Clarity Project & Portfolio Management System Implementation

A Best-of-Breed Approach to Project Management

Aristocrat’s gaming software development projects were increasing in number with greater regulatory and compliance requirements and, as such, they required a tool-set that provided greater visibility across their projects.

Oakton supported Aristocrat in implementing Clarity, a comprehensive project & portfolio management system. The project was broken up into ive phases and ran over a two year timeframe.

The project was made up of the implementation of web-based timesheets, Project Management and Resource Management. This included electronic worklow to facilitate the game development process and rolling out Clarity to R&D users in Las Vegas. To satisfy management requirements, also implemented were customised reporting, dashboards and custom modules for Master Games Plan and Game Development Release Plans.

Working closely with Aristocrat’s Clarity Project Management team, Oakton’s Project Management methodology, processes and fundamentals were invaluable to the successful delivery of the project.

The challenge

With the increased growth in the number of projects and more stringent compliance and regulatory requirements, Aristocrat’s existing project management system was proving to be outmoded and inefective. Product development information, including progress time lines and expenditure, were not reliable or readily available to senior management and an increasingly large portion of management time was spent on preparing project reports with data extracted from diferent sources.

Aristocrat R&D needed a trusted common monitoring system that provided visibility of games development to management and marketing executives, thus minimising the project management and general management infrastructure in Aristocrat’s USA & Australian R&D facilities. Aristocrat decided to invest in Clarity, a solution that would support both its vision and growth plans.

To ensure a smooth transition from the existing applications and processes, Aristocrat required a progressive and controlled project approach across to the Clarity solution. To ensure user acceptance levels were high, cultural changes needed to occur from within the organisation and mapped to the application’s functionality.

Aristocrat chose the CA Clarity product after a thorough review of requirements and product suitability. Clarity provides a seamlessly integrated portfolio management solution which provides executives with a real time view into the organisation’s investment initiatives. Having worked successfully in other areas of the business, Oakton were a natural choice for the Clarity implementation. The initial Oakton engagement was to assist Aristocrat with project management, change management and consultancy for the implementation of web based timesheets for R&D staf in the USA and Australia.

As a result of early successes, Oakton then assisted Aristocrat with the mapping of the Games development lifecycle process automating electronic forms and worklows for review and approvals where applicable. The team was able to develop processes around all key stages of the Games development process -game design, software development, testing. Oakton’s services were then expanded to develop various custom functional modules on the Clarity platform capturing the deman forecasts and acceptance between R&D and marketing for all markets they operate in around the world This gave senior management visibility into the status of the games approval plan, through a dashboard shared by the entire organisation. A centralised games coniguration information repository was another custom module developed by Oakton. This stores all coniguration parameters for the various markets Aristocrat operate in, according to regulatory and compliance requirements.

Oakton and the Aristocrat Clarity project team worked together closely and using the Oakton Project Management methodology were able to implement the Clarity solution in record time.

Business Outcome

Aristocrat now has access to an accurate and comprehensive timesheet system which provides management with reporting capabilities that facilitate better utilization of R&D resources and more accurate forecasting of resource requirements.

Detailed resource planning using information from the Clarity system allows R&D to operate with optimised levels of resources while the Clarity resource repository provides details of employee’s availability and skills to allow high utilisation of resources. It also allows for the optimization and prioritisation of games development due to end to end project visibility.

Aristocrat leveraged Oakton’s PMO knowledge of process and implementation tools to realize the true beneits of the solution sooner.