Product Update - Copper Enterprise 2007
Situation: You're looking at new ways to manage resources across the enterprise... I often like to ask software vendors "what's unique about your product?". Yesterday I asked Ben Prendergast that question about the new version of Cooper Project. His response, "...in our new enterprise product we've - for the first time - rethought the entire Project Management process, and our resourcing structure is unique to our product and we're confident it is going to provide new insights for our customers, not to mention some natural improvements to the collaboration process (via some real resource visibility). "When I asked for more detail, here's what he came back with. Hi Dave, We haven't released anything as yet. However here's an overview:
Effectively, we've restructured our resource tables so that we have a resource table, a task table, and even a day table (yes, every day for 12 years has its own ID, which dramatically reduces db overheads).
Firstly you set the availability of a resource, either via the availability wizard (e.g. This resource is available on weekdays for 8 hours a day) or via the users calendar (setting/tweaking hours available for each day).
Then create your project/tasks. Our new drag/drop timeline allows you to set start/end dates for each task/project, as well as set the estimated 'effort' required. So in terms of estimating, the new timeline allows for a really intuitive process both for set-up and ongoing tweaks.
Then you can allocate your resources. When allocating a resource to a task, you can only add hours when they are available for that resource, so we get around the cumbersome and inaccurate 'percentage utilization' that other tools use for resourcing.
When hours are allocated, they are shown in the calendar (so the user/manager sees an accurate breakdown of what is required for any day) and in the timeline as 'committed' hours (a white line intersecting the task block).
Then, as each resource undertakes the work this 'actual' time is recorded for timesheets/billing, and is displayed in the timeline as a darker line. This means that during the project you can see what was committed vs what was ACTUALLY completed, and can tweak/refine the timeline as the project progresses.
At first we were unsure about how much of an impact this would have on both the overheads in keeping data up to date, and the visibility of project progress, however having used the new structure for a few months we now have a MUCH better project management flow (aptly, we use Copper to develop Copper). People are going to love this new structure.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
______________________________________
Ben Prendergast
Element Software, Inc.
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