PS8 Features
System Requirements
- Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, or Windows XP operating system
- A Pentium 120 MHz or better
- 32 MB of memory (64 MB is preferable)
- 45 MB of available hard disk space
- A mouse or other pointing device
- Preferably 800 x 600 resolution display with 256 colors or greater
Powerful Multi-project Management
PS8 excels at managing multiple projects. PS8's architecture supports the planning of multiple projects using a common resource pool. You can manage projects as independent plans or form a master project that contains multiple projects with cross project dependencies.
PS8 provides powerful project summarization through the subproject feature, allowing you to link tasks in a higher-level project to all or selected portions of other projects. You can roll up lower-level project information to provide a wide range of views ranging from schedule-only, to resource summarization by Resource Breakdown structure, to detailed profiles of individual resource utilization in each subproject.
Multiple Views
PS8 provides a rich set of views for viewing project information. You can customize these views in terms of both format and content. PS8 allows you to save your customized views as layouts for consistent use throughout your organization.
The Project List view provides a control center for viewing all project level data for multiple projects in a configurable spreadsheet format. You can sort and filter this view to quickly browse through your project portfolios.
The Resource List view contains your resource pool information in a configurable spreadsheet format. You can organize your resources into a Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) outline to define organizations and skills for your resources. PS8 allows you to organize this view by any resource data field so that, for example, you can show resources by responsible manager and then by skill. Both the outline and data organizations support selectable expanding and collapsing and data summarization.
The Task List view provides a quick way to enter and view task information in a configurable spreadsheet format. You can organize your tasks in an outline format based on a Work Breakdown Structure. PS8 also allows you to organize your tasks by any task data fields. For example, you can show your tasks by department and by responsible manager. Both the outline and data organizations support selectable expanding and collapsing and data summarization.
The Gantt Chart view is the most widely used view in PS8. It consists of a configurable spreadsheet pane on the left with a Gantt Chart display on the right. This view can be organized by outline or data content just like the Task List view. PS8 provides significant control over the look of your Gantt Chart, including the selection of colors, symbols, fonts, and annotations. PS8's Gantt Chart view can display single projects or multiple projects in detailed or summary forms.
The Network Diagram View provides a flow diagram of the tasks in your project, providing clear insight into the relationships between your tasks. You can select from a variety of shapes and colors to tailor your network diagram based on task filters. For example, you can highlight high-risk tasks with a special border and color.
The Outline Tree view provides an organization-chart representation of your Work Breakdown Structure. PS8 allows you to select from a variety of organization chart layouts, and to define shapes and colors for your Outline Tree view based on task filters.
The Distribution Spreadsheet view is a three-pane spreadsheet that contains task, resource, and resource distribution data. This view provides detailed insight into resource assignments, baseline, and actual data on a task-by-task basis. This PS8 view allows you to enter and review detailed time-period-by-time-period resource assignment data-giving you full control over the data presented in each pane.
Resource Utilization View provides time-period-by-time-period totals for all time-distributed resource data in a two-pane spreadsheet. The left pane contains resource information, while the right pane presents time-distributed resource data. You have full control over the data presented in each pane. PS8 allows you to automatically search for resource overloads from this view to assess the need for resource leveling.
The Graph View presents bar chart and line graphs of all time-distributed project information, including user-defined fields and formulas. PS8 allows you to apply unique project, task, and resource filters to each item being graphed-giving you unmatched flexibility in extracting and graphing project information. For example, you can easily graph the funds allocated to each category in your project portfolios, showing the amounts spent on Capital, IT infrastructure, and Research & Development.
The Report View provides online access to all your PS8 reports. The Report View is not a print preview; instead, it provides a dynamic display of any selected report that is driven by current project data. If you change a data value, PS8 automatically regenerates the report view to reflect the change. The Report View provides a great design tool for building custom reports and viewing your reports during what-if analysis sessions.
You can split the PS8 window to display two simultaneous views. When
these views contain a time distribution, the views are automatically
synchronized so they jointly scroll and respond to column width adjustments.
PS8 provides automatic synchronization for the Gantt Chart, Distribution
Spreadsheet, Resource Utilization, and Graph views.
