Software Review 181
If architects are truly better designers than managers, will this software help them be more efficient? Steve Cotterell looks it over.
Architects are, said Roger Wu - a director of projects with John McAslan and Partners, better designers than they are managers. If that’s true then anything that can be provided in the way of help must surely be welcome. PH-Media’s PROJECTminder was designed to provide that sort of help. It was developed four years ago by a couple of software people with connections in the architectural world. They identified a gap in the market for a project management-cumprofessional services automation package developed specifically for architects. Originally marketed as ‘TIMEminder’ it proved a success and is now used by more than 280 companies, including 18 eighteen of the top 100 British architectural practices with up to 300 users in each company.
Whilst many of PH-Media’s clients are architects, following market research and subsequent development and customisation of the software, PROJECTminder is now being successfully marketed to engineers, management consultancies, IT consultancies and marketing agencies.
The software is Web-based and is only available as a hosted service. It uses Ajax technology to refresh just those screen areas that change rather than refreshing the whole screen, which speeds up the application. It’s entirely browser-based and you can sit at any machine and run PROJECTminder, leaving no trace of your activity behind (apart from the usual browser history records and the like). The system had been designed to be used by SMEs of up to 300 staff. The software is tailorable to use industry-specific terms (for example, project managers’ ‘Tasks’ are architects’ ‘Workstages’) and PH-Media tailors it before it’s delivered to the client. Different niche industries have different practices and the system is tailored to suit the people using it so that, for example, architects see different opening screens to engineers. The software is also designed to be used by different people within the same organisation – architects, resource managers, project managers and financial people are all catered for. There are also customisations and configurations that the client can carry out. As part of the system implementation PH-media will assist new clients with the data import from their current systems. PROJECTminder has a dedicated customer support team of six people (out of a total staff of 22) and free telephone support is included in the software licence contract. Security is group-based with the group rights controlling what its members can see and do.
Logging in with your user name and password takes you to your Client Home Page, which can be used to display company news. Links to other system pages are contained in a bar across the screen. By default, these are: Home, My Work, Contacts, Projects, Timesheets, Expenses, Invoices, Reports, Admin and Help.
A click on the ‘Projects’ link displays a list of all of your projects with the data in columns. At the head of each column is a sort / filter control - all columns throughout the application use the same system - and above that is a free text search tool.
Clicking on a project’s name opens the home screen for that project, containing additional navigation options including: Fee Allocation, Work Structure, Gantt, Resources, Expense Forecast and Invoice Rules, Items and History.
New projects can be set up before winning the contract so that the business development costs and time can be logged against it and the expenditure reviewed at a later date. They can be created from scratch, from a template or from an imported MS Project MPP file. You can use an old project as a template or you can construct a set of specific templates.
Start from scratch and you're shown the ‘Project Summary’ screen containing a set of blank fields in which you can enter the basic project information, details of your project team and project contacts. Custom fields can be added to the Project Summary screen and also the Contacts and Users screens. By adding custom fields to the Contacts screen you can turn it into a limited CRM system. Adding custom fields to the Users database can turn it into a limited HR system.
A report ‘Quicklaunch’ bar on the Project Summary screen (and on other screens throughout the system) enables you to produce a selection of reports on the featured project. The report is displayed in a pop-up screen. PROJECTminder utilises MS Reporting Services and all reports can be exported to XML, CSV, TIFF, PDF, HTML and Excel formats. In addition to the reporting functions, data from any visible table can be exported to a CSV file and can then be immediately displayed in an Excel spreadsheet, in which it can be manipulated. Projects can also be exported to an MS Project MPX file.
The job is actually planned via the ‘Work Structure’ screen, where you enter the stages and tasks, moving them up and down the list and inand out-denting them until your plan’s right. Anything you can do on the Work Structure screen, you can do on the Gantt, including entering new tasks and indenting and out-denting them.
When the tasks are displayed on the Gantt, a right-click on the Gantt bar opens a dialogue in which you can enter additional information about the task, such as editing the start and end dates, progress details, constraints and resources assigned. Predecessors are entered in the spreadsheet table beside the Gantt but don’t appear on the chart. You can drag and drop the Gantt bars to change the task dates. The critical path is neither calculated nor shown. Only finish to start dependencies are utilised and no lags can be entered. All other conditions have to be entered by using constraints.
A task can be noted as ‘speculative’ which can then be used to report on jobs that are just connected with bidding for work.
At the bottom of a project’s Gantt, you can show a histogram of any team member’s involvement in the displayed work - including their work from other sources - showing their total loading and if they have been over-assigned work.
Using the resource screen, you can display the names of all the people in your project team and the details of the tasks that you’ve assigned them to on a histogram. You can open a window containing your resource budget and actual figures and, by clicking and dragging on the histogram, increase and decrease the time people are allocated to the tasks, watching the effect of the changes on your forecast figures, making it possible to do what-if experimentation with your resourcing. Using the ‘Fee Allocation’ screen, a percentage of the total expected fee for the project can be allocated to each stage of the project, both as a percentage and as a cash figure and a budget for each stage is set, thus setting targets. The expected profit is calculated. Once the resources have been allocated, the expected cost of these is calculated and appears on the other half of the screen, showing whether the plan falls within budget.
The system features a holiday booking, approval and tracking system and holidays appear on the resource screen. If you try to assign someone to a task when they have a holiday booked, the system won’t let you.
When planning the project, you can plan for expenses, such as consultancy service fees or the cost of obtaining planning permission, and so on. Using the ‘Expense Forecast’ screen, you enter the details of the expense, the dates, etc, and tie it to a task and/or milestone. Management consultants who use this system use it to plan the use of associates who are due to submit their invoices at particular stages in the project.
