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Jefferson's PMControl™
Process has many components that are integrated and disciplined to
complement and complete the seven steps. In addition, the components are
designed to integrate the sponsor’s needs and objectives.
A
Jefferson
core competency, organizational communication is an integral part of all
components. The components are:
Time Tracking -
The PMControl™ Time Tracking technique transcends beyond
the one-dimensional timesheet to a complete, yet simple, team
information capture. It was designed with a number of innovative
timesaving features, combining activity time tracking with the capture
of forecast information. Each assignment can therefore include actual
time, estimate to complete and percent complete. Assignments can also be
constrained by including a forecast start and finish date.
Team members can also
create steps to break down the task into more manageable pieces. They
can break down the required effort for each step and report at that
level of granularity. This provides the team member with his/her own
"To Do" list for each project assignment. Each step can also
include actual time, estimate to complete and percent complete.
Project
Accounting -
The PMControl™
Project Accounting technique provides project managers with the ability
to estimate capital costs and consumable budgets and time-phase them
across the life of the project. Because this ability is actually
integrated into our portfolio management solution, the organization
benefits from a single source of expense related project performance
information.
To facilitate the capture and tracking of incurred and/or committed
expenses, PMControl™ enables project
participants to enter expense information against appropriate accounting
charge codes. By centralizing project expense reporting, cost variances
are calculated, effectively reducing potential project risk and
contingency utilization.
As project participants
incur expenses, PMControl™ calculates the
remaining expense budget for each charge code and provides the
associated budget variance. This functionality enables an immediate
response capability to mitigate variance impact and to realign project
forecasts.
Issue,
Change and Risk - The PMControl™
issue, change and risk techniques provide a standard simplified
exception language to ensure that all team members participate in change
control, risk and issue management. Exceptions are centralized to ensure
that all unplanned events are identified and logged.
The PMControl™
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) serves as a valuable tracking framework,
aggregating all variances and exceptions to help project managers
effectively identify and react to unplanned events, alleviating their
burden of information capture and redefining their focus towards more
value-added effort in variance and exception management.
Managers can use a
standard process to review and approve work packages resulting from
exceptions and ultimately transfer them into the WBS from where all work
is centralized, distributed and controlled. In addition, this capability
augments communication with the PMO and Implementation Consultant
Project Management and other vendors completing the various assigned
Task Orders.
Project
Document Management - PMControl™
provides document lifecycle management, including document creation,
review and approvals. At any level in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS),
project managers and team members can create document folders and
various document types as required. Folders may be nested within folders
and documents may be positioned as sub-documents, creating a "document
hierarchy structure".
This structure provides
a logical, visual and intuitive document association environment, making
it easy to locate and retrieve pertinent information. All documents can
be attached at any level in the WBS, and will aggregate to the
associated project element and can be instantly viewed. Task Order
project documentation is available to the PMO, Implementation Consultant
Project Managers and other vendors integrating with the Jefferson
project team.
Project Collaboration -
Using its integrated collaborative
workflow technique, PMControl™ manages
and tracks the flow of all project work. Projects processes are
configured and automated into a fluid knowledge-enabled work stream that
is ubiquitously present and accessible throughout the project lifecycle.
The PMControl™
provides a structured and traceable communication process from request
to closing. All the latest information required for reaching an informed
decision accompanies each communication, providing a reference library
to support a formal workflow response by the recipient.
We can incorporate the
desired flow cycles, gates, typical phase reviews and approvals that
align with requirements. We can configure multiple outcome streams for
each cycle with infinite branching alternatives. Each process can be
accompanied by a checklist of activities to be performed by the manager
prior to continuing to the next cycle. In addition, this component can
augment communication with the PMO and Implementation Consultant Project
Management and other vendors completing the various assigned Task
Orders.
Reusable
Methods - By developing standard reusable lifecycle templates
and work products, job experts can provide managers with a shared plan
of action, constraints, links to important information, expected results
and standards of acceptability. Just as the software industry has
reached an unprecedented level of efficiency primarily due to the
introduction of reusable objects, similarly, project plans and
engagement models assembled from high quality, robust, reusable and
interoperable work-products, will play a defining role in the
competitiveness of a project-based business. Jefferson
has spent
considerable time with the Software Engineering Institute’s several
Capability Maturity Models (CMM) to integrate its model into
PMControl’s reusable project capability.
PMControl™
incorporates a framework for asset-based planning. Managers can publish
various methods. These published methods assist practitioners with
better work sequences and provide them with sample scope and quality
parameters.
Practitioners can also
include skill alignments through the assignment of resource placeholders
called "profiles". Templates include effort estimates, risk
mitigations, and all necessary documents to help practitioners create
more consistent, higher quality plans and avoid reinventing the wheel.
Project
Control - PMControl™ provides
project managers and team members with the ability to create
dependencies between assigned tasks. If a team member inserts a
predecessor dependency and the dates of that predecessor task are
modified, managers will send an e-mail notification of each change to
the task successor and the project manager.
Program managers can
also consolidate their CPM and/or task driven schedules for multiple
project resource scheduling and leveling. In a matrix organization that
shares common resource pools, task inter-dependencies amongst projects
are common. Often, a scheduled task lagging in one project will affect
another.
PMControl™
enables program managers to create task dependencies across multiple
projects. Once these dependencies have been established, program
managers can then export the tasks back to their scheduler to be
consolidated into a Master Project. Upon consolidation and re-leveling
of the data, PMControl™ allows managers to republish the data back to
individual projects. This capability augments communication with the PMO
and Implementation Consultant Project Management and other vendors
completing the various assigned Task Orders.
Resource
Leveling / Scheduling - This capability schedules resources
in a fashion with legacy desktop schedulers. It analyzes bottlenecks,
available slack, over allocated resources and due date constraints in an
iterative process that finds the best solution available across a
multi-project environment. PMControl’s Resource Scheduling solution
consistently returns shorter and more accurate schedules than most
primary project management methodologies.
PMControl™
uses Microsoft® Project 2000 and 2002, adding support for Microsoft’s
multi-project environment.
Capacity and Resource Planning -
PMControl™
maintains a complete model of an organization's capacity, affected
resources, skills inventory, total workload and resource demand. Its
capacity and resource planning optimizes skill usage and ensures that
all mission-critical resources are productively aligned with high
priority projects.
With complete and
accurate enterprise resource system availability, managers can plan
initiatives that consider all organizational resource constraints and
portfolio priorities. Beginning with an intuitive and flexible work
breakdown structure, managers can identify familiar elements such as
projects, deliverables, tasks and milestones, and plan initiatives that
reflect realistic resource capabilities and assignment durations.
Project Status-at-a-Glance -
PMControl™
structures an environment in which all resources are tasked from within
a central prioritized system. No other assignments can be considered.
This enables a dynamic decision process, whereby a list of new projects
can be evaluated, selected and prioritized. Active projects can be
continuously updated and revised and may be accelerated, rescued, killed
or de-prioritized.
Resources are
constantly reallocated to all remaining initiatives, aligning project
and organizational priorities with business strategies and needs.
Since
the Portfolio Status-at-a-Glance was not integrated from an external
application but rather designed as part of an entire solution, managers
and executives can leverage the complete repository of information to
configure and personalize their views, columns and bands.
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