Product Manager Networking and Satellite Communications (PdM NSC) required a capability to simplify understanding of Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) interdependencies, maintain configuration management and data integrity when obtaining updates from stakeholders, and facilitate use of IMSs as the data source for generating reports.

SimVentions’ analysts applied our program management expertise and implemented the Program Management and Planning (PMaP) tool to fulfill each of these requirements; PMaP’s capabilities include Dashboard, SlideMaP, External Data Exchange (EDX), and RiskMaP, all of which use an IMS as the data source. Dashboard provided the ability to customize program views and visualize task relationships; our analysts used the planned percent complete difference (i.e., difference between planned vs actual percent complete) to report areas of concern to government staff before projects became significantly off schedule. SlideMaP provided the ability to use tailorable templates to create slides and automatically generate milestone charts, execution status reports, and filtered lists. EDX provided the ability to automate the task of updating program data in IMSs and used MS Excel to capture updates for automatic data transfer into MS Project. The skill of SimVentions’ analysts in program management combined with PMaP’s capabilities contributed to improved execution, removed the requirement to manually generate schedule slides, provided data integrity, and enabled early identification of potential schedule delays.

Once PMaP was implemented, PdM NSC required a portfolio management capability to view activities across multiple schedules to anticipate potential resource conflicts and track the execution status of projects within the portfolio. To meet this requirement, SimVentions conceptualized a solution and collaborated with software developers to tailor our existing Roadmapping tool, Informedb Enterprise, to import Microsoft Project schedules. The capability delivered to PdM NSC was a web-based application that had the ability to search activities across multiple schedules while providing PMaP’s Dashboard functionality to perform schedule activity status tracking.