The product uses a publish-and-subscribe model for its notification and alert capabilities, which appear on the user's home page upon logging in to the system. The vendor wisely includes methodology templates to describe projects' phases. As with Changepoint PM--but not Portfolio Edge--Artemis' time-management capabilities are integrated, so you won't need a third-party application.
Artemis 7 is a J2EE application supporting deployment in a few select application servers and platforms. We were confused by the limited support--because the application is J2EE and can run within WebSphere on Solaris, we would have thought it could run within WebSphere on Windows. So much for standards.
Artemis 7. Artemis International Solutions Corp., (949) 660-7100. www.aisc.com
Portfolio Edge 2.0 was the most customizable of the three ITPM packages we tested. PE can be adapted easily to manage portfolios for any type of business--IT, manufacturing and insurance, to name a few--without a hassle. The downside to this approach is that implementation is slow--even with the "templates" included in the system, as you'll want to create your own templates to fit your business model. The upside, however, is that all lines of an organization's business can use a single portfolio-management product.
Out of the box, PE offers a host of metrics for reporting and analysis. The product's graphical-analysis capabilities are as appealing as Changepoint PM's and offer equally strong drill-down capabilities and flexibility in customizing reports. Calculations for metrics and reporting are extremely flexible; PE utilizes MathML, which can be used to create just about any type of calculation. We liked PE's ability to adjust project timelines automatically, without requiring project managers' manual intervention. Artemis required us to send an alert to project managers, instructing them to move projects up or back in time, whereas PE allowed anyone with the appropriate rights to do this automatically.
As with Artemis, we discovered we had overallocated staff during the second quarter of 2004. The IT manager could choose a project with a lower prioritization and click the "delay" button. By specifying a new start date, the project was modified automatically to start on the new date, changing all relevant staffing needs and moving all associated costs. This process lets the IT manager move projects in time and immediately gauge the effect of doing so on the budget as well as staff workload--though it's not as elegant as Artemis' what-if capability.
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