ELMA Projects +

ELMA Projects + - a project management system. The complex means intended for planning and control of project implementation, management of the available resources (temporary, financial, human) and the organizations of interaction between project participants.

Basic functions of the application help to solve problems:

• Management of project implementation terms;
• Organization of a common information space for the project;
• Communications between project participants;
• Budget management of the project;
• Informing project participants on the course of its accomplishment;
• Project risk management.

Scheduling of the project

The schedule ELMA is compatible to the schedule MS Project.

It is possible to create and publish calendar the project by two methods:

• Manually. Directly in the ELMA system to create necessary tasks, to define hierarchy, the sequences, to configure communications between tasks, to define contractors, etc.

• Import from the MS Project file. A system will try "guess" on surnames of contractors on each of tasks for automatic purpose of these tasks.

As a result the project plan turns out. It is possible to present it in the form of the chart Ganta.

Chart Ganta (2014)

Externally the schedule is similar to the plan from MS Project: same set of attributes of tasks, hierarchy, etc. It is not accidental – the plan of ELMA and the plan of MS Project are compatible. It is possible to load the schedule from MS Project, and then at any time the project plan can be unloaded in the MS Project file again (for example, for multipage printing).

A system allows adjustment of the plan and its repeated loading without loss of the statuses of tasks.

Organization of a common information space

The project manager receives on behalf of the ELMA application Projects + Wednesday in which all tools, necessary for project management, are in one place.

On one page of the application information is displayed:

• General information about the project. Participant list, main dates, status.
• Schedule and project tasks. In the list it is visually visible what tasks are carried out at present what were already executed what are overdue at what accomplishment term comes to an end. Having clicked by the name of a task, it is possible to browse it.
• Comments of participants and discussion of works. The tape of messages containing correspondence on the project.
• Project budget. Information on income and expenses of the project and to the financial result constructed on their basis.
• Documentation. Contains the list of the project documentation: it can be various agreements, acts, technical specifications, etc. The general base of documents has differentiations of access rights that only the necessary project participants had an opportunity to browse them.
• Project risks. Potential problems of the project, way of their prevention, minimization and elimination. It is important to hold constantly in the head project risks that in case of their emergence completely ready to be effective to minimize and eliminate effects.

All information provided on the page of the project is displayed in the form of portlets – small information windows – structure which order and arrangement can be configured randomly. For obtaining more detailed information on this or that question (for example, on the budget), it is enough to click on portlet heading. In this case the separate page containing information on a question in full opens.

Communications in the project

A system provides convenient mechanisms for building of communications between project participants. At the same time special attention is paid to questions of efficiency of information exchange in combination with the high level of security of potentially confidential information.

For effective implementation of project tasks it is required to organize communications between participants. In the ELMA system the mechanism of communications operates. Users can send each other messages on the project and communicate in tapes of messages. They can attach documents and files to messages.

Messages are displayed on a special portlet in a project card. It is possible to comment on them. All business correspondence on the project remains in one place.

If the project participant has a subject for discussions – he just throws the message into a tape of messages. All necessary users of a system instantly will see it who should – will comment. At this comment all necessary users will also see. It is very similar to communication in Facebook – also conveniently, but only messages are seen by exclusively necessary staff of the organization – from public eyes correspondence is reliably hidden

Control of the project budget

The ELMA application Projects + allows to conduct itemized control of receipts and payments within the project. For each project a set of articles and positions forms, planned targets form, and according to the actual documents there is accounting of the actual digits.

The actual values of income and expense are made out as documents in the ELMA system. They can be sent to approval, acquaintance or on route. Thus, the project budget represents not faceless digits – at any time it is possible to browse not only cash flow, but also to learn what employees are involved in these processes and are responsible for them. Different options of display of budget information are provided.

In implementation projects implementation of process of the request for assignment by project articles and a tie of this process on accounting is possible. Receipt of funds in the project budget can be also executed within business process. Thus, entering of information in the project budget of the ELMA system is executed automatically. For the project companies it allows to accelerate settlings with contractors, to control them and by that to accelerate the general course of the project. It gives to the project manager the chance at any moment to look at actual costs and the current payments on approval and payment by the project.

Access restriction to the commercial information

The ELMA application Projects + allows to differentiate access to information resources of the project (general information on the project, documents, budget information). Access to resources will be got only by those participants who should have it for accomplishment of the direct duties within the project.

