Using attend© in project management

In this article we are going to show something different with an application known as a "ticketing tracking system".

Maybe the history tells us that attend© is an incident management tool. But we cannot ignore the fact thatt with attend© we can use our imagination until limits never studied before.

A client told us, several years ago, about the need to manage internal developement projects to add new functionality to its SAP ERP. The alternative to solve this issue was Microsoft Project, the main tool intended for these purposes. We can find several benefits with MS-Project and the most important is that someone is behind the solution, in terms of technical support and continuity guarantee.

Our customer was lied managing their software factory with MS-Project during several months before they called us. We have deep know-how on MS-Project and other solutions such MS-Project Web Access. But the client estimated that with those solutions, the user that has to input his time accounting also has a lack of security, avoiding input errors. Using MS-Project Professional sharing the project files is not a good idea and the interface to put your activity there could cause to put the activity in other task easily. Also, there is not security to avoid activity data-entry if the project is finished. MS-Project Web Access (PWA) would try solve these issues with the Time Sheet but... if you have a lot of tasks in one ore different projects, introducing your activity there could you driving mad.

It is not our intention criticize MS-Project but our customers prefer safety and effectiveness while users introduce their progress in the projects.

So, wich alternative could I have to improve the tasks progress in our project management? We cannot use Excel (or MS-Access) interface due the difficult integration between them (who has tried to input time dedication with MS-Access, finding that we cannot correlate REAL WORK and DATE?).

A good interface to input the activity dedication has to minimize the data entry errors, showing to the user the only projects in wich he is assigned, the only tasks he has assigned, only current tasks (not finished) and with a greatful interface that give him affordable tools such diaries, tasks escalation and tasks transfer tools, managing hiss normal activity, always in communication with different staff levels.

attend© can provide a better user interface with input control to avoid this situations, giving visibility to diferent superuser roles and providing interaction between team components and also between teams.

It is important to talk about the different versions of attend©. Is the same attend© for all these purposes: tracking incidents or managing projects. Because its powerful parameterization system you can use attend© for different needs.