Time is logged to projects via the timesheet system. Selecting the ‘Timesheet’ link, you choose which tasks from which projects you want to log time against. Projects can be listed by name and by code and a ‘Quickfind’ tool helps you locate one project among, maybe, hundreds. You can add a note to any entry to supply more detail and an icon indicates that this has been done.
Non-project time (sick, administration, etc.) can also be logged.
Admin section
In the Admin section, you can set rules to control, among other things, the number of hours per day someone must log. You can fix it so that only those people assigned to a project can log time against it and this can be extended to task level. You can also close a task to prevent more time being logged against it. You can start each new week with an empty timesheet or, if your timesheets are repetitive, you can copy the projects and tasks from one week to the next.
Timesheets are submitted for approval (the approvers are set in the Admin area - every user has an approver).
When clicking on the My Work link, you’re shown a Gantt-style chart detailing the tasks you’re assigned to - ‘My Workspace’. There’s also a ‘My Approvals’ link which lists the timesheets, expense claims and holiday requests awaiting your attention.
Approvers can be allowed to edit timesheets. Rejected timesheets go back to their originators for re-submission. You can add a note to a rejected timesheet to explain your reason for doing so.
From the My Approvals screen, you can issue emails to people, for instance asking them to get up to date with their timesheet submissions. On the My Workspace Gantt, if you hover the cursor over a Gantt bar, a note appears, telling you how complete the task is, how much of your time (what percentage) is allocated to it and how much time you’ve already logged to it. You can have monthly, weekly or daily views of the chart. Overdue tasks are shown in red.
You can also switch the display to a histogram view which, on a daily basis, shows you how much of your time is assigned to each task. I found the colours on this screen a little confusing, with the weekends being marked in such a way that, at first glance, they appear to be days with work allocated to them.
When project managers display the My Workspace screen, they also see a list of their projects with each name in the list being a link to that project.
Expense sheets operate in a similar way to timesheets. You log expenses against projects and tasks. From this screen you can print out an expense claim sheet, attach the receipts and submit it for approval and payment with the details being logged against the projects and tasks. These have to be submitted for approval but auto-approval can be set.
Purchase invoices can be entered against projects via the ‘Purchase Invoice Entry’ screen so that these costs are also logged against their respective projects.
A link to Sage Line 50 and Quickbooks exists so that details can be passed to these accounting packages without having to be re-keyed. An API has been developed which will be able to connect to any other system via Web Services and XML technology.
Reports can be produced showing the time, expenses and purchase invoices logged against projects.
Most projects involve the issue of invoices at specific points - dates or milestones or billing by the hour. You can create a set of ‘Invoice Rules’ at the beginning of the project to control how much is invoiced, and when. Such a rule might read: ‘Bill £5263.00 on 1st November 2007. VAT = 17.5%. Repeat every 1 month 19 times.’ This covers, for example, a retainer.
Every month you hit the ‘Run Billing’ button and the system compares all of the time and costs logged in that month against the rules, creating the appropriate invoice entries. All of the un-issued invoice entries are listed on the ‘Invoice Items’ screen from where you control the actual issue of the invoices and print them straight from the system - or they can be sent by email. I was particularly impressed with this excellent system.
Rate cards are set up in the Admin section of the application to control the charges made for various staff under different circumstances. When setting up a project, you specify which rate card to use. The Contact system is a database in which you can record details of your clients, contacts and suppliers. Against the name of a company you can list your contacts in that company and also list the projects that you've done for that client.
Reports
There are 33 standard reports built into the system in addition to the various lists and screens already mentioned, all of which can be printed and these probably cover most of the average user’s requirements. However, Microsoft Report Builder is also incorporated into the application and this Web-based tool can be used to create any additional tabular, matrix and graphic reports that are needed. The building of a report starts with the dragging and dropping of the required fields on to the blank report. Data can then be sorted, grouped filtered and formatted as you want. The graphics available include pie, line, bar and doughnut (like a pie with a hole in the middle!) charts. Once created, reports can be saved and made available to all users who can then run them for themselves and (if appropriate) can be made to appear in the single project drop-down list.
Of particular note is the useful Resource Forecast report which shows what all staff are individually going to be working on in the forthcoming period both in summary and broken down by projects and tasks. The image of this report can be condensed to fit the screen, or expanded to examine a particular area and it can be searched for a free text entry. So, will PROJECTminder help architects be better managers? If it’s used as intended, the answer has to be a resounding Yes!
Right to reply
Whilst this excellent review clearly demonstrates the benefits of PROJECTminder to architects, we feel we should point out the business benefits brought to our other target vertical markets. Our software is dedicated to helping professional services organisations become more successful through improving and simplifying the way that projects are secured, costed, resourced, run and invoiced. These improvements have proven to increase profitability and productivity. The recent sale to a 200-man international consultancy is testament to the development of PROJECTminder to provide solutions to the key business issues faced by each of our specialist vertical markets. Unlike many software companies, product development at PH-media is driven by direct customer feedback and product utilisation statistics; thus providing specific solutions to the day-to-day issues face by our clients. All development and new releases, regardless of the version, are included within the monthly fee.
The ethos of taking time to listen, to our prospects and clients alike, disseminates throughout all processes at PH-media; from the first consultative meeting with one of our business development consultants through to the day-to-day communications with a dedicated customer support account manager at hand to resolve all client queries.
Stephen Penfold
Operations Director
PH-media Ltd
What does it cost?
A one-off initial charge of £200 per user covers data take-on, system implementation and two days’ training from a specialist implementation consultant. Additional training days are available. The monthly fee thereafter is £20 per user, which covers support and upgrades.
