TenForce Execution is a web based collaboration application to follow up project and operational work. It brings consolidation and visibility to ongoing work, activities planned and closed. As such it replaces the diverse set of spreadsheets, word documents, emails, project plans, meeting minutes, lists and tracking databases of all kinds.
The management challenge
The management of information for project and operational work is very labour intensive and error prone. In addition the data is often distributed in spreadsheets, MS Word documents, project plans, email meeting minutes, ... This makes the tracking information difficult to access and results into a big effort to have a consolidated and comprehensive view.
Spreadsheets
help you to manage actions, issues, risks, tasks, requests, ... However they are single user and most of the time you need a lot of different sheets.
MS Word documents
compile a copy of information previously held in spreadsheets, minutes, emails for status reporting, steering committees, team meetings, …
Project plans
show tasks to be executed with their start dates, due dates, milestones and dependencies. They lead a life of their own. Often tasks in project plans are too high level to be distributed in a team. Or conversely, plans tend to explode and become overly detailed.
Emails
to assign and follow up work are far from ideal. Nobody really wants to browse through the sent emails to track assignments.
Meeting minutes
for workshops, steering committees, design meetings, status meetings, … contain a mixture of text, decisions, issues and actions. Typically we make our own notes if we want to remember and make sure things move forward.
Task tracking data resources
like local databases, isolated tracking tools are used to follow up tasks, bugs or change requests. One trick pony’s that shift the problem.
Project Management
Through its Pragmatic Project Management approach, TenForce Execution is the essential tool to manage your projects. Project information on status, progress and problems is immediately available from any viewpoint, being the project, the portfolio, the team, the individual, the plan, ... Through the MS Project integration you can leverage MS Project expertise in a no-nonsense way. Reports and indicators bring clarity without any effort.
Project management is a set of tools and techniques to organize work within an agreed timeframe. To achieve a successful project with all of its dynamic dependencies, you need an organization with a methodology, a set of tools and techniques.
1. Define the project
2. Manage the plan
3. Manage scope
4. Manage budget
5. Manage risks
6. Manage issues and actions
Tools like MS Project support project definition and planning but fall short when managing the day to day activities. TenForce Execution moves beyond planning and makes sure your ideas get implemented.
Operational Management
TenForce Execution brings central visibility to operational activities previously hidden in spreadsheet and emails. In a global 24/7 company everybody needs to know what to do, any time. Make sure that assignments are listed and distributed. Collect issues, remarks and questions from any corner of the company. Track all this information centrally and make it visible through automatic alerts, reports and dashboards.
A wide range of activities characterize the daily operations. Today managers live by processes, procedures, systems, checks, quality programs and audits to guarantee reliable operations. These generate an abundance of work, activities, actions, incidents, changes, tasks, … Typical areas are:
- Detailed activities initiated by orders from an ERP system.
- Daily Meetings & Log Books.
- Incidents, accidents, complaints and issues.
- Certification Programs (ISO, OSHA, TS, …)
- Audits (safety and security, legal, corporate).
- Projects
- Ideas, continuous improvement
TenForce allows organizations to manage area specific information while at the same time making sure that things get done.
Every single employee in the organization knows what to do and receives instructions from one single source.
Benefits
Higher visibility
- Single point of work for the individual team member. The view can be customized through filters.
- Actions are pushed to team members.
- Online and always up to date metrics.
More efficiency
- The automation of administrative tasks reduces overhead effort
- Once created information can be accessed multiple times by different parties involved.
- Continuous monitoring of team workload, performance and plans is made possible so that adequate responses to problems can be defined promptly.
Increased speed
- Actions, issues, risks, incidents, accidents,... are immediately accessible for everybody.
- Best practices are captured in templates that get instantiated when needed.
- Alerts focus the attention on exception conditions.
- Bottlenecks are removed because work can flow freely through the organization.
Higher quality
- No data redundancy because TenForce Execution manages the links between meetings, risks, issues, actions, audits, findings, …
- While using TenForce Execution the organization builds up the material required for audits without overhead.
Reported benefits
Our customers report following business benefits when managing projects with TenForce Execution project workspaces:
- Increase operational, project and portfolio visibility
- Align activities with business strategy
- Consistently increase project success rate
- Deliver consistent and measurable success
- Connect team members in a collaborative environment
- Deliver more and better with the same people
A modular design around the workspaces
Work is managed in workspaces. Workspaces can be set up for projects, process, teams; basically for anything that requires collaboration. Workspaces allow distribution and follow-up of planned work, detailed operational management, support for best practices, configuration of company and/or team specific workflows, etc.
