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Situation: You deal with highly repeatable processes and new components in most project cycles.
RPlan is a project management tool which is very popular in automotive manufacturing, with clients such as GM, Daimler, VW, AUDI, Porsche, BMW, Renault, Getrag-Ford, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and more. The tool is designed to address a variety of challenges common both project and product management. These days automotive projects involve a lot of IT and IT projects are often faced as product development efforts. So I thought it would be a good idea to speak with Actano's CEO, Thomas Salva to understand what makes their tool set special and why those differentiators are important in the IT space.Q. How is project management different in a product-focused environment? How do project and product management work together most effectively?
In a product-focused environment projects are not and can not be treated as a “unique endeavors,” but must follow standard processes to make the most of scarce resources. A defined development process, that comprehends the characteristics of the product, the organization that will execute the projects, and the program management processes and control points, is essential. RPlan provides standard structures and templates that provide the consistent and efficient basis for project planning, and allow the project manager to focus on the aspects of the product that make it unique to the market.
One major difference in product focused environment like automotive vehicle development is the need to coordinate component planning. In a "new" vehicle design there are components to be developed "from scratch", carryover from vehicles in production and components in various stages of development. The last of which is complicated to manage, due to their interdependence with the "new" components, often so-called lead vehicles are delayed or canceled entirely. This causes “Sturm und Drang”, i.e. the need to seek scheduling alternatives to still meet launch dates. RPlan supports this process with “what-if” scenarios and their ramifications.
A very high degree of collaboration is required between project and product management to insure that the corporate goals for part commonality, vehicle launch dates and costs are adhered to, while providing a successful product to the market. RPlan provides the global, web based platform to manage the complex schedule interdependencies via SynchroLinks (task/resource interlinking across projects and programs) combined with resource loading, leveling and costs.
Q. Most of RPlan’s clients are global. What are the top 3 things to be mindful of when working with large distributed teams? What can be automated? What needs to managed via human interaction?
Cultural differences, e.g. in terms of how concrete a schedule actually is. Differing priorities/goals between the global and regional organizations that must be harmonized if global PD is to function effectively and lastly language barriers, e.g. terminology must be uniform so that all partners truly have the same understanding for each English term, when it’s translated back into their native tongue.
Reports can be automated, typically there is a set of standard metrics that management requires weekly reports on (e.g. baseline budget $/Euros, effort and timeline vs. actuals). This is capability that RPlan provides out-of-the-box via integrated Crystal Reports.
Human interaction is required in resolving scheduling conflicts. Here RPlan provides multiple means of communicating a delay to the stakeholders, including a link directly to the schedules/tasks/resources involved and "what-if" capabilities to provide options to remedy the situation.
Q. What are the focus of project presentations in the automotive industry? What do they always include? Are they fairly standardized or very unique to the project that you are working on?
Project presentation for complex programs such as automotive development can vary widely, but general focus on either overall project status or the status of key project metrics. Communication of the project schedule is a critical need, as program team members are typically balancing resources across multiple projects. RPlan provides the capability to generate project timelines directly into Microsoft PowerPoint. Standard formats provide consistent communication, with the ability to annotate and draw focus to areas requiring attention.
Project managers also need the ability to dive into the detail supporting the overall status. The supporting information must be organized in such a way that the metrics supporting the key control points defined in the product development process are easily identifiable. RPlan provides the ability to manage all the information and to create presentation reports that integrate the key cost, schedule and resource metrics.
Q. RPlan has been very effective in the automotive industry, based on its strengths in collaboration, project information management, and bottom-up schedule management. How do you see those strengths being applied in the broader IT market?
Many of the same requirements carry-over to IT: complex interdependencies of modules and components in SW development, reuse of components across projects, and the need to adhere to standard processes and structures. Typically SW development is now also spread out globally. Several of our customers in automotive are now also using RPlan for their SW development activities (e.g. BMW)
Q. If you had to name one key differentiator for the RPlan toolset, what would it be? What makes it special? What does that mean to the organization and people using it?
Collaboration! RPlan's architecture, ease of use and flexibility make it ideal for complex, distributed and dynamic project environments where world-wide collaboration of all of the stakeholders is the key to achieving the project goals. Visibility and transparency of project information insure stakeholders always have access to current information, and are working to the same plan. Project team members are able to focus on accomplishing the tasks and objective they own, with a clear line of sight into tasks and issues that impact them. The RPlan product coupled with ACTANO's 20 years of experience in providing project management best practices will insure the customer’s organization reaps the ROI in the shortest time and the users experience a significant productivity gain and less migraines.
Posted on: November 16, 2009 09:10 AM |
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