Project Management Files Related Issues or Data management Issues
How do I track the history and evolution of my projects? For every change, how do I know who made it; why they made it; when they made it; and what the change was?
Example:
“What did this directory contain last Wednesday?”
“Who was the last person to change this file, and what changes did he make?”
How can I archive old versions of files and directories, possibly resurrect them, or examine logs of how they've changed over time?
I’m working with other people (in my company or outside my company) on the same files of the project, how can I prevent them from accidentally stepping on each other's feet? It's all too easy for users to accidentally overwrite each other's changes.
If people need to simultaneously make changes, how can I identify and resolve conflicts for potentially incompatible changes?
How can I recover from mistakes? For example, I make a change that later turns to be an error, so I would like to revert to an earlier version of one or more files.
How can I recover files that a user accidentally deletes?
Everybody experienced one time this catastrophic case: deleting recursively one directory that contained thousands of important files.
How do we fix it? By getting the last backup that we hope we did not very long ago and by recovering the full backup, then scanning all the files to check the ones we need to recreate from scratch.
Not only we waste precious time in figuring out what we have lost and what we have to recreate, but also we are not sure that all mistakes we have previously fixed are gone away.
How can I recover or continue to work in case of important incident ?
For example, my server where are located all the files is broken or catches fire and is no longer accessible.
How can I recover or continue to work if my server has been stolen?
Project Management Planning Related Issues
The following list of issues is, first of all, the Project Manager Issues List, but they are shared at different levels of concern with the Project Team members and the Direction.
Avoid Stress due to delays and low quality.
How can I be sure that we will finish On Time what we have to do with the defined Team?
How to ensure that I will be informed of every potential deviation and that I will take the right decision such as:
• asking management more people or means,
• asking customers to postpone or to limit some features,
• negotiating a correct new delivery time,
• or better organizing the job in the team,
as never sacrificing the quality of our service in order to keep our customer satisfaction intact?
How to know at every moment of a project the exact exhaustive list of remaining tasks and the right effort and time that it will take?
How to know the real difficulties of the team in order to focus the energy on the right issues?
How to capitalize on the done projects to better evaluate the effort for new ones?
For each member of the project, what I have to do this morning?
For the direction or the sales rep, can I engage my company on the delivery time? Are we sure that we are able to do what the customer wants? Are we sure that we will make money?
Project management Problem Tracking Issues
How can I offer to my customers an easy way to systematically inform my project team of all issues and request enhancements as soon as possible?
How to be sure that the project team won’t forget important Customer issues or enhancement requests?
How to be sure that an answer has been submitted for every issue or enhancement request?
How to help the team members and the customer to communicate on each issue efficiently?
How to be sure that the project team members have correctly focused on the issues based on the customer importance?
How to ensure that any non predictable effort has been correctly impacted on the delivery dates of the projects?
How to capitalize on projects done to correctly estimate the risks, the stabilization stage effort and duration?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Announcing our New Website for the TerraProj solution
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new website for the TerraProj Solution.
TerraProj is a CAD dedicated Project Management Solution that:
- Protects CAD department digital assets
- Keeps all document versions and eases team work
- Allows document sharing in a secured way
- Helps planning and monitoring projects
- Allows tracking issues and solutions.
TerraProj is a CAD dedicated Project Management Solution that:
- Protects CAD department digital assets
- Keeps all document versions and eases team work
- Allows document sharing in a secured way
- Helps planning and monitoring projects
- Allows tracking issues and solutions.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Why a Suite is better for Content Management?
Several Software Vendors state that they can handle all the aspects of content management with just one piece of software.
At VDoc Software, we have a complete different approach which consists in integrating five main modules in one suite.
VDoc Portal provides the underlying services (directory, cache...), collaborative applications (people finder, news, forums...) and a customizable portal user interface. This module is the entry point for all users. It simplifies access to the information and application.
VDoc Process provides a easy and fast way to model and automate all kind of processes. This module allows non-IT employee (managers, business analyst) to model the processes (that they best know) and to generate, without any programming complete Web process-driven applications (purchase process, customer claims...). This module provides the workflow services for the Suite.
VDoc File Center provides a very easy and intuitive way to publish and find documents for all employees, partners or customers. This module has been designed to simplify the use of document publishing and finding features for workers who have basic IT or Documents Process knowledge and don't need all of the sophisticated functions that a Electronic Document Management system typically has.
