Project Server 2010 - One or multiple PWA instances?

In our Project Server 2010 practice we work with various customers and see their deployment strategies, problems and great things. Today, I wanted to cover one of the major issues that big companies without centralized PMO are facing.

The problem (challenge) is - Should organizations create one PWA for entire organization or several PWA per business unit or department?

Our recommendation is ONE PWA.

One of our customers had 2 departments that started implementing project server about the same time but independently. Now - the challenge is to merge the data. 150 projects total, project sites, duplicated custom fields and names, different document library structure. It is a significant effort that is way more complex now than to have several joint meetings to discuss the approach, attributes and structure.

If fact, this was driven by requirements to isolate data between departments and this is a task for Project Server 2010 consultant / consulting company or qualified Project Server 2010 Administrator to configure security in a way that it will isolate data.

Analysis of pros and const for one PWA:

Pros:

• Executives can see all the information in one place.
• In future, departments that will start using PS (for example HR) will re-use existing approaches, practices. This significantly reduce time and investments required to start using Project Server
• Ability to overview entire resource pool in the organization and do cross-departmental resource planning
• Ability to do the cross-departmental dependencies in projects.

Cons:

• Slightly more complicated security configuration
• Anything else?

I would recommend using additional PWA for test / staging environments if there is no additional hardware available (recommendation is still to have staging / development environments as separate farms).

Feel free to comment or ask questions - I will be happy to answer.

Related blog posts:

Distribute templates to multiple PWA: http://www.projectserverblog.com/2012/02/distributing-project-templates-in.html

Merge PWAs with help of FluentBooks: http://www.projectserverblog.com/2011/12/merge-2-project-server-2010-pwa-with.html