Security
PS8 provides two security models for protecting your sensitive project information: password-based security model and an enhanced Access Control List (ACL) security model.
Using the password-based security model, you have the ability to assign passwords to protect the project and resource files to enable read/write or read only access. You can also apply additional read/write protection to cost, baseline, and specific user-defined fields.
The enhanced ACL security model (requires additional PC-Admin component) provides access to your project information via individual and/or group level permissions within your organization. When a project is initiated, project managers can access their organizational structure to grant permissions to both organizations and individuals. Permissions control read/write access to project, and configuration data as well as visibility into cost data.
Management Insight
When you look at the current status of a project, did you ever wish that you could easily go back in time to check on previous status data to catch trends in project performance? PS8 provides you with just such insights. For example, you can view an interactive Project Status Chart in your browser that displays the current project schedule with major milestones. A "player control" lets you easily step back or forward through each status report period so that you can quickly see what you were told in the past and compare it to current status. Additionally, you can view web reports that show you a time history of key metrics that are important to gaining insights into project performance.
PS8's has been extended to include user-defined date-organized history fields and a flexible method for defining named history capture scenarios that describe which project metrics are to be stored into a history field. A project manager simply executes one of these scenarios to log the required metrics at each project update cycle. With the use of either reports and/or graphs this date-ordered history data can be viewed in the format you need.
Views to the Web
PS8 provides a powerful set of tools for posting project views to your web site. These tools automatically generate a set of web pages and graphics that let you browse through any view using a high-level thumbnail overview page. You can access any detailed view page from this overview. Additionally, PS8 generates automatic browsing controls to navigate within the detailed view pages. The PS8 Web Site Manager allows you to control these tools to perform manual or fully automatic updates of your project graphics.
Learning and Using PS8
PS8 is fully compatible with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, so you start in a familiar, comfortable environment. Wizards, Guides, Tip-of-the Day suggestions, and field-level help provide an easy-to-navigate path to project management success. PS8's multilevel undo/redo capability provides a safety net for backing out of mistakes or for trying different alternatives during what-if scenarios. A new Windows 2000 multi-pane Help system provides structured access to comprehensive online documentation. In addition, PS8 includes a new manual that teaches the fundamentals of PS8 project management via consistent, easy-to-follow examples.
Database Extensibility
You can add any number of custom fields to the basic PS8 relational database tables utilizing PS8's built-in database management capabilities. PS8 supports a wide variety of field types, including memo, rate, text, integer, yes/no, URL, decimal, decimal distributed, date, duration, cost, $, $ distributed, effort, effort distributed and history dated. Next, you can define any number of custom formulas to perform calculations on standard and custom data fields. PS8's formula capability is enhanced with a complete set of arithmetic, string, and date functions. You can easily reference and sum data from one PS8 table into another. For example, you can sum the revenue earned on tasks into a total earned revenue field in your project table. All PS8 formulas are sensitive to time-distributed data. This means they calculate values for each displayed time period in a spreadsheet, report, or graph based on the values in the respective time periods.
PS8's distributed fields provide a high level of power to tailor your PS8 application. When you define a distributed field of type $, effort, or decimal in a PS8 table, you are creating a time-distributed data storage element you can view as a spreadsheet within a spreadsheet cell. For example, if you define a $ distribute field at the project level called Budget, you can then enter time-period-by-time-period values for your budget. You can then combine the budget with your planned and actual costs in the graphs and reports to analyze budget performance. You can use these time-distributed user-defined fields with PS8's formulas to create a truly unique project management solution to fit your needs.
Portfolio Manager
PS8's Portfolio Manager provides a powerful tool for organizing your projects into portfolios. A portfolio consists of a portfolio name, a set of retrieval sources for accessing projects, and a project selection filter for each retrieval source. PS8 supports a variety of retrieval sources, including network directories, a database repository, or an FTP source on the Internet or Intranet. A single portfolio can have multiple retrieval sources. The Portfolio Manager includes a project selection filter that allows you to test any standard or custom project field to determine which projects meet the criteria for inclusion in a given portfolio. In addition, the Portfolio Manager provides additional settings for retrieving your projects - ability to retrieve projects in a read-only or write status, and the ability to consolidate your project information for summary reporting or resource utilization analysis. Using the PS8 Portfolio Manager you can access and report on all projects of a specific type, where the project data are retrieved from multiple sites and databases.
