Now that we have covered deliverables and work breakdown structures as the means to manage scope and define the work in Exact PSA, there are a few additional small features that a project manager will benefit from.

First, all project managers need to see the progress of deliverables and specific activities from work breakdown structure as the project is getting done.

To address this need, Exact PSA retains a link from a WBS line to an hour planning or material allocation request. This allows it to display f all estimated, planned and approved (actual) hours or each activity line so that the project manager can see what the current status is.

Moreover, such linking opens the road to creating of all of new reports (for example project schedules via Gantt charts).

Second, our interviews with the customers confirmed that project managers often run projects very similar to the those that have been completed already in their organization. In such cases, recreating a full set of same deliverables and defining almost the same activities is a tedious job.

To save the project manager’s time, Exact PSA allows him to copy deliverables and WBS from an existing project to a new one.

Third, on fixed price projects managers often want to invoice per deliverable, and filling out all details of a new invoicing term request each time can quickly become unhandy.

To save the project manager’s time, Exact PSA allows him to create an invoice for a deliverable directly from the list of all deliverables on the project.

All these small enhancements are a part of the release 249/404 that will become generally available in the 2nd quarter of 2012.

In the previous article we discussed the basics of managing scope using deliverables and looked at the simple project scenario. In that scenario a project manager used Exact PSA to create a set of deliverables to define the scope of his project to implement Synergy Enterprise at a customer site.

This allowed the project manager to see what needs to be delivered on the project; however, he is also interested in how much time and money it will take to deliver it. In Exact PSA he can define tasks (or, in other words, activities) that need to be carried out in order to build a certain deliverable.

Let’s take another look at our example. The project manager wants to add more implementation details to the deliverable Requirements analysis. He conjures the following list of activities, and enters them one by one:

What does he see after completing this exercise?

• that he has estimated that 36 hours (32 hours of consultancy and 4 hours of project management) are needed to complete Requirements analysis;
• that the cost and the sales price per hour for each activity are calculated according to the rate rules in Exact PSA;
• the total cost and the total sales price of the whole deliverable are clear to him.

After having done exactly the same for every deliverable in the project, he will arrive at a complete work breakdown structure (or simply WBS) for the project, that will:

• give him confidence that every single activity that needs to be done on the project is captured in the system and is linked to a correct deliverable (based on the scope that he has defined);
• provide him with the project schedule, where each deliverable and each activity is plotted against a time range;
• let him see the total cost and total sales price of the whole project (based on the applicable rates, but not including any personal rates);
• allow him to share this calculation with the sales in order to create a final calculation for the customer, or to validate the original quotation.

In essence, that means a firm grasp of all estimated work on the project and its financials — something that a project manager is responsible for.

There are two additional features of Exact PSA that make work breakdown structures particularly convenient:

1. It is possible to list not only activities for each deliverable, but also material, in case goods are procured and shipped to the customer. In our example (as shown in the previous article), a deliverable Hardware installation might include some equipment that will be billed to the customer together with installation hours.
2. It is possible to plan hours directly from a WBS line, and, starting from release 249/404 it is possible to allocate material in the same way.

And last, in the release 249/404 the project manager will be able to see directly from a WBS line what hour planning or material & expenses requests are linked to it, that will give him insight into progress of the project. We will review these grand possibilities in the next article of the series.

Managing project scope remains one of the most important responsibilities of  any project manager who works on a project of larger than trivial size. A successful project is a project that is completed on time and within budget; and completed means that the scope of the project is delivered to its stakeholders as expected.

To be sure that this goal is indeed achievable, a project manager needs to have absolute clarity on what is in the scope of the project, and especially, what is not. Failing to see the difference often results in projects falling prey to scope creep, that is, when requirements get added to the scope without modifications to schedule or budget.

There are multiple tools and techniques to define and manage scope; almost all of them are based on the divide and conquer principle. That is, the scope should be broken into individual, smaller deliverables. PRINCE2, for example, calls them products and specifies a dedicated product breakdown structure tool that is a part of overall project planning.

We have reviewed such scope management tools with our existing customers, and after adding a few modifications to make them easier to use, we introduced this project management best practice to Exact PSA.

In an nutshell, the sequence of steps that a project manager will take looks like this:

1) Once a project is created in Synergy Enterprise, the project manager will define the scope by entering one by one deliverables that will be built. Sometimes they are very easy to spot, like reports, or installations of equipment and software, or agreed milestones.

2) Sometimes deliverables are less tangible, like testing or integration, and need to be broken down further – into smaller deliverables. The rule of the thumb is that a project manager should stop when he can comfortably estimate the amount of work and material it will take to deliver the deliverable.

A resulting parent-child structure in Exact PSA will similar to this:

In this example, in a project to implement Synergy Enterprise, there is a main project deliverable — the overall outcome of the project. It is called Complete implementation and it’s lifespan is the same as the lifespan of the project.

