| Home | News | In the News | |
Review |
|
Catch The Change Control Wave With Tenrox Incident Management
The Company Tenrox PSA is a product of Tenrox, home-based in Quebec, Canada. The suite contains Tenrox Time & Expense, Tenrox Expense Reporting, Tenrox Incident Management, Office Skill, Punch, Visual PM, and several other products. Most of the products that Tenrox offers are Web-based.
Tenrox PSA offered to let me install the whole package locally or use the demo to review the suite’s capabilities. I chose not to install, but instead to use the enclosed demo. The demo was easy, very informative, and had some super zippy animation and sounds. The company is proud of the animations they use, which are about a family of characters called the Martiks. The Martiks comically show you the stories of project reporting and timekeeping. This column does not allow room to write about all of the suite’s functions so I picked one on which to elaborate. My Pick Tenrox PSA offers Web-based solutions for time-consuming tasks such as timesheets, expense forms, and change management solutions. As I am a proponent of change control in most instances, I was most taken with the change management capabilities of the Tenrox Incident Management member. Change Management "Change doesn’t necessarily assure progress, but Progress implacably requires change"—Henry Steele Cornrnager A weak point in most projects is a reputed feeling that change management is the most under-planned and least-used portion. Even a well-planned and executed project will have change. Managing this one aspect of a project can be time consuming and expensive. Not managing change can lead to runaway scope, cost overruns, and, perhaps a failed or cancelled project. Naturally the larger the project, the larger the risks of not controlling and managing change. The Tenrox Incident Management member is a fully functional stand-alone application or it can be integrated with the other modules of Tenrox PSA. It has built-in bug reporting, problem reporting, change requests, feature tracking, and knowledge base functions. I found the product to be very interesting, so after browsing through the demo I installed the client portion of the Tenrox Incident Management module and even asked the vendor for the online passwords to get to the application via the Web. Tenrox Incident Management I found Tenrox Incident Management to be a versatile product with many different ways to configure the setup. One can set up the screens as a bug (defect) tracker, issue tracker, problem tracker, or use it as a help desk application. I was thrilled to see a product so configurable and easy to install. The install would allow me to use an MS Access, MS SQL Server, or an Oracle database. It has all of the Database Design Language (DDL) included to build the schema for all of the supported database infrastructures. It also had an install for MS Data Access Objects (DAO). The package comes out of the box with over 50 reports. The user can group and sort the summarized data by the date, issue, bug type, open or closed, assigned or postponed. The canned reports also issue pie charts or bar graphs. The export utility will export reports to HTML, MS Word, and MS excel, I found one cool option that would let the user add any customized reports to the application toolbar menu. This saves time, as you do not have to leave the program or minimize it to run a report. As the reports are generated using Crystal Reports®, you can easily modify or write new reports using the same tool. Another neat option is the ability to e-mail a report to anyone. This is a great feature if you are traveling and have to submit the defect report to your management. It will also fit the lives of those who are in diverse locations. Interfaces Tenrox Incident Management will interchange information with many other packages. Those using the bug tracker or change management aspect of the tool will appreciate the seamless connectivity with many MS products, such as Outlook, Project, Office, and even Visual Source Safe. It is great to see a change management package interface with the code or document repository such as that stored in MS Visual Source Safe. If you don’t want to use the out-of-the-box interfaces, you can install Visual PM®. Visual Pm will allow you to customize or enhance the database with your own front end. The application programmer’s interface will allow you to easily map data to feed other programs. I have had Lotus Notes® on several projects. The main problem was getting prepackaged or off-the-shelf products to interface with the Notes email. This product handled the problem right out of the box. Yes it does talk to project management software such as MS Project®. And, it will also interface with the new Windows 2000 User Database. Security Security is a concern for project management software and is most important to a change or Issue management tool. One definitely wants a tool with the flexibility to allow the administrator to configure a set of sophisticated security features. Tenrox Incident Management package includes the ability to define security roles and also has some preset profiles. These access control lists will allow the administrator to set an audit trail and secure a connection using Windows NT authentication. Other Features The change management module of this product hit home with me. As one of the important platforms of project management, I have seen this as a real weakness in most project plans and project management software alike. This product can be a real-timesaving and very structured add-on to any project that just monitors its Gantts or PERTs. Go to the Tenrox site at www.tenrox.com and see the other offerings. Tenrox allows you to log in to the demo database online to check any of its number of products. I am having a great time finding exciting products to review. Installing and reviewing the products burns some real-time very quickly; not to mention some cleanup on the old hard drive afterwards. In the next few articles, I will review some products that don’t necessarily manage the project, but serve to introduce some quality add-ons to your present project toolkit. Next time, I’ll look at a tool or two to assist you in keeping the requirements phase of your project manageable. Requirements, another of those important aspects of the project. Charlie’s Recap
VERY GOOD Summary Price: Single User; $US190 per user on 10 user pack. Pros: Many configuration as Issue/Bug/Problem tracking. Cons: Not a full PM Tool. Tenrox
Exhibit 1. Exhibit 2. |
|
This month we look at yet another twist on the project management and Internet-based world management arenas. As we plow along through our daily routines at our work places, we project managers often think that time management is becoming a paramount task. Time management includes not only the endless days of meetings, but also such mundane tasks as timekeeping, project costs, reporting, and change management. I received a package that may help. It’s Tenrox PSA, a full-featured front-to-back project management product that was new to me. 
The Installation. In our daily lives, which may include moving to diverse locales, Web-based products are hardly something most companies or projects can live without. Not to mention.. It’s not fun to have tons of software loaded locally on our hard drives. I guess I am one of the world’s largest fans of "put it on the Net and let me get to it with my browser." After loading my laptop and office machines with several software packages and then losing the software--subsequently reloading and restoring--(ad nauseurm)—l prefer to access Net-based work products. Obviously when I review a software product, Web enabled capabilities are a real plus!
