintenance, and support.
This is an event that can take you and your teams skills to the next level and deliver significant efficiencies and business value.
Click here to Register now
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Object Consulting, Visual Studio Industry Partner, announce plans to simultaneously ship Process Mentor with Visual Studio ALM tools.
Posted on 27th January, 2010
Object Consulting, Visual Studio Industry Partner, announce plans to simultaneously ship Process Mentor with Visual Studio ALM tools. Process Mentor provides a platform for Visual Studio ALM tool users to set-up their own processes and methods, which can be imported into Visual Studio and used as tailorable / configurable, hierarchical work-items.
This platform provides developers with an environment in which they can understand their performance, enabling:
- The ability to roll-up development processes to the project level for, development time, time-to-complete, and overall process performance
- Development managers are able to see at a glance how complete a work item is, due to the dynamic effort data provided
- Integration of Process Mentor - TeamGuide, Visual Studio ALM tools, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Project means we have the whole team on the same page, even though they may be using different views / products
- Insertion, within the development environment, of guidance for developers and the rest of the project team
- The ability to include your own governance, project management, and development methodologies into Visual Studio ALM tool process templates.
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Process Mentor podcast on the Improving Systems and Software Engineering Conference
Posted on 18th July, 2009
In this inaugural podcast for Process Mentor, Brent Cahill – Product Manager Process Mentor - speaks with Angela Tuffley - conference chair for the Improving Systems and Software Engineering Conference (ISSEC). The discussion ranges from Angela’s considerable experience in the IT industry through to some of the highlights of the ISSEC conference. Process Mentor has been involved with the SEPG and resulting ISSEC conference since its inception and believes that this year (especially in harder financial times) is the best time to identify how efficiency can be gained in the development of systems and software. This interview identifies how you can gain that knowledge from the ISSEC conference.
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Kevin Francis blogs about strategic architecture and Process Mentor
Posted on 29th April, 2009
It was a pleasure to read Kevin Francis' blog about his trip to San Francisco for Microsoft's Strategic Architecture Forum. Kevin is a Microsoft MVP for Architecture and one of his passions is the development of solution architects as individuals and as key capability within organisations. It was at this forum that Kevin presented to CIOs and CTOs on the development of architects. It was great to see that as part of this development Kevin sees a place for Process Mentor. For the full post visit http://msmvps.com/blogs/architecture/
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Process Mentor assists Victorian Government develop strategic enterprise architecture framework
Posted on 26th April, 2009
Process Mentor grew from the development and project management approach of Object Consulting. To this day Process Mentor is assisting Object Consulting in the delivery of sensitive consulting engagements. To view the case study of how Object Consulting assisted Service Victoria using Process Mentor, please see the case study here:
http://www.objectconsulting.com.au/case-studies/service-victoria-roadmap.aspx
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Summer User Group a success!
Posted on 9th March, 2009
On Thursday 26th February it was my pleasure to host the Summer User Group for Process Mentor. The summer user group was addressed by Steve Arahill and Karen Ong of Railcorp, presenting on their recent Process Mentor implementation. Railcorp have recently gone live with Process Mentor and are staging a gradual roll-out of Process Mentor to each of its divisions, IT and non-IT alike. This was an interesting presentation given Steve and Karen not only took us through the implementation approach with lessons learned and successes, but also a run down on the Railcorp Project Management Methodology (RPMM) within Process Mentor.
We look forward to seeing more of our users at the Autumn User Group.
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Summer User Group Breakfast
Posted on 10th February, 2009
We are excited to start the new year with our first user group meeting of 2009! It will be held at the end of February with a summer breakfast and presentation.
The user group provides an opportunity for current Process Mentor users to come together and discuss their implementation and use of the Process Mentor product suite. It also provides users the ability to cross pollinate and learn from the successes and improvements of other organisations, which they can apply to their own environments.
The summer user group includes a presentation by Karen Ong, Senior ICT Project Officer, from Railcorp. Karen’s presentation shall detail their recent implementation of Process Mentor and their vision for its future use.
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Process Mentor® and the University of Newcastle award students with Prize
Posted on 4th December, 2008 by Brent Cahill
In association with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - University of Newcastle, I presented the Object Consulting Prize to Carl Ormerod, Richard Ormerod, and Zack Golenia for their presentation “A Simulation System for Mobile Commerce – A Flight Booking System”.
It was my great pleasure to sit with an expert panel to determine the winning project from the final two submissions for the Object Consulting Prize – 2008.
It was exciting to see the application of the techniques that Object Consulting & Process Mentor® hold fundamental and the imagination and lateral thinking shown in the presentations were particularly encouraging.
Object Consulting have sponsored this accolade for the last 10 years, awarding the prize to the project team who delivers a software product that best meets the Object Oriented Software Engineering course requirements, through the application of Process Mentor, object oriented analysis & design and component based modelling.
“This is the life of a software developer – everything is always evolving and being improved on. We show them how to use Process Mentor® to guide their project development and the students can then extend their learning in dealing with industry-based themes, issues and problems of software development. This is a great experience for their future career.” – Professor Ye, University of Newcastle
This has always been and will continue to be an exciting opportunity for Object Consulting and Process Mentor® to support the next generation of software engineers and solution architects.
Brent Cahill
Product Manager
Process Mentor® Version 6.2 Released!
Posted on 28th November, 2008 by Brent Cahill
An exciting day for Process Mentor! Version 6.2 has now been released and comes packed with new features and functionality.
These include:
- Commenting functionality - providing full circle feedback capability to assist process improvements
- Addition of Advisor - a risk profiler that ensures the correct fit of governance to projects
- Customisable teams and roles
- Release of Raptor 2.0
- Versioning enhancements
- Confluence support in Accelerator.
Learn more about Process Mentor
Brent Cahill
Product Manager