Circumstances Our client is a British company specialising in creative web design and promotional campaigns. Essentials of the company's work imply conducting of many contracts with numerous clients simultaneously, while the jobs are being done by own staff and involved developers. As in any creative work, many issues arise during development process, so some tool, helping to guide this process, was a must.

Our Solution We at Inform Link developed a management system for the overall control of the jobs. Each project conducted by the company could be divided into issues - functionally completed parts of the project. Severity, priority, and type properties could be assigned to issues. Tasks provide more detailed elaboration of issues and additional features. The system automatically generates TODO lists for all user groups, and for each user personally. TODO lists give clear perception of the jobs to be done. Users may communicate attaching NOTES to specific issues. Notes are being stored in a manner similar to usual Internet forums. Four user groups: Administrator, Project coordinator, Developer, and Client - have different rights within the system, according to their role. Each of them deals only with information relevant to their group and specific projects they are involved in. Administrator can create and modify user accounts. Several contacts could be assigned to a single client account. Project coordinator plans jobs, settles issues and tasks, assigns them to specific developers, and manages the development process. Members of development team can indicate amount of hours spent on each task or issue. Project coordinator may approve or reject those values. The system keeps track of the total man-hours spent. Client may initialise new projects, negotiate and influence the working process. Like other user groups, clients may have jobs "TODO", for example: "Provide photos for booklet". At any moment the system clearly displays status of each project, issue or task. Projects, issues and tasks could be estimated, approved, started, put on hold, postponed, cancelled, etc. The system is rich in descriptive pictograms, which ensure easy and convenient navigation. The system provides remote access via the Internet, ensuring effective feedback and on-line or off-line negotiations. The system logs all the actions and events happened.

©2002 Inform Link Ltd