This main deliverable is broken down into three other deliverables: Requirements analysis, Onsite implementation and Final testing & acceptance. Each of these deliverables has its own start time and start date, that will define the schedule of the project.

The project manager considered Onsite implementation to be still quite large, and split it into two more deliverables: Hardware installation and Software installation. He also decided to that work on this large deliverable should be managed via a child project, since different team members will be writing hours on it.

All this information is displayed in a single screen, so that the project manager to see the complete scope of the project in one glance. (Special columns like Item, WBS cost and revenue, and Margin we shall discuss in the next articles).

In release 248, to allow project managers to using deliverables to scope the project, the administrator should enable a central switch in the settings of Exact PSA. However, based on customer feedback, in release 249 we delegated this choice to project managers, since they know best when to use deliverables to manage scope and when not to.

Often, in small projects centered around realizing, approving and invoicing a few billable activities, there is little incentive for a project manager to actively manage scope. However, interviews with customers showed that many disciplined project managers use deliverables on all their projects, regardless of size, so that they have the scope very clearly defined and managed.

In the next article we will discuss how the project manager can define individual activities and tasks that are needed to build an actual deliverable., and how he can track their progress. Stay tuned!

We are happy to announce that as of today, Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 246 is generally available. This marks the end of the controlled release, which started in the beginning of July.

In this product update we have mainly focused on Professional Services Automation. Among others we have added the following improvements:

• Multiple improvements have been added to the existing hour and expense entry screen for consultants (video, release note)
• A full-fledged project manager role (video, release note)
• Rates and items enhancements for project controllers (video)
• Several improvements for administrators, such as 64-bit environment compliance

Moreover, we have added new features in Reporting services (release note)

• Possibility to share reports via the customer and reseller portal
• Retrieving information from many administrations separately with one report
• Linking multiple persons to a report irrespective of the assigned roles
• Identifying reports as web parts

We have also extended features in Mobile Synergy, based on feedback and suggestions from our customers. You can now view your own calendar and schedule appointments with your accounts and colleagues (release note).

As you know the iPhone app for Exact Synergy is already available and you can download it from the App Store. This app makes it possible for the users of iPhone and iPad to directly send emails, call customers and colleagues with a single finger tap while being on the go. Moreover, you can manage your schedule, but also view planning of your colleagues. Watch the video here to find out more.

For a full overview of all new functionalities, please refer to the Product Update News page and release notes for product update 246.

Should you have any questions regarding this product update, please contact Bert Siekmann (manager of product management) at bert.siekmann@exact.com.

As of this week, Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 246 is in controlled release. As usual, the release is now available for resellers and all controlled release customers that take part in it. This new product update is planned to be generally available in the end of July 2011.

Professional Services Automation
This product update focuses primarily on automation of professional services organizations, where we have added several new features to support project managers, consultants and project controllers in their daily work, such as:

• Additional improvements in the hour & expense entry screen for consultants (video);
• A new project manager license role that can create PSA projects, define budgets and project scopes, create work breakdown structures, find and plan people, approve their realized hours and invoice them to the customers via Exact Globe (video);
• Improvements to rates and items for project controllers and project managers, who will be able to, among others, define project, customer and personal rates with cost and sales prices in multiple currencies, and on top of that define multiple assortments of items. We have also increased the total amount of allowed rates. (video)
• Improvements for administrators such as:
  • 64-bit environment compliance;
  • Additional request types to be used by consultants;
  • Control over sections of the hour & expense entry screen.

Reporting services
Moreover, we have added new features in reporting to provide our customers with even better insight into enterprise data:

• Possibility to share reports via the customer and reseller portal
• Retrieving information from many administrations separately with one report
• Linking multiple persons to a report irrespective of the assigned roles
• Identifying reports as web parts

Mobile Synergy
Based on feedback and suggestions from our customers, we have also extended features in Mobile Synergy. You can now view your own calendar and schedule appointments with your accounts and colleagues.

Looking forward to your feedback on the new update!

If you work a lot with appointments or have set dates to follow up on your tasks, but you are facing a problem of being buried under your ever increasing workflow, we have a great tip for you to help you organize it!

Would you like to see in your workflow what you have to do today and not be reminded about what you have to do tomorrow till tomorrow? Watch our video to find out how to work with an end date, so you can start completing your to-do list and be able to go home at the end of the day knowing you’ve completed all your scheduled tasks.

Image credits: pmchamp.com

A flexible structure of billing rates is one of the key requirements to any system that automates work of a professional services company, where time is the main billable resource. This structure is particularly important for project controllers, who need to express tricky contract conditions with different billing rates for different customers on different projects.

On the one hand, project controllers require plenty of options to capture any imaginable combination of hour prices for a specific assignment. On the other, they expect simplicity of use. However, achieving this simplicity becomes increasingly challenging as the amount of rates to choose from grows.

