Projects

The project management process includes options for planning and monitoring projects.

Setting up projects

Before starting to work on a project, determine the scope of the project. Translate the jobs required to manufacture a product or to render a service into task types within the project, i.e. phases or subprojects subdivided into activities. Then plan the work and register costs and revenues:

• Planning: In the project, specify the time the tasks will take, and then enter the date on which they have to be completed. Specify the order of the tasks and the relationships between the tasks: By creating a link, you could indicate, for instance, that the installation cannot start before production has finished. In addition, you can register the employees involved in a task.

  Use the Gantt chart tab to plan using a graph. A Gantt chart gives you a quick and easy insight into the progress and any bottlenecks in the planning. It also shows how a change within the project affects the planning. Any changes required can be made in the Gantt chart itself.

  You can assign milestones to a project to indicate important moments in a project. A milestone could mark the end of a phase, for example.

• Register costs and revenues: If you want to be able to monitor the project costs and revenue, enter hours, costs, and revenues in the high-level project structure. The more detail you add to the project structure, the more detailed the calculation will become. As order data become available, you link sales orders to the project and perform the project calculation based on the order information.

Monitoring projects

During the execution of the project, you monitor the planning and the financial progress. The progress check is performed on a continuous basis:

• The time planning is displayed in the Gantt chart, allowing you to check for any bottlenecks. The project planning and the order planning can be displayed side-by-side to see if they still match.
• Details about the financial planning are available in the project and the task data. To see the elements making up the hours or sums, check the project cost analysis. It will show all details relating to the linked orders.

Managing projects

If bottlenecks are detected or if accurate estimates are available, you can adjust the planning.

Once a task or entire project is completed, it is confirmed as complete. By assigning the 'Complete' status to a task, you ensure that the task can no longer be re-scheduled or changed.