A complex project having many tasks and sub-tasks, many phases, and many workers will often require an evaluation of completion of the tasks and sub-tasks at several times during the project’s duration. Initially and throughout the duration, suitability of the technical and inter-personal characteristics of the workers, managers, and teams should also be evaluated. What is needed is a system that allows a user to specify a type of report, to specify one or more classes of information within this type of report, to specify a time interval, to specify one or more projects, and to receive the status and/or comparisons of performance for the specified projects.
This invention is a system for managing a project that includes multiple tasks and a plurality of workers. Input information includes characterizations based upon a human model, a team model, and a product model. Periodic reports, such as one or more of a monthly report, a task plan report, a schedule report, a budget report, and a risk management report, are generated and made available for display or further analysis or collection into a customized report template. An extensible database allows searching for information based upon context and content. Seven different types of project risks are addressed, including non-availability of required skill mix of workers. The system can be configured to exchange data and results with corresponding portions of similar project analyses, and to provide user-specific access to specified information.
A searchable skill set module lists a name of each worker employed by the company and/or employed by one or more companies that contract services for the company, and a list of skills possessed by each such worker. When the system receives a description of a skill set that is needed for a project, the skill set module is queried. The name and relevant skill(s) possessed by each worker that has at least one skill set provided in the received skill set list is displayed in a visually perceptible format.
Provisions are provided for customizing and linking, where feasible, a subset of reports and accompanying illustrations for a particular user, and for adding or deleting other reports as needed. This allows a user to focus on the 15 reports of immediate concern and to avoid sorting through reports and related information that is not of concern.
Implementation of this separate-storage option would allow most or all users who have review access to a document to write, edit, and otherwise modify the original version, by storing the modified version only in the user’s own memory space. Where a user who does not have at least review-access to a report explicitly requests that report, the system optionally informs this user of the lack of review-access and recommends that the user contact the system administrator. The system optionally stores preceding versions of a present report for the preceding N periods for historical purposes. The comparative analysis includes an ability to retrieve and reformat numerical data for a contemplated comparison.
The system also provides a lexicon for user-defined labels/referents for an illustration or a section of text, where two or more users may refer to the illustration or the section of text by different, but corresponding, names.
This work was done by David A. Maluf, Chen-Jung Hsu, Hemil N. Patel, Jairon C. Moh Hashim, and Khai Peter B. Tran of Ames Research Center.
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