The upcoming solution update of Exact PSA addresses these needs by increasing the amount of configurable rates and providing simple means to work with them.

The more rates the merrier

Starting from solution update 246/401, a rate is a pairing of both the sales price and the cost assigned to a combination of criteria such as a person, a project, a customer or an activity. All rates have a date range attached.

All rates are listed in the following order, starting from the most important:

• Project + person + activity;
• Project + person;
• Project + activity;
• Project + person + activity of the parent project (if applicable);
• Project + person of the parent project (if applicable);
• Project + activity of the parent project (if applicable);
• Customer + activity;
• Person + activity;
• Person;
• Activity.

With this setup, rates in Exact PSA fall into one of three categories: personal rates, customer rates and project rates. When the system needs to look up a specific rate to populate the sales price of a billable hour, it starts from the top of the list and progresses down until the first non-zero match is found. In case no rates have been defined in the system, the sales price and the cost of an item that represents an activity is used.

This hierarchy of rates is configured in Synergy Enterprise and obsoletes previously available both the external rates that provided only the sales price, and the internal rate that represented the cost of labor. During the upgrade process all existing rates will be copied into the new rate structure so that nothing disappears.

Not getting lost in all the abundance

Access to rates is carefully guarded by Exact PSA: project controllers can view and edit all rates, consultants can see none of them. Project managers are allowed to view all rates that apply to the projects they are directly responsible for, but cannot peek into rates of other projects.

Project managers and project controllers can get hold of rates by following one of two paths: either by looking at an individual  personal, customer or project card or by listing all personal, customer or project rates from a dedicated overview screen.

The new rates structure will become available to existing and new Exact PSA customers in June 2011.

Vintage gas tank image by Woodhouse74.

Full support of 64-bit Windows operating systems was a long-standing item on the list of requested features for our professional services automation (PSA) solution. Still we had to postpone it time after time because of other great and important features we wanted to deliver.

In the meantime some of our customers were getting increasingly upset about having to run background jobs on a dedicated 32-bit server locked somewhere in the basement, when the rest of their infrastructure has already been upgraded to 64-bits.

Well, no need for that anymore. Once the PSA solution update 246/401 (comprised of Synergy Enterprise 246 and Globe 401) becomes generally available this June, it will run smoothly in a 64-bit environment after an upgrade.

No need for that 32-bit server anymore either. However, some people might be very interested in it.

Initial investigation completed

We completed our inquiry into business challenges and needs, and gained good insight into service-related activities in today’s business. We clustered our findings into solution elements, checked them with our customers and internal experts and transformed into a concept of the new solution. We would once again like to thank all customers and business partners who took part in this phase and would like to remain in close contact in the coming months while we are working on the solution.

Decision to develop made

Exact already has a strong footprint in both wholesale trade and manufacturing segments where companies provide services in both local and international environments. Our findings during the initial investigation confirmed the need to develop a new service management solution.  The solution board approved of the project and development commenced. For us it is an iterative, build-rinse-refine process, during which we will, of course, keep you informed and involved.

First take: contract & configuration management

The first area of the new solution that we are covering is contract and configuration management — the starting point of all service activities. We want to offer both flexibility in setting up contracts and individual conditions & agreements, as well as convenient way to reuse contract templates to speed up work of service managers and sales personnel.

More details will follow in the upcoming updates. Stay tuned, and let us know if you have questions or comments.

If you look around almost any public space these days, your chances to spot an iPad are quite high. People play games on iPads, browse the web, tweet and send mails, and yes, make notes and to-do lists.

Now, you could do all of this before with your laptop or a netbook, but that is no longer cool enough, and the magic is that Apple is indeed replacing manual transmissions in our everyday computers with automatic ones. Apple is building computers for regular people, remember, and Apple is keen on making iPad’s user experience second to nothing.

But apart from that, it looks like the rest of the industry is struggling to discover what else can be done with an iPad in a completely new way. Will iPad be fully embraced by the enterprise? There are interesting examples already, but otherwise, to quote Deng Xiaoping, it is too early to tell.

The only guys who figured it out completely are the newspapers and magazines. It is clear to them that it is more fun to carry around an iPad than a stack of issues to read. And sky is the limit to what they can do with their content: the Economist is on iPad, Wired is, and so is the New Yorker. Rupert Murdoch claims that it is a game-changing device for his industry.

The question that we naturally ponder at Exact is whether iPads can change the game drastically for our solutions.

There are interesting applications already out there in the wilderness, ranging from secure document access to specific field service clients that we can take inspiration from, but is there more than that?

Before we start discussing individual solutions in the following articles, we want to turn the tables — what do you think? Will an iPad application make an Exact user fitter (for purpose)? Happier? More productive?

Photo by Nick Mokey.