Every year I spend days in project management software exhibition halls, so you’ll forgive me I hope for harping on what has become a bit of a cliché in our industry. You know the one I’m talking about – Enterprise Project Management Software. It must be the hangover from the ERP implementation craze from years ago because it seems that every software system available to mankind today is “Enterprise”-something. Vendors seem to all be either…
Years ago I wrote an article about how project management required tracking not just planning. It was a time when many organizations used the terms project management and project planning synonymously. In fact many of what we referred to at the time as project management software systems were, in fact Critical Path Methodology calculators which were all about the planned schedule and very little about the actual progress. It’s almost 15 years later but it…
It’s what everyone wants but almost no one gets: Enterprise-wide resource capacity planning. Just what makes getting this accomplished so difficult? I’m sure I hear it at least once a week (during a trade show, twice an hour), what organizations are asking of their project management system boils down to enterprise-wide resource capacity planning. Now I know that everyone has a little of the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome where you think…
If you’re wondering why posts have been a bit slow on EPMGuidance, it’s because of the sheer volume of content that is being reviewed to be posted. You’ll be happy to know that starting in September we are queuing a much more frequent series of posts that will include articles, updates of white papers and articles, videos and other content that we hope will be of use to those interested in Enterprise Timesheets and Enterprise…
Is There a Pilot Onboard? is my latest article on Microsoft’s TechNet. The article talks about the benefits and challenges of software pilot programs. You can see other articles in the From the Trenches column I’ve been writing for years on the TechNet site.
With the advent of TimeControl version 6.9, Administrators can now configure TimeControl to have timesheets other than a 7 day week. Of course exports from TimeControl could already be of different intervals. It has been common for years to have a weekly integration with the project management system but a bi-weekly link to payroll. Timesheets could now be 14 days long (bi-weekly) or bi-monthly or monthly or quarterly or custom length. But with all that…
HMS received a great letter recently from Sandoz, a world leading pharmaceutical firm. Six years ago, one of Sandoz’s divisions in Canada deployed TimeControl to help with R&D tax credit tracking. Marianne Raiche of Sandoz tells the story in this letter which you can read it for yourself at: www.timecontrol.com/why-timecontrol/testimonials/sandoz. A list of other testimonials is available on the new testimonial and case study area of the TimeControl website at: www.timecontrol.com/why-timecontrol/testimonials. We’ve got the best…
It’s been a busy time in the development department here at HMS since last summer. Last week we released TimeControl 6.9 which marks a major change in how TimeControl timesheets can be configured. Here are more details on the new and enhanced features available in this version: Variable Length Timesheet This is a major evolution in how timesheets are defined in TimeControl. Now, you can select from a number of different lengths of timesheet to…
TechNet has my latest “From the Trenches” article. Well, I say TechNet but in fact, Microsoft are hosting these articles on their main support.office.com site. The article is called “We sell holes, not drills” and talks about one of my favorite subjects; making sure we deliver the solution not just the tool. Is the tool delivered? So what? Is the problem fixed? Great. You can read the article on Microsoft’s Office.com.
Well, it was a long time coming but we’ve finally completed a major overhaul of HMS Software’s web environment. Our websites are among the oldest in the world. The company, HMS, has been around for 31 years and the original HMS Software website was established in the mid 1990’s just aver the release of the original Netscape browser. (remember Netscape?!) There’s a picture of the website from 1998 or so (thanks to the Wayback machine).…