Stephen C. Sanderlin

Stephen Sanderlin is an experienced System and Software Architect with a specialty in designing, implementing, customizing, and developing custom software and reporting solutions for Microsoft Project, Project Server, and SharePoint. Stephen also holds a wide variety of Microsoft certifications, including all those currently available for both the 2003 and 2007 versions of Microsoft Project and Project Server.

Stephen has worked with Microsoft Project since 2000, and has been providing consulting services to Fortune 500 clients in the areas of Project Management, SharePoint, and Microsoft Project on a full-time basis since 2003. Stephen also actively participates in the Microsoft Project community by answering questions in online user communities and posting Microsoft Project-related content to his blog. In addition, Stephen runs a Microsoft Project-related forum where users can discuss the product, seek technical assistance, and network. He resides in Quakertown, Pennsylvania with his wife Michele and their two cats.

About EPMFAQ

This site is run by Project Server deployment and development consultant Stephen Sanderlin for the benefit of all members of the Project Server community, be they deployers, developers, or end users.

What is EPM? What is Project Server?

EPM is the abbreviation for Enterprise Project Management, which, in broad terms, is a collection of processes and methodologies for facilitating the governance of projects and programs within an organization.
Project Server is Microsoft’s enterprise-class solution for Enterprise Project Management. It works with the Microsoft Project Professional desktop application to provide a common location for project and programs, thereby easing the burden of collaboration among teams.

Why is Project Server useful?

The goal of Project Server is to provide a single location where members of an organization can access and store project plans, issues, risks, project documents, status reports, project reports, task updates, and other information relating to projects and programs. There are many benefits to this approach, but the primary benefit is the ease of collaboration. With a Project Server deployment, no longer will Project Managers and Team Members have to trade emails, play phone tag, or spend valuable time in meetings to establish status and project progress. No longer will team members have to exchange hardcopies of documents, issues, or risks. With Project Server, updating your Project Manager or pulling up a project’s vision statement is as simple, literally, as the click of a button.

Project Managers and Resource Managers recieve significant benefits as well. With Project Server’s out-of-the-box reporting capabilities (along with the endless possibilities for customization and integration with other Business Intelligence packages), report generation for executives and other stakeholders has never been easier. Resource Managers can easily collect timesheets, time-off requests, and other information with Project Server.

With Project Server, executives and other stakeholders gain the ability (often for the first time) to find out the status of a project for themselves, without holding a meeting or obtaining a hardcopy of a status report.

Some of the topics you’ll see discussed here are:

• Quick Tips: Short, targeted articles aimed at providing a solution, workaround, or troubleshooting steps for a particular problem.
• Administration: Ensure your compliance with best demonstrated practices in your administration of an already deployed Project Server.
• Implementation and Deployment: Defeat common issues and gain from the experiences of other consultants in the field.
• From The Field: Learn from our experiences, or contribute your opinions or perspective. These are the war stories, straight from the trenches.
• FAQ: Discover the answers to the most common questions of administrators, deployers, developers, and end-users.
• Development: Master the inner workings of Project Server and the art of customization and extension.
• Reporting: Explore the possibilities for insight into your business with Project Server.

Be sure to bookmark this site and return to it often!