VDoc Document Management provides very rich document management functionality to streamline and automate complex document processes. This module allows document responsible to create document templates connected to back-office applications (ERP, CRM...) to speed up by more than 10 times obtaining final documents (ex: Technical Specifications, Work instructions...). The final version of the documents can be automatically published in VDoc File Center.
VDoc Easy Site provides a very easy and intuitive way to create web sites and to publish web content. This module also allows publishing within web sites documents or processes that are managed by the other modules of the suite.
At VDoc Software, we have a complete different approach which consists in integrating five main modules in one suite.
VDoc Portal provides the underlying services (directory, cache...), collaborative applications (people finder, news, forums...) and a customizable portal user interface. This module is the entry point for all users. It simplifies access to the information and application.
VDoc Process provides a easy and fast way to model and automate all kind of processes. This module allows non-IT employee (managers, business analyst) to model the processes (that they best know) and to generate, without any programming complete Web process-driven applications (purchase process, customer claims...). This module provides the workflow services for the Suite.
VDoc File Center provides a very easy and intuitive way to publish and find documents for all employees, partners or customers. This module has been designed to simplify the use of document publishing and finding features for workers who have basic IT or Documents Process knowledge and don't need all of the sophisticated functions that a Electronic Document Management system typically has.
VDoc Document Management provides very rich document management functionality to streamline and automate complex document processes. This module allows document responsible to create document templates connected to back-office applications (ERP, CRM...) to speed up by more than 10 times obtaining final documents (ex: Technical Specifications, Work instructions...). The final version of the documents can be automatically published in VDoc File Center.
VDoc Easy Site provides a very easy and intuitive way to create web sites and to publish web content. This module also allows publishing within web sites documents or processes that are managed by the other modules of the suite.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Why do Small and Medium Enterprises need Collaborative Suites?
SMEs have to rationalize their processes
Constrained by the competition, Small and Medium Enterprises have to constantly improve the quality of their products or services, whilst reducing time to market by executing more quickly decision making and operational cycles.
Since 1990, at first in the manufacturing organizations, SMEs have had to rationalize their processes in order to obtain quality certification (ISO 9001 V 1994), this effort enabled them to improve the quality of their products by focusing on reducing errors but it was extremely expensive.
Today, in an ISO 9000 V2000 spirit, they want to deliver the same quality but in a more efficient way. They have written their procedures, now they have to gain in productivity and reduce errors during their execution, and the best way to face this challenge is to automate a big part of their processes.
Whilst, their organization has changed, the time when an organization alone was able to deliver a complete added value to the customer is over. Nowadays multiple organizations (internally or externally) have to collaborate (share ideas, documents, structured information and action plans) to constitute a chain of added values.
Information Technology has brought extraordinary benefits through electronic message solutions and internet communication, but SMEs need more. They need to collaborate inside or outside their entity through structured processes.
What are their processes?
Typically, we can subdivide the processes of an organization into three domains:
- The product realization domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the realization of the product (e.g.: selling, product specification, product design, product manufacturing, product delivery).
Generally, all the manufacturing processes are already broadly automated through ERP systems. In this area, organizations especially need to improve the upstream (e.g.: success stories, collect customer needs, proposals, launching of new product) and downstream processes (e.g.: customer support) that are not covered by the ERP systems.
- The Management processes domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the strategy, quality policy, goals definition, budget definition, communication and hiring. Obviously, automating these activities doesn't present an obvious added value as they are singular intellectual tasks with the exception of the hiring and department budget submission processes. For big SMEs, new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandate that companies implement improved internal controls. Automating processes for internal control validation, audits, issues submission, preventive and corrective actions ensure that the strict defined processes are followed.
- The support processes domain includes all the processes that play a role in human resources management (e.g.: training), purchasing, information system management, accounting and quality control. With the exception of raw materials purchasing and accounting domains, these processes are poorly automated.
The following list gives just a few examples of processes which are poorly automated:
- Quality control: customer claims, non conformity, preventive and corrective actions, audits
- Human resources: CV submission, arrival of new employee, internal employee movement, training requests, holiday requests
- Finance and purchasing: expense validation, extra production purchasing requests
- IT: incident submission, application improvement requests, purchasing requests
How could they automate these processes?
