Aviation & aerospace project management software that lets R&D enterprises ensure smooth workflows and optimise resources
The aerospace industry has a set of unique challenges. It has to deal with the current external risks of supply chain disruptions, and companies in aerospace and defence are facing the uncertainties of supply, demand, and disruptive tech innovations brought about by the rise in global conflict.
R&D also has to deal with operational challenges because this industry is among the ones that need to effectively combine production projects with research and development to stay competitive. In this article, we’ll take a look at how companies can manage their R&D workload with aerospace project management software.
Aerospace R&D Challenges and How PPM Software Solves Them
Let’s first take a look at a list of the most pressing R&D operational challenges and see how aerospace project management software solves them.
Budget-oriented thinking
The main challenge that most companies face, especially ones with budgets as large as in the aerospace industry, is budget-oriented thinking. This thinking stems from the false belief that the monetary constraints are the most important ones in project acceptance and portfolio composition. Simply put, when a new project comes up, and the company has the money for it, it immediately initiates execution.
Project management software changes that by highlighting the true limiting factor — resource capacity. Each aerospace company has a limited number of employees and a limited number of work hours it can spend on projects. No amount of money can turn 40 hours into 100.
Analyzing and understanding resource limitations leads to better planning, more reasonable due date projections, and an increase in productivity.
Lack of visibility
Companies with large portfolios often struggle with knowing what goes on in their portfolios. It’s hard to keep track of:
- All projects.
- All project requirements.
- All resources.
- Current capacity of resources.
Especially so if the data is siloed and kept separately across departments.
PPM software solves that problem by incorporating all company data into a single centralized platform. Most tools like these also offer multiple visualisation options that can help project and portfolio managers view the whole portfolio at a glance.
Prioritization
Lack of visibility and budget-oriented thinking often lead to the lack of clear priorities. When every project is treated as equally important, it becomes impossible to decide which projects can be postponed to speed up the delivery of other projects if resource capacity is at its limits.
Aerospace project management software can’t help your organization develop prioritization criteria. Those would depend on your team’s approach and objective internal company factors. What this software can do is provide all the tools you need to make decisions based on project priority and performance data.
Stakeholder resistance
Finally, a common challenge in managing a multi-project portfolio in the aerospace industry is stakeholder resistance to changes both big and small. Many companies with a large and interdependent leadership chain will have one or more elements of that chain oppose changes like:
- Altering workflows.
- Postponing or deleting projects.
- Reallocating resources.
This challenge is best overcome with interpersonal communication skills, but PPM software adds another important element, data. Using data on resource availability and scenario planning can help convince stakeholders of the importance of change.
How to Manage R&D Projects in Aerospace and Defence
With that out of the way, let’s explore how R&D companies can manage R&D projects effectively with the help of aerospace project management tools.
Take inventory of the portfolio
The first step is taking an exhaustive inventory of the portfolio. You should consolidate siloed data streams and integrate them with the PPM software to create a list of:
- Current projects.
- Planned projects.
- Projects considered for acceptance.
- Project tasks.
- Project timelines and milestones.
- Project budget assessments.
- Company resources.
- Resource groups.
- Resource skill levels.
- Total and current resource capacity.
Once data is integrated into the tool, managers can have a centralized holistic view of the portfolio. Some tools will highlight potential operational risks straight away, giving ample time to adjust project timelines to eliminate resource overload.
Prioritise projects
Once you have a clear vision of the projects in your portfolio and resource capacity available to you, there are two possible outcomes.
- If resources are overloaded, you should remove projects from the portfolio to balance the load.
- If resources are underloaded, you can add projects to improve throughput.
Both of these actions require understanding which projects are more important for your company. This requires prioritizing projects, often done through comparing the business value a project brings. Since we’re dealing with R&D projects, you can’t measure their business value in strictly monetary form.
One of the most straightforward ways of measuring R&D business value is creating a ranking system based on several criteria like:
- Strategic importance.
- Potential for increasing earnings.
- Potential for reducing costs.
- Risk level.
Give weights to each criterion, decide on what unit to use for measuring them, and hold a meeting to vote for each of them. As a result, you’ll develop a unified project priority score, which will give you an understanding of which projects will benefit the company more. Upload that data into PPM software for analysis.
Develop portfolio scenarios
Once you understand both the business value projects can bring to the company and resource constraints, you can create scenario simulations to find what set of projects would deliver the best value while keeping the resource load manageable.
Many PPM tools have scenario planning software built into them, so this step can be as easy as shifting projects in a simulation environment. Some aerospace resource management software like Epicflow offer AI-based features that can analyze the portfolio on their own and present the scenario that maximizes business value under given resource constraints.
Get stakeholder signoff and implement changes
Once you’ve found the best option, present it to the stakeholders to receive their agreement, and implement changes in the portfolio.
Monitor performance
After you implement the changes, monitor project performance. If you spot an issue in performance, go back to the drawing board to change your approach to R&D management.
Most often, performance issues are tied to:
- Inaccurate project budget assessment.
- Inaccurate risk assessment.
- Lack of proper risk management strategies.
Solve these problems and reevaluate the portfolio with PPM tools.
Conclusions
Aerospace project management software is irreplaceable when it comes to managing R&D projects and balancing them with production. It can help R&D companies to:
- Form a clear understanding of company resource capacity.
- Increase visibility.
- Guide resource allocation decisions.
- Monitor performance.
To use it effectively, integrate all company data with the tool, analyse resource performance, and regularly review your approaches to data collection and project prioritisation.