Web Site Manager
PS8's Web Site Manager provides a comprehensive set of tools for defining and automatically updating multiple project management web sites. The Web Site Manager uses your defined portfolios as the source of project information. PS8 allows you to define a set of web folders for each portfolio and, to select the PS8 reports or graphic views to include in each folder. You can accomplish a complete web site update automatically using the Web Site Manager to open portfolios, execute reports, and then automatically FTP transfer the updated web site to your web server. PS8 gives you extensive control over the look of your web site, including style selection, navigation methods, and template use. The Web Site Manager generates a complete error log during each update, and the automatic FTP transfers can be made contingent on an error-free update.
Gantt Viewer
PS8 includes a simple, yet powerful Java-based Gantt Viewer that you can seamlessly integrate into your project web site. PS8 gives you full control over the selection of tasks displayed in a particular view and the task fields displayed in the Gantt spreadsheet. For example, a particular team member might want to see just his assigned tasks. A department head might want a multi-project view of all tasks assigned to her organization. An executive might want to see a top level Gantt Chart of all projects in a portfolio with key milestones. The Gantt Viewer provides immediate access to these typical views without requiring the information users to learn how to use PS8.
Integrated Report Writer
PS8 has the most powerful report writer available in the project management market. Using the Report Writer, you can define a library of custom reports that can be free form, tabular, or time-distributed in format.
Each report can iterate through multiple levels of project data and contain different filters for each level. For example, you can easily design a single project summary report that starts with project level information, goes on to report the status of key milestones, then concludes with an exception report of tasks that are late or over budget.
The Report Writer provides access to the full PS8 formula calculation capability in any report cell, allowing you to create calculated values that are local to the reports (as opposed to existing in the PS8 tables). In addition, you can use PS8's formula capability to change a report comment based on selected data values or to change the HTML formatting used to display a data item. This allows you to automatically note or highlight exceptional entries in your reports.
The Report Writer can create reports for online viewing, printing, or HTML or XML output. PS8 allows you to control the fonts, colors, and row separation banding as well the filters and data organization of each report. You can have HTML reports update existing templates or generate complete HTML pages.
For HTML reports, the PS8 Report Writer can automatically generate an overview page that is linked to detail pages. For example, the overview page might contain a multi-project summary page where each project in the summary is linked to a detailed summary page for that project.
Project Templates
PS8 provides a simple but powerful set of tools for creating and using project templates. If you have a candidate set of tasks in a completed project that you want to use repeatedly as a template in new projects, you can use the tools to remove baselines and actual data, and then to scale selected tasks as appropriate. You can then save the tasks as a template project. PS8 allows you to access these template projects and automatically insert them in new projects as appropriate.
Resource Leveling
PS8 provides powerful resource leveling that you can use to keep your task plans viable, given your resource constraints. The PS8 leveling algorithm supports single- and multi-project leveling using time-phased resource availability profiles. The algorithm's goal is to create the shortest possible schedule, given the resource constraints.
If you have defined a Resource Breakdown Structure for your resources using the resource outlining capability, then you can have PS8 level resources by generic resource as well as by specific resource. For example, if you have a generic parent resource called Software Engineer in your outline with specific software engineers, Steve, Mary, and Ray under this parent, PS8 allows you to assign both the generic parent resource and the specific resources to tasks. You would use the generic Software Engineer resource for planning future projects. Later, you would replace this generic assignment with a specific resource, for example, Mary. During resource leveling, PS8 will ensure that the total availabilities for Software Engineers as well as the specific availabilities for Steve, Mary, and Ray are not exceeded by integrating the loading of specific and generic assignments during leveling.
PS8's resource leveling matches the schedule direction you have chosen. If you select forward scheduling mode, then PS8 moves conflicting tasks later to adjust for overloads. If you select reverse scheduling mode, where you are planning backward from a target end date, then tasks are moved earlier.