Within project implementation, its participants can work with enormous volumes of the most different information. This information can be trade or other secret; at the chaotic organization of project works information leak, its undesirable disclosure can take place.

A system provides flexible configurations of access, providing to users all necessary for execution of the duties and limiting in access to all to information excessive in every sense.

Risk management

Project risks are stored in the uniform list on a project card – it always is in full view of the manager. During creation the certain priority emphasizing its importance and potential danger is exposed to each risk.

Project risks

Projects + the convenient risk management tool of the project has the ELMA appendix.

Project risks can be resolved when in the ELMA application Projects + are compared to them some actions or actions eliminating or minimizing effect of influence of risk on project deliverables.

2015: ELMA Projects + 3.8

On November 22, 2015 the ELMA company announced about a release of the ELMA application Projects + as a part of version 3.8 of software of ELMA.

Screenshot of software window (2015)

Within the version of ELMA 3.8 the application Projects + received a number of significant changes. Project budgets underwent the most global change:

• the budgeting model of projects is completely processed. The budget became the independent working tool with a user-friendly interface. All work with the budget became completely transparent.
• each budget can have the hierarchy of articles as close as possible to realities of project activity of the company. The structure of budgets became more applicable for the large organizations.
• the hierarchy of articles allows to keep track of each value of a receipt/expense – it is possible to see date of adding of value, planned/actual values, a deviation, etc.

Complete understanding of a situation in the project gives the diagram – the chart of the budget, she helps to see the broad picture of the project budget on the periods, to estimate the possible risks able to arise in the project (for example, because of budget deficit).

The chart of the budget is completely interactive: if to guide the mice cursor at one of points on the chart, the window with information on the planned/actual values of income and/or an expense for the selected date will appear. If necessary any line on the diagram can be hidden or made sorting of records.

It is very simple to read such chart: horizontally on the diagram time, vertically – the budget is postponed (above the diagram of receipt, below – expenses). The diagram at the same time displays planned values and actual. Automatically the balance is considered.

The reality presented in the form of the actual income and expenditure introduces the amendments in the diagram. Thus, on the simple and clear chart it is always possible to understand - what money and when are spent from the budget what money is expected and when, and the main thing - to understand a difference between income and expenses in each specific period of time.

One more opportunity – creation of the budget report for a certain time frame. In it planned and actual values can be at the same time displayed and also the possibility of their separate display is available.

The project budget can be exported to the Excel file. It allows to work with the budget in a system and beyond its limits.

As well as in case of the schedule of the project, the plan of the budget can be also approved. It allows to control not only the actual values of an income/expenses, but to set the firm plan at which each contractor will bear responsibility for the amounts and terms.

Except project budgets, the homepage of the section Projects underwent change

• now on it it is possible to fix any project on which work is conducted now. It means that upon transition to this section the page of the selected project will be automatically displayed. It is convenient in case of users who have not so many projects – at correctly built project management such in the company there will be an absolute majority.
• in a system there was a portlet "All tasks of the project" where all project tasks to which the specific user has right of access are displayed.
• the history of movements of the user in the project - a system remembers projects which pages the user visited recently.

In this version it is possible to customize systems stricter control of labor costs – the setup mechanisms allowing to set tough limits of the reporting are created: it is possible to limit submission due date of labor costs backdating. Earlier the user who gave labor costs could make it in any day for any date. Now it is possible to limit terms, having permitted the user to give labor costs only for active week.

One more setup will help to limit the daily volume of labor costs, i.e., for example, in one day the user cannot give more than 10 hours of labor costs. The combination of similar restrictions will help to discipline employees, to make mechanisms of the reporting is more transparent. In particular, information on the budget of labor costs displayed in a project card will purchase big accuracy – data on the hours which remained in the budget are close to the truth and there will be no situation when in an hour three employees enter the data on labor costs which are not submitted earlier for the last month.

The set of small completions in functionality of scheduling is executed:

• setup of columns of the left part of the chart Ganta became more convenient
• the schedule display mode is added – in addition to the chart Ganta the Mindmap mode is available.

2016: ELMA Projects + 3.9

In This application version ELMA Projects + the possibility of fast editing the project plan in the Mindmap mode is implemented. Thanks to what, on a form of editing the project plan the HSW (hierarchical structure of works) tab appeared. Now for each task it is possible to add quickly a subtask, to highlight a task with color, to delete it and to perform other actions.