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Legal cases as international projects
Due to the growing internationalization, above all, of European legal systems, international cooperation of persons and authorities/institutions dealing with legal cases is becoming more and more important. The same is true for the necessity of providing a central work platform to all participants that enables a seamless exchange of information and documents, as well as ensures prompt, verifiable legal processes. This is why it makes sense even in the legal field to use modern project management tools to be able to represent and carry out individual work steps from the start of legal proceedings to their conclusion in a way that is totally transparent. This is especially true in cases in which a number of project employees are working simultaneously in different legal systems while separated at different locations. Here the aspect of coordination is very important, since there is a high level of standardization for legal processes (regarding deadlines, submissions, etc.).
PHH Law Firm and ProjectNetWorld®
The Vienna law firm PHH, which specializes in business law and increasingly in international cases, has been following this trend for quite a while now: they use project teams under the direction of various managers and maintain regional networks – centrally managed – that are responsible for the implementation of individual onsite projects.
Project Management
In order to manage the participating project employees and, at the same time, to provide efficient communication paths and a corresponding flow of information, PHH lawyers rely on the ProjectNetWorld® project management solution.
This modular, web-based application does not require any additional installation effort – Internet access and a browser are all that's required to use the software – and is, therefore, especially well-suited to support decentralized organizational structures. It offers a clearly-structured, easy-to-use work interface and provides all relevant project management tools, which can be customized to the respective project requirements.
In this case, the clearly-designed calendar and schedule planning function and fully-automatic archiving and/or versioning of project-relevant documents, file notes and other information are essential for timely project handling. This gives project managers a good overview of all project-specific processes and transactions at any time, enabling them to take corrective action if required. This is one of the major advantages of ProjectNetWorld®: This application is based on the software as a service (SaaS) principle. It provides a centralized and customizable project management platform that can be accessed at any time, making the monitoring and control of all project processes very simple..
Modular design and maximum cost transparency
In this way, the customers are billed only for what they actually need. The software is configured and leased according to project specifications. The resulting costs depend on the project duration as well as the number or users and/or project participants – service package included (e.g., operation, maintenance, storage, data security, support hotline). This ensures cost-effectiveness as well as efficient use of the service – and all this with maximum data security and constant availability.
The industry and specific project applications play no role. ProjectNetWorld® can be used in any company – anywhere there is demand for modern project management solutions without time or location dependencies.
Background
In many companies, regular business operations can no longer run without IT. This is regardless of whether or not the internal IT departments support the core business or are themselves the focus of the business activity. The more important IT is to the company, the higher the requirements usually are regarding quality and security standards for the operation (maintenance) of business processes. The higher these requirements are, the more demanding and cost-intensive the necessary infrastructure is to maintain internal company business processes. In many cases, the limits of what can be justified economically are quickly reached.
Computer centers offer services that meet these technical and infrastructure requirements
For this reason, more and more companies are deciding to transfer the infrastructure required for seamless operation to an external computer center.
Computer centers, as IT service providers, offer the corresponding structural requirements and security standards for the protection and availability of company data. They provide climate control to ensure a constant temperature for high-performance computers, fire protection using gas systems and a redundant uninterrupted power supply (UPS), as well as general security measures using strictly-regulated access controls, video monitoring, etc. The connection of redundant fiber optic cables to an Internet node point (exchange point for Internet data traffic) enables the high availability of data.
All of these services are detailed in service level agreements (SLAs) and guaranteed by contract – SLAs are subject to continual checks via log files, availability data, access protocols, etc. to ensure that they are maintained. This ensures that quality management is sustainable and makes computer center services transparent and verifiable.
Maximum data security and constant availability
Security, availability and performance are important criteria especially for providers of SaaS solutions ("software as a service"). In order to offer customers the highest level of quality and security, it is essential that software solutions run in high security computer centers. This brings some major advantages: software availability and performance can be maintained at a constant high level. At the same time, the security of customer data is always guaranteed.
This is why the IT managers of the ProjectNetWorld® project management solution decided years ago to take advantage of the IT services of a computer center.
