History of our Online Project Management software System or as we call it Manage-Projects-Online.com

2000-2002

Manage Projects Online (MPO) started out as an intranet or internal corporate application in 2000 for a large marketing company in Chicago in order to manage online web site creation projects as well as offline marketing promotion projects.

There were 3 main groups within the agency consisting of Creative, Accounts, and 'Technology & Production' as well as a Project management team.
In each of these groups were several levels of members including staff and resources which included graphic artist, web developers, Account Directors, and programmers then a Manager Level, Director Level, and VP Level.

MPO became a complex Roles based PM system with various security levels as well as Group and Business Level permissions based on who you are, what you do, and your level within the company.

This resulted in the following Project management features

Roles Based Project Management:

There are numerous project views based on user Rights and levels

• If you are a cross functional team member, you can only see projects that you have been assigned to, you can either mark off tasks you have been assigned or enter in tasks you perform for any of your assigned projects as well as track your time per task per project.
• If you are a Manager or higher, you can see All projects that your direct reports are working on
• If you are a Project manager, you can view and edit your assigned projects
• If you are a Manager of Project Managers, you can view edit your Direct Reports Projects

Example Use Case:
Each account director needed access to their clients projects in order to see who was assigned and the overall status of their projects. Some Account teams worked with specific Clients and focused on Offline or online marketing campaigns However they used the same Creative Graphics staff for either.

Project Managers and Project Management:

• Quick and easy Project Creation
• Quick and easy Cross Functional Team Assignment
• Use of Flags and Sub Flags for quick Creation of Project Timelines and deliverables
• Quick assignment of user tasks
• Edit multiple project tasks at the same time
• Edit Completed items
• Easy drill down into project details
• Move the dates of entire Projects

Management of Cross Functional Teams:

This allows multiple staff members to be assigned to various projects as a member of that specific Client Project team

Team Communication:

At a glance, you can view your cross functional team members and communicate directly with them via messaging or dynamic email list based on your team members.

Resource management:

The project manager can review workloads for the cross functional team members to make sure there are no scheduling conflicts with deliverables, presentations or client meetings

Direct Reports:

Managers, Directors and VPs can view information about all of their direct reports including hours, projects being worked on and availability.
In this view you can only view and manage Direct reports and is based on the overall organization chart. This also helps with calculating utilization of your employees or Direct Reports

Printouts for meetings:

Print outs were necessary for handouts during meetings and reporting.
These came in two formats: a calendar view and a list view. Depending on your role, you can print single projects, multiple overview projects, all of your direct reports hours and projects

Managing Project Managers:

Managers of Project Managers need an overview of all the projects being worked on by their Direct Reports and the status of all projects managed by their team.

Success of our Project management tools:

Due to the flexibility and success of the Project Management Tool, new levels were added including Senior VPs and Executive VPs. And new User groups were added including New Business and Administration with their own views of data that was critical to their position. Additional features included tracking sick days, Holidays, vacation schedules as well as requests for Vacation and an approval system All of the above features we now call the Enterprise Edition

2002-2015

Custom Project management tools:

Realizing not all of the features are required for all businesses, we customized and implemented various versions for numerous companies on their corporate Intranets or Extranets

2015-Present

We moved our system to the Internet allowing for companies, groups and individuals to take advantage of our seasoned Project management tool. We continue to make improvements and add in new features for all of our customers. We continue to simplify our system for users who do not need all of the features that a large Enterprise would need