Managing Projects
In this tutorial we will go through the Manage project page. The Manage Project is the central workbench for the Coexsys Project Cloud.
Navigation
The Manage Projects is available under the Projects menu.
Topical Essay
Available to Project Managers and Administrators only, The manage project page enables complete PMI Standards based project management for project managers.
Using the manage project page, project managers can setup new projects, create and assign team members to project tasks, build work break down structure, setup stake holders, setup change control board for change management, maintain project documents repository and many other functions.
The manage project data grid is the main data table that will contain all your projects. This data table is information rich. Here you can see all necessary information and metrics about your projects. Next let’s go ahead and open a project.
Next, here you will see the complete step by step setup of a project.
You must setup a project in this specific order. First setup project shell, then stake holders, requirements, tasks, resources, risks, setup CCB, define project expenditure budget, upload documents and finally close the project when it’s ready.
Tab 1: The Project Tab
Setup your project shell in the first tab here. You can change the project status, enter project name, description and necessary information.
You can also decide whether to track this project by hours or by hours and costs. We are only covering the overview of the manage project page here. Therefore we will not be going into great details for each and every feature on the manage project page in this tutorial.
Please visit project cloud help guide for detail explanation about manage project features.
Tab 2: Stakeholders
The second step in the project setup check list is the stake holders tab. Every project has stake holders in Coexsys Project Cloud.
Click on the individual stake holder count link to launch the list of individual stake holders assigned under the group.
Here you can add, view or edit a stakeholder member to the group.
Tab 3: Requirements
Next step is to enter requirements for the project. There is no limit on number of requirements you can enter.
To add a new requirement, click the plus icon or pencil icon to view or edit an existing requirement.
In this requirement entry form, you can enter requirement details, its attributes, describe the detail narrative or topical essay and upload documents.
If these requirements need to be approved by stake holders, you can also track the approval process here.
Tab 4: Tasks
Next on the project setup process is to setup tasks. There is no maximum limit on number of tasks you can enter for a project.
Here you can define parent child like hierarchy of tasks, setup schedule and actual timelines, and attached requirements to tasks.
To add a task, click the plus icon, or pencil icon to view or edit a task.
Here you can control various task statuses depending on the project execution strategy. Enter task name, description, task dates and so on.
Tab 5: Resources
Next, you can assign requirement to the task. This will enable project managers for effective scope management of the project.
Note that you can create tasks only on approved requirements.
Next, if there are any change requests for the task, you can assign them here or these change requests will simply appear from the change management page.
You can also upload any relevant documents, artifacts, or any media file and upload here on this task.
once you are ready, you can simply either click save and add new task or save and close out of this page.
Note that at minimum, you must enter project, stake holders and tasks
Next, we will assign tasks to resources. Resource ownership are essential to track progress on a project.
To assign resources to task using the resource page , you can simply select the team, resources you want to assign and tasks you want to assign.
You can also determine the task specific role for a given resource.
In addition, you can also enter budgeted hours or estimated hours each resource will need to complete the task.
Tab 6: Assumptions
Next step in the project setup process, you can optionally enter project assumptions.
Assumptions in project management are set of base line controls that exists to kick start the project from the ground.
You can record your project assumptions in the assumptions tab if applicable.
Tab 7: Risks
Next step in the project setup process is to define risks. Every project has some sort of risks.
You can record and categorize variety of risks on this project cloud platform such as commercial risks, contained risks, high impact risks, open risks, Industrial risks , overall project risks, external risks and so on.
All defined risks are available under the data grid shown below.
To record a new risk, simply click the plus icon or click the pencil icon to edit or view existing risk.
Here you can define new risks, type of risks, business impact, severity and triggering events.
You can also document risk responses and assign risk ownership, manage risk approvals from stake holders.
Tab 8: Setup CCB
Next step involves setting up the Project CCB – change control board for your project.
Projects often go through changes while in execution phase. These changes must be vetted and approved before considering any changes in the scope baseline of the project.
The use case of CCB members is in Change management page. Once a change is initiated, all CCB members will be notified via email and will be required to approve or reject change requests.
Tab 9: Expenditure Budgeting
Next step is the Expenditure tab. Optionally use this tab to define to budget your various project related expenses.
Under the expenditure tab you can define various expenditure types and also enter the control amount for each expense category.
Note that this expenditure budgeting tab is only used to budget your non labor expenditures only.
Expense tracking cloud uses the expenditure budgets defined for a project when expense reports are submitted for the material purchased for a given project or task.
Note to set up expenditure budgets is optional and is useful only if your project involves material and supply purchases for your projects and expense reports are submitted using expenditure cloud.
Tab 10: Documents
Next tab is the document repository page. Here you can upload, organize and categorize various project documents.
Tab 11: Close Project
Finally, the last step in the project is the closing of the project.
