 | IBM® Rational SUMMIT® Ascendant® is a process solution that delivers a comprehensive library of methods for planning and managing enterprise IT project and programs. The process framework is supported by tools for planning, estimating, and monitoring a project or portfolio of projects. When used with IBM Rational Unified Process, the de facto industry standard for iterative application development, SUMMIT Ascendant is a robust process management tool, helping project-, program-, or portfolio managers to plan, manage, and deliver IT projects on time and within budget.
On a project by project basis, there are many reasons for failure: lack of proper planning, insufficient user involvement, no standard procedures, poor communication between team members, and lack of overarching portfolio visibility. At the organization level, situations such as mergers, acquisitions, IT restructuring, or regulatory compliance mandates also create the need for a structured approach to planning and managing IT projects. IBM® Rational SUMMIT® Ascendant® is a process solution that delivers a comprehensive library of methods for planning and managing enterprise IT projects and programs. These methods are supported by Web-based tools for planning, estimating, and monitoring a project, program or portfolio of projects. When used with IBM Rational Unified Process®, the de facto industry standard for iterative application development, SUMMIT Ascendant is a robust process management tool, helping project-, program-, or portfolio managers to plan, manage, and deliver IT projects on time and within budget. | Feature | Function | Benefit |
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| Tools for planning, estimating, and monitoring projects or portfolios | Automated tools for: establishing deliverable templates and a plan for a project, estimating project needs using a variety of estimation techniques, monitoring the health of a portfolio of projects. | Project plans are easily and quickly built from out-of-the-box method components or customized templates. Estimating in SUMMIT Ascendant can be done using bottom-up or top-down techniques which are automated in the product, helping managers improve the reliability of their project plans. SUMMIT Ascendant also maintains portfolio summaries and provides reports across projects using portfolio information. | | Enterprise IT Method Library | SUMMIT delivers guidance on information systems planning, program management, system delivery, organizational change, and more, for project types ranging from rapid-cycle development to packaged-software implementations. This guidance is modular in nature, using an approach called "route mapping." | IT organizations benefit from time-tested process guidance while still maintaining the flexibility of selecting the route maps most relevant to their projects or programs. | | Linkage with IBM Rational Unified Process® | New to SUMMIT Ascendant: planning templates for RUP®-based projects, plus RUP process content. | Leverage the industry-proven best practices of RUP, plus the tools of SUMMIT Ascendant for effective IT application development. | | Integrations with leading project management & scheduling tools | Automated project plan generation. | Once a plan is estimated, it can be quickly and easily resourced in SUMMIT Ascendant or a 3rd party tool and then launched and scheduled in a 3rd party tool such as Microsoft® Project. |
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