Georgia Tech’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) recently launched a new project management platform that will enhance how projects are introduced, approved, tracked, and managed across the Institute. IT Business Management, or ITBM, is a robust portfolio and project management solution that is powered by ServiceNow technology, also leveraged for managing service and support requests at services.gatech.edu.

ITBM allows users to manage both traditional and agile projects. It also allows leaders, program managers, portfolio managers, and project managers to capture ideas for new projects from students, faculty, and staff across the Institute. Early adopters of the platform include the Georgia Tech Library, Georgia Tech Strategic Consulting, and OIT. ITBM is now being offered to other units and will replace the current enterprise project management tool, Workfront, at the end of the month.

“One of the areas where we have a tremendous opportunity is in capturing and implementing the amazing ideas that our librarians, archivists, and staff have, along with reducing the time it takes to transition those ideas through implementation to viable new services or existing service enhancements,” said Samuel Graham, director of information technology for the Library. “ITBM has the potential to help us better organize, prioritize, and execute ideas faster with an increased discipline in project management.”

ITBM users can expect an intuitive and innovative environment, interactive dashboards with real-time updates, simple and easy reporting tools, and the ability to effectively manage traditional and agile projects in one platform. The solution’s advanced reporting capabilities will increase Georgia Tech’s visibility into its investments on programs and projects.

“We are hopeful that the ITBM module will offer us the ability to organize the Institute’s strategic plan to measure, track, and communicate progress, and allow us to generate reports for executive dashboards that will show our progress,” said Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, executive director of Georgia Tech Strategic Consulting. “We are also hopeful that we can use it to organize the goals and objectives of the colleges, schools, divisions, and departments as they create plans aligned with the overarching Institute plan. By having one central place to organize unit-level plans, we should be able to facilitate connections and collaboration while measuring progress collectively.”

ITBM is a part of a larger effort to unify service management and delivery across the Institute within a comprehensive, managed platform. This effort introduces a framework that shifts the focus of service management from technology-driven to customer-driven.

“The Office of Information Technology’s Project and Portfolio Management Office currently utilizes disparate systems to manage projects, which makes sharing data difficult and results in many manual and inefficient processes that our project and portfolio managers have to support,” said Kimberly White, director of portfolio and project management within OIT. “We are excited to reimagine our business processes and take full advantage of the capabilities of ITBM.”

The platform’s features include:

• Demand Management: Used for collecting ideas and promoting accepted ideas to strategic and operational demands.

• Project Management: A suite of tools used to manage projects, tasks, and resources.
• Program Management: Used to manage program tasks.
• Portfolio Management: Enables management of projects and programs in different portfolios.
• Resource Management: Enables resource and capacity planning.
• Timecard: Enables the ability to track time on a daily basis against assignments.

By centralizing these efforts, users can create reporting visuals and establish trends through historical data. Customizable dashboards also allow users to create, manage, and share role-based reports within and across teams.

To learn more about the ITBM project at Georgia Tech, or to sign up to join the waitlist for ITBM training, visit oit.gatech.edu/ITBM.