P2ware Planner Advantages

 

The P2ware Planner Suite - is a suite of highly effective and flexible tools for managing projects, programmes and portfolios. The suite includes the following software products:

• P2ware Planner Standard
• P2ware Planner Professional
• P2ware Planner Developer
• P2ware Planner Server
• P2ware Planner Viewer

Why the P2ware Planner Suite?

P2ware Planner allows you to focus on products instead of activities, to fully exploit the Product-Based Planning technique. Much of a project’s success depends on its definition. To define a project with P2ware Planner, you won’t need a mass of whiteboards, flipcharts and reams of paper.

P2ware Planner is probably the most advanced tool supporting effective project brainstorming, allowing you to record results easily, thereby increasing your productivity and reducing the time necessary to define and plan a project properly.

You can identify project products and immediately record all significant information in a structured way. You can simultaneously create and record Product Breakdown Structure, Product Descriptions, Product Flow Diagram, Activities, Resources required, identified Risks and Issues, and many more of the key project management artifacts.

P2ware Planner allows to build a logical framework for a plan based on the defined products and the order in which they should be made available. Changing an activity to get a product doesn’t usually change the plan’s logic. Thus, you can create plans many times faster, and easily change them as you proceed.

P2ware Planner Suite consists of applications suitable for project, programme and portfolio management offices as well as for a project coordinator, project manager, team leader or project management novice.

Why the Product-Based Planning Technique?

When planning your project, programme or portfolio, you should be focused on either:

• A single project output
• An outcome, resulting from the changes made by exploiting the products of a single project, or multiple projects managed as a programme or portfolio
• The benefits resulting from the outcome

The same product can often be obtained in different ways, e.g. bought ‘off the shelf’, developed in-house or contracted to third parties. Therefore, when you start planning a project, instead of the activities necessary to get the products, it is better to think about what the project is to deliver (the Project Product), and what other products will be necessary (the project’s products) for that.  This means that first of all you should define the Project Product and the project’s other products. Activities can be considered later, for example, to take into consideration available capacities and imposed constraints.

Product-Based Planning consist of four steps:

• Writing the Project Product Description
• Creating the Product Breakdown Structure
• Writing the project’s products  descriptions
• Creating the Product Flow Diagram

Perhaps the most important feature of the Product-based Planning Technique is that once you have defined the Product Flow Diagram, the Activity Network is defined automatically. This makes planning much easier – often ten times faster!

Identifying and Describing Products

Project managers often find it difficult to identify products and describe them adequately at the same time. P2ware Planner is designed to support brainstorming sessions during which products, groups, external products or a final product can be identified and added to a plan, as well as described simultaneously. It takes only 2-3 clicks to add a new product or to add something to the description of a previously identified product.

The type of product can be easily changed from a simple product to a group or an external product. It is sufficient to select the product or group, click the right mouse button and select the required type from the pop-up menu.

At anytime you can add new products or groups, connect or disconnect, and arrange them automatically. Also a comment can be added to the PBS or PFD diagrams as a free item, or attached to the selected product. To do so, click the right mouse button outside any visible product and select the required action from the pop-up menu.

Creating a Product Flow Diagram (PFD)

Instead of trying to define Activities and create a Gantt Chart, now you need to arrange the Final Product and other products in a suitable order in which they can be created or delivered.  With P2ware Planner this can be done more easily and quickly than with any other planning tool. If you add a new product to the PFD, it can be immediately described and will be automatically added to the PBS.

Creating Activity Networks

Based on the PFD, P2ware Planner automatically creates an Activity Network, assuming that each product has to be created or delivered as a result of an activity called ‘Product X Creation’.

In P2ware Planner the Activity Network is presented in a standard form, as below.

Gantt Chart and other Views

Don’t be surprised when you click on the Gantt Chart icon, because P2ware Planner creates the initial Gantt Chart for you, by assuming that each activity has a default duration. So, now you need to go through and amend activity names and define their proper durations – but P2ware Planner has given you a massive headstart, saving you huge amounts of time, as experienced planners will instantly recognise.

Many other views are available with one click.

Optional Views

PBS	PFD	Products	Activities
Gantt Chart	Activity Network	External Activities	Resources
Risk Log/Register	Issue Log/Register	Quality Log/Register	Daily Log
Work Week	Calendars	Work Packages	Checkpoint Reports
Snapshots	Cost Items	Time Sheets	Schedule
Cost Chart	Activity Buffer	Resource Load	Reports
Documents	Properties

 

Large Systems for PMOs

P2ware Planner Suite can be used to create large systems for PMOs for managing projects, programmes and portfolios.

P2ware Planner Server Professional provides a powerful core system designed for direct data entry and workflow for both project specialists and staff who are working on projects but are not involved in planning or management. The Suite can be adapted to the specific needs of the organization, and can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook® / TeamWise® / Lotus Notes®, with Microsoft SharePoint® and with major ERP systems