They face to 3 solutions:
Firstly: implement standard software.
It is impossible to find one standard software that covers the entire target processes; they could try to implement for each area a standard product, for instance a CRM for sales and support, a HR management software for Human resources, etc. In this case, they should have a spaghetti of disparate applications too big for the needs, difficult to adapt and integrate in the Information System and, at the end, very expensive.
Secondly: implement a specific development integrated in their intranet
Generally, because they don't have the resources internally, they have to buy a specific development from local integrator. It should be a PHP or ASP development or a Lotus Domino development.
They have the great advantage to obtain an application that fits perfectly their original needs but almost impossible to evolve (extend) without expensive costs. Generally, they automate one or 2 processes but have many difficulties to automate 10 or 20 processes.
Thirdly: implement a workflow solution
In this case, the solution varies from a specific development that uses internally a workflow system (for instance Domino.Workflow) to a simple document workflow (for instance a workflow that describe the routing of document, for instance based on SharePoint Portal) or a Human Workflow product as VDoc Process.
The first implementation is quite identical to the specific development solution.
The second one, based in a single document workflow, brings limited added value. This ensures that each document type (generally a Word form or an excel form) follows the pre-defined route, and this also permits managers to track who and when people act in the process. But because the information is non-structured (document MS office), it is very difficult to adapt the route in function of datas (e.g.: have an expert depending of the nature of the purchase) or to create accurate direction dash boards (for instance, for a support processes, we know that the demand follows the procedure we defined, but we can't know the tendency for a particular product).
The third one is assuredly the best solution if people in place (i.e.: internal or external functional experts associated with very limited IT management resources) can ensure the success of the projects.
To be precise, automating at the end 10 processes (for instance: 3 in the quality management area, 2 in the sales or marketing area, 2 in the design area, 2 in the financial or purchasing area, 1 in the support area) don't have to exceed 3 months delay involving 5 functional experts during 1 day for each, 1 full time IT manager and 10 days for a developer.
In conclusion
SMEs share the same challenges than big ones: improve quality, reduce cycle, improve productivity but they have limited means: small IT team, limited competencies in development (even their traditional IT partners witch are generally focused on implementing infrastructure as messaging system lack development or project management skills) and low budget.
They need packaged processes but highly adapted incorporated in a collaboration platform.
Moreover, some departments of big accounts such as quality departments share the same concern as SMEs.
Our success (600 customers and 450 000 users) confirms that this diagnostic is true : our product (VDoc Process) stands out from others BPM solutions by its capability to be used by non computer scientist to design, adapt and automate processes without programming. The development effort is limited to connecting the processes to the back office.
Constrained by the competition, Small and Medium Enterprises have to constantly improve the quality of their products or services, whilst reducing time to market by executing more quickly decision making and operational cycles.
Since 1990, at first in the manufacturing organizations, SMEs have had to rationalize their processes in order to obtain quality certification (ISO 9001 V 1994), this effort enabled them to improve the quality of their products by focusing on reducing errors but it was extremely expensive.
Today, in an ISO 9000 V2000 spirit, they want to deliver the same quality but in a more efficient way. They have written their procedures, now they have to gain in productivity and reduce errors during their execution, and the best way to face this challenge is to automate a big part of their processes.
Whilst, their organization has changed, the time when an organization alone was able to deliver a complete added value to the customer is over. Nowadays multiple organizations (internally or externally) have to collaborate (share ideas, documents, structured information and action plans) to constitute a chain of added values.
Information Technology has brought extraordinary benefits through electronic message solutions and internet communication, but SMEs need more. They need to collaborate inside or outside their entity through structured processes.
What are their processes?
Typically, we can subdivide the processes of an organization into three domains:
- The product realization domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the realization of the product (e.g.: selling, product specification, product design, product manufacturing, product delivery).
Generally, all the manufacturing processes are already broadly automated through ERP systems. In this area, organizations especially need to improve the upstream (e.g.: success stories, collect customer needs, proposals, launching of new product) and downstream processes (e.g.: customer support) that are not covered by the ERP systems.
- The Management processes domain includes all the processes that contribute towards the strategy, quality policy, goals definition, budget definition, communication and hiring. Obviously, automating these activities doesn't present an obvious added value as they are singular intellectual tasks with the exception of the hiring and department budget submission processes. For big SMEs, new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandate that companies implement improved internal controls. Automating processes for internal control validation, audits, issues submission, preventive and corrective actions ensure that the strict defined processes are followed.
