Danelle manages schedules and deadlines for several projects at Glenn, including fire safety and hypersonic flight. These are, naturally, extraordinarily complex, with numerous departments – purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, integration, testing, software, engineering, administration and more – in play, accounting for hundreds of stakeholders. Bringing it all together, from procurement to launch, is a gargantuan task. Ultimately, it’s Danelle’s job to provide universal visibility into the project, on both granular and holistic levels. Every piece of the puzzle, both on and off the critical path, matters – and launch dates don't move.
"Departments don’t work in silos. Sharing project data in a OnePager chart makes it easy for groups to realize how their time estimates and performance affect the next group."
- Danelle Fogle, Project Analyst/Scheduler at Vantage Partners, LLC
Project Analysts at Glenn spend much of their day managing tasks and schedules in Microsoft Project. It’s proven to be a wonderful tool for staying on top of details and timelines, but not for sharing information. That’s where OnePager comes in.
Rather than spending endless hours in meetings explaining raw Project data, Danelle uses OnePager software to instantly create Gantt chart timeline summaries. These charts – based on real information – are easily digestible for the viewer, streamlining the information sharing process considerably. The effects have been tangible.
Information Tailored to the Audience
With so many stakeholders, it’s essential that Danelle be able to tailor her project reporting to the audience with whom she is interacting. Using Project alone, that’s almost impossible; the information is the information, and it only comes in one format. But OnePager makes it simple. By customizing what data is pulled from Microsoft Project and how it is organized in the timeline summary itself, Danelle is consistently able to communicate in a way that is highly relevant and actionable for the other party.
"Some groups need to see a true project summary," she said. "For them, OnePager is a summary tool. Others need more detail. For one group, I use five separate OnePager charts to give an extremely granular view of the project, in addition to an overall project summary. OnePager makes it so easy to customize the data you are showing. It’s all real dates and real data – just presented in a way that gives the audience what they need."
Real-Time Feedback
With so much to do and such inflexible deadlines, engineers and administrators have no time to waste. If a decision made at a meeting creates a schedule change, they can’t wait for Danelle to manually change all of her documentation. Fortunately, OnePager’s robust integration with Microsoft Project makes it easy to update schedules and charts on the fly. Once a date or milestone is changed in the source program, it’s immediately reflected on Danelle’s Gantt chart.
"The quick turnaround for change requests makes all the difference," she said. "With OnePager, you can see the impact of changes in real time. When someone requests to see something, they get it quickly, in a format that’s not too complex for them to understand."
Project Management Software Fit for the Most Complex Projects
Managing such complex schedules is no easy job. The teams are massive, the projects are remarkably complex and the deadlines are immovable. There’s no margin for error – and failure is not an option. But Danelle and OnePager are up to the task, in a business where going up (and up, and up) is all that really matters.
About OnePager
Developed and sold by Colorado-based Chronicle Graphics, OnePager is the timeline presentation software solution that empowers project managers to turn project files and spreadsheets into beautiful summary graphics in seconds. No matter the size of a project or the application used to create the original plan, OnePager turns real data into concise, instantly understandable visual project plans, suitable for PowerPoint presentations, emails, web pages, wall charts and more. Want to be a project management superhero? OnePager makes it possible. Click here to start your free 15-day trial today.
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