Helmut Serüga (Director of IT): "Security and availability of data is the quality criterion for web-based software. Our customers must always be able to access their current data – regardless of when and where. This automatically puts a high demand on the security of the data. We are able to meet this demand by operating ProjectNetWorld® in a high security computer center as well as through security measures in the architecture of the software and the use of encrypted data transfers."
In this way, ProjectNetWorld® customers get not only a powerful project management platform that provides effective project handling support, but also the certainty that the application will be available 24/7 and with the highest possible security standards.
Background
Small projects currently have a difficult time. Most of them do not get enough attention. Goals and tasks are not very well defined. There are resource overlaps and unclearly defined roles. Nevertheless, small projects are still expected to meet their goals in a precise manner.
The lack of a suitable tool is usually the problem. Regular tools, with all of their disadvantages, are normally used for small projects. Communication takes place via e-mail. Instead of targeted and traceable communication there is communication chaos. Data is usually stored in a decentralized manner (on the desktop), redundancies can't be avoided and a version mishmash can usually only be decoded with a lot of research effort. Above all, schedule planning is almost always too short.
In order to offer these projects a suitable tool in the future, we are working on a development package, our future release, which recognizes that time, resources and budget are scarce commodities for small projects.
Small projects require tools that are fast and easy to use - without training effort and effort-intensive project initialization. It is usually enough to coordinate schedules and make documents available from a central location.
The upcoming version of ProjectNetWorld® will also support small projects via:
- the new "To-Do List" module
- the flexible combination of tools
- the ability to send temporary links
Simple to-do lists instead of effort-intensive schedule planning
As a kind of "schedule light," to-do lists are also very well-suited to help provide structure to smaller projects. This tool enables clear schedule management in which all project tasks (to-do's) can be listed and assigned to individual project employees. This tool also takes into account contextual as well as temporal information with the advantage that responsibilities within a project and the progress of the project are always clear.
The To-Do List is accessed via the Schedule/Tasks tool.
Each to-do has various input fields. In this way, the task (to-do) is described in detail and assigned to a project employee. A due date and status are assigned. In addition, each to-do can also be assigned a project process.
The to-do is accepted by the project member responsible via a "handshake mechanism." This makes task allocation traceable at all times.
To-do lists can be used alone or in conjunction with milestone planning or, if more detail is required, using linked bar planning.
When a new to-do is created, the corresponding project member automatically receives an e-mail notification. This ensures that each project employee always has access to current information.
In MyWorld, the personalized work area for each project employee, to-do's are also displayed under the "Tasks" area.
Additional functions include deadline reminders (time-critical to-do's are marked in red) and the export function, which enables you to export to-do lists in common file formats and/or programs (.pdf, .csv, icalender) with just a mouse click.
Flexible customization of modules
Usability is increased due to a new function that actively displays only those ProjectNetWorld® tools that are used by the respective project participant. In future, this can be controlled via the ProjectNetWorld® authorization system. In this way, the work interface is more streamlined and the level of information for individual items can be better customized to project requirements.
Temporary links
Another new feature is the ability to create temporary links to documents. Because small projects have several project participants who are only briefly involved or only on the periphery, full access for this group usually does not make much sense. However, to ensure that this group also receives sufficient information, ProjectNetWorld® will be offering temporary links to relevant documents.
For example, this can be used to provide a reprographic services department or printer with relevant print files without having to give them direct access to ProjectNetWorld®. This is an enormous advantage especially for large files, because they usually cannot be sent via e-mail.
Our tool suggestion for small projects
- Document Management (for a central database)
- To-Do List – optionally with a milestone plan (for simple schedule planning)
- Calendar (for a common view of the project schedule)
- Discussions (for traceable communication for all participants)
Because many small projects require just as much effort as a larger project, it makes sense to also offer smaller projects and their teams a suitable environment in order to ensure that project goals are achieved with precision. And so our mission statement will soon also apply to small projects: ProjectNetWorld® – getting projects done!