- The support processes domain includes all the processes that play a role in human resources management (e.g.: training), purchasing, information system management, accounting and quality control. With the exception of raw materials purchasing and accounting domains, these processes are poorly automated.
The following list gives just a few examples of processes which are poorly automated:
- Quality control: customer claims, non conformity, preventive and corrective actions, audits
- Human resources: CV submission, arrival of new employee, internal employee movement, training requests, holiday requests
- Finance and purchasing: expense validation, extra production purchasing requests
- IT: incident submission, application improvement requests, purchasing requests
How could they automate these processes?
They face to 3 solutions:
Firstly: implement standard software.
It is impossible to find one standard software that covers the entire target processes; they could try to implement for each area a standard product, for instance a CRM for sales and support, a HR management software for Human resources, etc. In this case, they should have a spaghetti of disparate applications too big for the needs, difficult to adapt and integrate in the Information System and, at the end, very expensive.
Secondly: implement a specific development integrated in their intranet
Generally, because they don't have the resources internally, they have to buy a specific development from local integrator. It should be a PHP or ASP development or a Lotus Domino development.
They have the great advantage to obtain an application that fits perfectly their original needs but almost impossible to evolve (extend) without expensive costs. Generally, they automate one or 2 processes but have many difficulties to automate 10 or 20 processes.
Thirdly: implement a workflow solution
In this case, the solution varies from a specific development that uses internally a workflow system (for instance Domino.Workflow) to a simple document workflow (for instance a workflow that describe the routing of document, for instance based on SharePoint Portal) or a Human Workflow product as VDoc Process.
The first implementation is quite identical to the specific development solution.
The second one, based in a single document workflow, brings limited added value. This ensures that each document type (generally a Word form or an excel form) follows the pre-defined route, and this also permits managers to track who and when people act in the process. But because the information is non-structured (document MS office), it is very difficult to adapt the route in function of datas (e.g.: have an expert depending of the nature of the purchase) or to create accurate direction dash boards (for instance, for a support processes, we know that the demand follows the procedure we defined, but we can't know the tendency for a particular product).
The third one is assuredly the best solution if people in place (i.e.: internal or external functional experts associated with very limited IT management resources) can ensure the success of the projects.
To be precise, automating at the end 10 processes (for instance: 3 in the quality management area, 2 in the sales or marketing area, 2 in the design area, 2 in the financial or purchasing area, 1 in the support area) don't have to exceed 3 months delay involving 5 functional experts during 1 day for each, 1 full time IT manager and 10 days for a developer.
In conclusion
SMEs share the same challenges than big ones: improve quality, reduce cycle, improve productivity but they have limited means: small IT team, limited competencies in development (even their traditional IT partners witch are generally focused on implementing infrastructure as messaging system lack development or project management skills) and low budget.
They need packaged processes but highly adapted incorporated in a collaboration platform.
Moreover, some departments of big accounts such as quality departments share the same concern as SMEs.
Our success (600 customers and 450 000 users) confirms that this diagnostic is true : our product (VDoc Process) stands out from others BPM solutions by its capability to be used by non computer scientist to design, adapt and automate processes without programming. The development effort is limited to connecting the processes to the back office.
zCore Business Solutions uses VDoc Easy Site to manage its Web Site
zCore Business Solutions, a US VDoc Partner, uses now VDoc Easy Site to manage its Web Site.
http://www.zcorebusiness.com
http://www.zcorebusiness.com
Become a VDoc Partner
With more than 600 customers and a 100% Indirect Sales Strategy, VDoc Software is your best choice to enrich your portfolio in BPM and collaborative areas.
Get in Action - enter the Collaborative & BPM market (IT Fastest growing market) by joining forces with VDoc Software, a dominant industry player and fill out our VDoc Partner Program Request form to receive information on strategic partnerships with VDoc Software.
VDoc Partner Program Request
Get in Action - enter the Collaborative & BPM market (IT Fastest growing market) by joining forces with VDoc Software, a dominant industry player and fill out our VDoc Partner Program Request form to receive information on strategic partnerships with VDoc Software.
VDoc Partner Program Request
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