Around this simple and basic concept other modules and features can be activated:
Time sheets
Enter your regular time sheets based on the work in your to-do list, without overhead. See time spent on work, budget versus actual.
Portfolio Management
Have a unique and uniform view to decide on new project requests. Manage portfolios on how they contribute to the strategic company objectives. Have a uniform view on all projects and take well informed decisions.
Performance Management
Performance indicators, scorecards, KPI, CSF’s are used by management to get early warning signals on when things start to go wrong.
Return on Investment
Our extensive and intense collaboration with our customers allowed capturing the parameters that drive the ROI.
Where to use it
TenForce Execution supports, among others, the following activities:
Project Management
- Project Management based on Prince2, PMBOK or your methodology
- SCRUM and agile development
- Portfolio management
- Timesheet
IT
- IT Service Management: Management of error reports, change requests and incidents.
- IT Project Management: Project planning (through MS Project integration), project execution and follow up, time registration, action/issue/risk management and status reporting.
- IT Quality assurance and audit: Management of checklists for CMMi compliancy.
Improvement activities
- Quality Assurance
- Quality assurance - Registration of defects/non conformities and follow up of corrective actions.
- Manage cost reduction initiatives.
Specific processes
- Product customizations in engineering
- Design and engineering projects
- Management and follow up of activities in an operational environment.
- General management: Alignment of activities with regards to the balanced scorecard.
- Project Management: Risk, issue, action and decision management.
- Regular meetings and activity follow up in complex and challenging operational environments
Features
The basic features
- Integrated view on all activities.
- 100% web based.
- Attractive, intuitive and user friendly interface .
- Work can be organized in workspaces and lists. Domains can correspond to projects, processes or teams. Lists are the mechanisms through which work is being managed.
- Track actions, issues, tasks, objectives, projects, portfolio's, requests, questions, remarks, checks, audits, risks, change requests, bugs, ...
- Bulk update feature for fast updating of related items.
- Short cut menus to perform actions on items in lists.
- Templates to reapply the same standard approach.
- Scheduling: link tasks and schedule them automatically.
- Workflows: accept the application default or configure your own.
- Very advanced filter mechanisms to track you own and others activities.
- Automated meeting minutes management.
More advanced features
- Advanced and detailed search.
- Integrated capacity management.
- Integrated timesheet registration.
- User authorization management.
- Full audit trailing.
See what's going on
- Online dashboards.
- Online reports with drill down.
- Integrated report builder.
- Seamless integration with MS Excel for fast and easy reporting.
- Alerts and notifications online and in your mailbox.
Integration
- Bi-directional MS Project integration.
- MS Outlook integration: automatic processing of email.
Advanced customizations
- C# scripting.
- Documented Rest and Soap API.
- Drag and drop page or form configuration.
- Archiving.
New features - The most relevant changes in TenForce Execution - winter 2009
Excel templates for smart lists
Excel templates are now stored as database items. The templates can now be flagged as ‘keep as private’.
Time sheet report
Can now be restricted to an organization the registering person belongs to. There is a possibility to upload (and share) excel templates. The default template delivered with the system will already show a number of reporting facilities using pivot tables.
Indicator root cause
An Excel template that can be uploaded. It will be used to print indicator root cause reports, through Excel.
The project list
Now has a column picker and a additional filter. The project item detail page can be customized.
The meeting detail page
Can now be customized using drag & drop, for the page components.
SCRUM
- The burndown graph now has 3 lines: Available hours, Available hours * velocity, Actual hours.
- Actual velocity (calculated)
- Dashboards
Rest API
TenForce is preparing the API to be called from other languages using Rest. This will complement the currently used SOAP mechanism.
Technology
- All major browsers supported: IE, FF, Safari
- MS SQL or Oracle database
- Hosted or installed at your premises.
Implementation approach
TenForce professional services assist you in two domains:
- Getting started in your organization: document the requirements, model and implement a solution, validate with the users, support for the go-live.
- Training: Typically a train-the-trainer approach for end-users and/or administrators. Customized training material is made available that includes your workflow and specific setup.