Tracking & Governance
I was wondering how other people on here, or there colleagues, track the progress of the projects which they are overseeing?
The problem i have at the moment is that, aside from the usual generic 'off the shelf' programs which can be purchased (MS Project etc), i have no sufficient all encompassing mechanism to ...
a) Monitor, track and be able to display to any given person, at any given time, the status of a project which i, or my colleagues may be leading on
b) Have an holistic overview of the status of several or more projects ongoing within a certain area
In my opinion, which is backed up with a fair bit of research within the company i work within, successful governance, and the ability to be able to track the progress of a project, is one of the key issues in the delivery rates of projects.
I feel that i have established the key areas which a tracker would ideally have, however it may be that, aside from building a new platform (which financial constraints sway against!), or creating a 'dumbed down' version within excel, it may not be possible..?
Has anyone any comments as to how they track projects within the area they cover?
Many Thanks
Tom
Reply to Tracking and Governance
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 13 October, 2008 - 11:24.
Hi Tom,
I work for an orgnisation called Instantis, we provide end-to-end web software to track, manage and report on Lean, Six Sigma and other continous improvement projects, we have been doing this for a number of years and as you have identified this has enabled many organisation to improve project delivery as well as many other excellent capabilities.
Infact one of our customers recently calculated that due to our software they were able to deliver 2 additional project per BB per year directly linked to the imporved efficiency of managing their projects, they have about 10 BBs and of course the benefits that they measure in this one area where enormous.
Please feel free to contact me and I would be happy to discuss our solution further and demonstrate our software.
Regards,
Tim.
tim@instantis.com
Tracking Solutions
There are a lot of tracking solutions on the market for Six Sigma. Instantis, PowerSteering, and iSolutions/iNexus provide a very comprehensive solution; however it is expensive and requires heavy IT support to implement and maintain. Depending on the size of your deployment and complexity of your needs, can be worth the price. Most of the time you are paying for features you will never use.
There are two lower cost, easier to implement solutions. TRACtion by MoreSteam.com is very cost effective solution that has good reporting and project visibility features. The other is Quality Companion, which has good project tools and some visibilily features using their dashboard.
I hope this helps and good luck.