The project close process is fully automated. The system will allow the closure of the project only if all tasks are closed and milestones are successfully completed.
In addition to setting up a project, here are few useful functions project managers can use to track and manage the progress of a project.
Project WBS
Located on the top right corner of the page, you can launch the project work break down structure.
The project work breakdown structure is the graphical and tree style presentation of project tasks.
Another useful feature is the sharing of Project Progress Report in real time.
Using the share icon, you can generate a Project link and distribute it to wider audience who may not have access to the project cloud platform.
Optionally, you can also secure this link by setting a one time password and send it to selected individuals only.
The Project progress report is a real time dashboard designed to provide comprehensive progress on the project to whomsoever it may concern.
On this multi purpose dashboard, you can see your current progress in terms of planned v/s actual completion, task statuses, Project manager details,
List your stakeholders and team members, access recent announcements and most recent activity trails.
Using this real time progress report, various teams, stake holders and project sponsors can get a clear picture on where does the project stand on the progress chart and whether the project is on track to complete on time and under budget or not.
Next, let’s go the main project data grid and check out few more useful functions available to project managers and administrators.
On the top right corner of this data grid, you will see few icons for each project on this grid.
The first icon allows you to download the complete project schedule into Excel format.
You can export this into Excel and use that in other project applications such as Microsoft Projects.
Here is the scheduled opened in the Microsoft Excel.
You can also use the same excel file to import projects into Microsoft Projects.
Next in the list is the icon view project summary.
This pop up will provide information about various project components.
You can also drill down to details by clicking each item on this table and navigate to its corresponding detail page.
Next is the launch details page. This page provides built in pivots to take a look at your projects from variety of dimensions.
These built in pivots are Task view, requirements view, resource view , change request view, stake holders view and risks view.
For example, the task view displays all tasks in tree style. Click on each task and all relevant reporting for the selected task will be rendered in the tab set region on the right side.
For example, you can see which team members are working on the task FSR analysis, who are the stake holders associated with this task, what are requirements and resources assigned to this task and so on.
Likewise, the resource view pivot will render the same information but from the resource point of view.
For example, under the resource view, you can see all stake holders , tasks, resources, requirements, risks, issues associated with the resource Denny Fortes.
The next icon is the project team contact list. This is a handy tool for a project manager to access team contacts and stake holder contacts whenever needed.
Herer you can see your team’s contact details as well as stake holder contact details.
Next icon contains the project Gantt chart.
You can generate the project gantt chart in the next page where each project Gantt chart section contains actual v/s planned hours.
The gantt chart arranges date wise planned v/s actual analysis for each task.
Project manager can analyze the planned v/s actual timeline for each task, using the Gantt Chart page.
You can also export this gantt chart page content to Microsoft Excel
The Gantt chart is the graphical presentation of the actuall vs planned view of your tasks and is for information purpose only.
Next icon is performance analytics tab. Here you can access four different types of analytics to run health check on your projects.
These performance analytics tabs are handy tool for project managers to pivot and analyze project performance data and get a real time check on how their projects are doing in terms of time and cost.
The first tab is the Project and Task analytics. Run this report to get high level progress summary of a project and all of its tasks.
The second tab is the Project Trend Analytics. Project trend analytics is useful in forecasting project trends. This report calculates real time % planned completion as per schedule dates and actual % completion to date.
The third tab is the team performance analytics. This report is useful in getting total assessment of your project team’s performance in real time. This report is useful to check whether these team members are on track on tasks they are assigned to.
The last tab is the performance benchmark analytics. This report generates various performance metrices and provides critical data points on project’s cost and time constraints.
To generate a particular analytic, simply enter parameter and preferences and hit Go button.
Next, click the expand all button , to see the full details of the project and tasks.
For project and task status tab, you can select whether to include task level reporting, include costs and whether to include red, yellow and green flagged tasks or not.
The data table output for the project and task status depends on the preference check boxes you check.
Next, to run Project trend analysis, select the appropriate parameters, such as whether to include task level reporting, select whether to display charts, and include costs or not.
once you are ready, click the Go button.
Here you will see key performance indicators for projects and down to task level.
Next, to run the team performance report, select whether to include labor costs, and progress level of tasks assigned to your team members.
When you are ready, simply click the Go button.
Note that all analytics report output can be exporte d into excel.
Finally, to run the performance benchmark report, select whether you want to generate performance analytics data down to task level or maintain at project level only.
Next, optionally select whether to include costs in the reporting.
Depending on these settings the report data will be generated.
The performance benchmark analytics report is highly chart driven. Select the chart type, and X and Y coordinates data points in drop down lists.
Finally decide which type of costs you want to include in the benchmark reporting. You can generate benchmark for labor costs or non labor costs. or both.