PS8 allows you to specify both project and task priorities for use in resource leveling. To create more realistic project plans, PS8 further allows you to define margins for each resource that determine what conditions constitute an overload. For example, you could set these margins at 120% for key resources. During resource leveling, a key resource would have to exceed 120% of availability to trigger a schedule change.
PS8 also provides comprehensive insights into all actions taken during resource leveling. Before leveling, PS8 takes a complete snapshot of your project. After leveling, you can view a leveling report in the Report View that tells you which resources contributed to schedule changes, which tasks were rescheduled and by how much. If you aren't pleased with the resource leveling results, you simply click Undo to return to your previous state and try a different alternative.
Cost Management
PS8 provides comprehensive cost management features, providing up to six different time-phased cost tables for each resource. You can pick a specific cost table when you make a resource assignment to a task, or you can specify a default table set at the project level.
PS8 allows you to perform macro-level cost inflation analysis by defining a set of inflation schedules and then assigning a specific schedule to your resources. When you activate inflation modeling, your project costs are automatically adjusted according to the schedules. When you deactivate inflation, your costs return to their base values.
If your company uses real fiscal calendars where the accounting months are not based on traditional calendar months, you will appreciate PS8's full fiscal calendar capability that ensures your project plans correlate with your accounting calendar.
If you deal in a multi-currency environment, PS8 automatically converts cost data between a base and an alternate currency, based upon your conversion factors.
Critical Path Project Management
PS8 provides comprehensive support of traditional Critical Path project management. The critical path is calculated and displayed after every schedule change, along with free float, total float, and negative float. Optionally, you can define three-point PERT estimates (Optimistic, Pessimistic, and Most Likely) for your task durations. Your project plan can be saved in up to five baselines for calculation of earned value and cost and schedule variances. Full time profiles are stored for all planned, actual, and baseline data providing you with an accurate history of what happened when. Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) are fully supported, including automatic WBS code generation from an outline or outline generation from a WBS code.
Critical Chain Project Management
PS8 provides the industry-first implementation of Critical Chain project management as an integrated capability within a single product. The Critical Chain approach was developed by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt based on his earlier work in production optimization, where he developed the Theory of Constraints (TOC). Dr. Goldratt extended the Theory of Constraints to project management and introduced it to the world in his business novel titled Critical Chain.
Critical Chain project management offers promising results to organizations faced with time-to-market delivery problems in highly competitive industries. It removes the safety factor from each task in a project, reduces the total safety, and then pools it in buffers that are strategically placed to protect the project due date. As a result, Critical Chain projects are shorter than traditional Critical Path projects.
Critical Chain is different from traditional Critical Path techniques, because all work in a Critical Chain project is scheduled as late as possible in the schedule. The buffers protect the due dates from task overruns that occur unpredictably during project implementation. A buffer automatically contracts when it is pushed by late-finishing tasks, until the buffer is absorbed.
Finally, Critical Chain project management requires a different approach to managing projects and scoring project performance. Critical Chain projects are managed according to a relay race analogy, as opposed to the traditional schedules employed in the Critical Path method. Once work on a task chain is started, the management focus is simply placed on making sure the work is done as fast as possible. Like a relay race, the following runner takes off as soon as the preceding runner is done, and not according to a published schedule. Project performance is determined simply by monitoring the utilization of the buffers. Resource contentions are resolved by analyzing the impact of allocation alternatives on buffer utilization.
With PS8, you have more control over how new candidate projects are scheduled in your project pipeline based upon the capacity of your key resources. In version 8.5, you can control this prioritized synchronization scheduling to include: fixing projects so that they will not move, specifying "hard" no later than project finish constraints, and specifying start no earlier constraints.
PS8 implements the full TOC Critical Chain methodologies defined by Dr. Goldratt, including reverse as-late-as-possible resource leveling, critical chain identification, automatic buffer calculation and insertion, and automatic buffer absorption during project execution. These features are seamlessly integrated into PS8, including full undo/redo support of all functions. PS8 also fully supports multi-project Critical Chain, including the prioritized synchronization of new projects against the current workload and the insertion of capacity buffers to protect project due dates from cross-project conflicts on key resources.
