More Planning Capabilities
For the last 10 years, Communigram has demonstrated how important it is to plan the 5 W's of Communication before worrying about time and money, as one invariably does when using traditional project planning tools such as Gantt charts. Nonetheless, it is true that once the Communigram of a project is finished, it is interesting to see when which deliverable will be elaborated (indeed, this is the 5th W!). For this reason, Communigram 3.5 now features time-oriented views directly within the tool, without any need of changing applications or even screens.
Gantt Chart
Once you have finished planning the deliverables (lines), responsibilities (dots) and client-supplier relationships (arrows) of your project, your Gantt chart is only the push of a button away! A Gantt chart appears next to your Communigram, allowing you to see when your deliverables are scheduled for elaboration. This Gantt chart is also available in myCommunigram, thus showing your colleagues the current schedule of the deliverables they are involved in - in all currently active projects of the enterprise.
Resource Load Histogram
In many organizations in which people work on multiple projects simultaneously, it is important to see how many hours a person is currently scheduled to work in order to detect overallocation. Communigram 3.5 not only shows the workload of people in a so-called resource load histogram, the bars of the histogram are color-coded by project and can be identified individually when clicking on them. You can also click on a time bar in the Gantt chart and immediately see which part of the histogram is affected (and vice versa). It is even possible to move a time (Gantt) bar and immediately see the effect on the resource load of the person.
Simulation Mode
What happens when the responsible of a deliverable sets a yellow traffic light? Should the project leader simply give her a few extra days, or is it necessary to shuffle resources around in order to keep deadlines? These and many other questions call for a "What If?" simulation mode.
Communigram 3.5 innovates by providing a simulation mode in which planners can play through several scenarios to optimize the project plan and then simply transform the simulation in the new project plan at the touch of a button. If the simulation does not solve the problem, it can simply be cancelled: no project data is changed.
Decentralized Planning via Input Requests
In order to ensure that the current Communigram includes all needed deliverables, including those that only became obvious while working on the project, every deliverable responsible has the possiblity to raise additional input requests and enter these into the Communigram via the myCommunigram interface. These input requests need to be coupled with upstream deliverables either
- by finding corresponding deliverables that already exist
- by adding new deliverables to the Communigram
Once these deliverables have been identified, it is possible to ask the supplier of the deliverable to confirm that she has indeed understood what deliverable is expected and that she will be able to provide it (contract principle).
Communigram = Communication and Collaboration Server
Collaboration between distributed teams has always been one of the main reasons for using Communigram. Indeed, Communigram not only provides typical collaboration capabilities such as sharing documents and exchanging messages. Much more importantly, Communigram integrates project planning into the collaboration platform and provides a methodology to organize the work between people.
Now, in 3.5, Communigram adds more collaboration possibilities such as:
- The responsible of a deliverable can send messages to participants to coordinate the work necessary to elaborate the deliverable in time
- Participants of a deliverable can exchange messages to elaborate the deliverable
- Participants of a deliverable can contact their "clients", i.e. the responsibles of the following deliverables, to inform them of the current progress of the deliverables they are waiting for and to provide access to preliminary results (small-scale simultaneous engineering, see BCE Methodology)
- Anybody who sees a traffic light in myCommunigram can react to it, e.g. to suggest a solution or offer help
- Planners can send out reminder messages (also via e-mail) directly via the server to ssk for status updates (traffic light)
- ... and many more
The Progress Curve: A Real-Time Management Dashboard
The BCE Methodology is proactive. For this reason, the information made available to managers via the Communigram system is also proactive.
The BCE Progress Curve
All deliverables in the Communigram have values associated with them depending on their importance and their relative difficulty and risk. Each time an important and difficult deliverable is acceptably accomplished, the project has therefore made a significant step forward. In Communigram, such information is automatically obtained as a by-product of using the methodology. We can therefore provide management dashboards that are fed with real-time data that reflects the true:
- current schedule (thanks to decentralized, living planning)
- current state of progress (thanks to automated customer-supplier relationships)
- A Progress Curve Diagram showing the current planned curve (green) and actual curve (blue) - click to show larger view
Stand-Alone Configuration
Communigram 3.5 features for the first time a configuration alternative that works entirely without the need of any other systems. This also opens the door for integration into systems such as ERP's by integrating this standalone system into a portal and leveraging existing IT architecture to provide additional functionality and ease of use.
Import and Export Functions
MS Excel Import and Export
If you have data in an existing application that you would like to use in Communigram, or if you would like to transfer data from Communigram into another application, this feature provides you with a universal format for semi-manual data exchange.
MS Project Import and Export
Project data from MS Project can be easily imported to Communigram, thus allowing your users to quickly transform their traditionally planned projects into communication-driven projects.
PDF Export
Exporting your Communigram to PDF has several advantages over printing:
- it gives you a file that you can send to anybody via e-Mail
- the result is better than printing: the output is vectorized (particularly important for printing arrows)
Full-featured universal Java API
Custom data integrations can be performed via the Communigram application programming interface (API) that runs on any Java application server.
Check out the all-new version 4.0!
Communigram is loaded with new features in version 4.0, and all are 100% user-driven! Read on to discover the latest improvements!