Asynchrony Collaborative Environment (aCe)
The emerging global economy has spurred many companies and government agencies to push projects outside the bounds of the enterprise walls. An increasing number of endeavors span companies, government agencies, countries and date lines. Unfortunately, the promise of such initiatives is often unrealized due to the challenges of adapting legacy practices and tools to a globally distributed environment.
Unleash the power of collaboration across the enterprise and around the world.
The Asynchrony Collaborative Environment (aCe) is a framework and integrated toolset that lets people around the world work together as easily as if they were in the same location. aCe allows companies and government agencies to extend and optimize their existing practices to thrive in a geographically distributed collaboration environment.
Thriving in a globally distributed environment
Companies and government agencies are dispersing operations around the globe to take advantage of opportunities to cut costs, streamline operations and meet partner requirements. This trend makes it increasingly common for people from a range of disciplines around the world to simultaneously work on the same projects. aCe can help make such global collaboration as effective and as comfortable for participants as working in adjoining cubicles.
aCe focuses on four primary requirements of distributed collaboration:
- Project Management
- Task Management
- Program Management
- Data Management
Project Management
Most project management systems rely on periodic data reporting that is often incomplete or out of date. Since aCe is a real-time collaboration system, data is directly compiled as it is created. The environment’s flexible interface can integrate with many third-party systems that are currently used within the organization. Hour reporting helps to maintain accurate time spent on projects, including memo fields to enter specific information about task work noted alongside the reported hours. In addition, hours reports can be sorted and filtered by team member or project/program.
Other reporting tools include real-time:
- Project summaries
- Under-allocated/overdue task reports
- Reports by sub-project
- Reports by person
aCe removes much of the administrative burden on managers with auto-generated event calendars, notifications and contact lists. aCe also facilitates a deeper understanding of projects and programs with at-a-glance visualizations of data, such as tasks and team members.
TASK MANAGEMENT
Effective management of tasks is probably the most critical factor in the success of distributed project teams, so aCe uses a range of channels to foster and document communication within each team, including:
- Threaded discussion areas
- Task dependencies
- Task reports (underallocated/overdue)
- Gantt charts
- Email notification of new tasks and events
- Red-yellow-green task-status flags
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
Projects can be linked hierarchically into programs. Programs group projects together to allow project members to monitor certain summaries and statistics for multiple related projects at once. A project becomes a program when it is linked to another project, at which point the project home page will become a program home page, and several new options appear, including access to a member list featuring program members listed by name and project title, and several new program level reports.
Program capability also empowers managers by giving program summary and reporting tools. For instance, programs provided rolled-up views of all projects’ action items, as well as summaries of planned hours versus actual hours (and dollars) from all subordinate projects.
DATA MANAGEMENT
aCe provides configuration and data-management systems such as CVS and WebDAV that give team members source control of intellectual property, traceable from anywhere in the world. The environment’s single point of access for team members simplifies the collaborative software development process and the ongoing task of management. Team members can choose to be automatically notified when changes occur in document repositories.
SECURE ACCESS FROM ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET
aCe employs a simple, intuitive browser-based interface with an extremely low learning curve. Complex and costly development packages often end up gathering dust on network drives after costly and lengthy staff training. aCe is so user-friendly and easy to manage that projects can be initiated within days of installation.
Since aCe is browser-based, participants can log in with access to the full set of tools and functionality from any computer with proper network access and authorization.
SIGNIFICANT ROI ACROSS MULTIPLE COST CENTERS
aCe reduces a wide range of costs associated with distributed projects, while speeding up delivery and ensuring project success:
- Dramatically improves the success rate of complex projects, whether in-house or in collaboration with outside contractors.
- Significantly reduces travel and associated costs, and positively impact employee satisfaction, reducing turnover.
- Saves on training costs associated with turnover and growth, due to aCe’s low learning curve.
INTEGRATION WITH EXISTING TECHNOLOGY, TOOLS AND PRACTICE
- XML interface supports integration with most leading exertnal programs.
- Platform independence (Java-based) supports implementation on Linux, Windows NT, Sun, etc.
- Rich collaboration environment allows enterprises to employ the specific development tools of their choice.