Intense simplicity. Review on Achievo

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge. (from the Achievo website) Achievo is a project management and monitoring tool that I have been using in my company (software development firm) for the past three months or so. I froze upon this tool after a couple of false starts with other project management tools. More than a year of searching brought me to Achievo. Achievo serves me well and has brought a distinct improvement on five fronts in my company:

(1) Productivity

(2) Improved job allocation

(3) Ability to manage multiple projects

(4) Improved realisation from customers

(5) Selling process

Profile of my company: Mine is a four developer firm working on projects ranging from $150 - $2000 with few projects in the 5k to 10k category. We are typically working on more than 5-6 projects with almost all employees involved in all projects. Projects themselves range from development to maintenance work. The key requirements for the profitable running of a company like mine are the ability to

(1) keep track of projects - in terms of things to do

(2) move from one project to another quickly and efficiently

(3) track each project in terms of profitability i.e. to ensure that we are not putting in disproportionately large amount of time and to be able to realise this in ADVANCE

(4) continuously improve upon the speed and accuracy of our code generation, so as to compete in a market that is primarily price driven and competition is from countries like Romania and Yugoslavia.

To do this we need to understand where and what we spend our time on and thereon improve upon those aspects of the delivery process.

ACHIEVO: ACHIVEO is a simple and effective tool with three main features:

(1) Time registration

(2) Job allocation (''''things to do feature'''')

(3) Linking the two through a simple set of generic ''''activities'''' that form ''''phases'''' and at a higher level project templates

The project manager creates a project using a project template with a set of generic activities. He(to be read he/she) then creates a list of things to do based on the project requirement and assigns this list to the resources. Each resource works on this list (which can span projects and activities) and at the end of the day registers the time spent against the project AND ''''activity''''. So a ''''thing to do'''' could be ''''complete the data import functionality'''' (a project specific requirement) which would then be REGSITERED at the END of the day as ''''development'''' activity on project ''''xyz''''. There are a number of reports that allow you to view this information that is captured.

Why does ACHIEVO make sense?

(1) Project management (monitoring) - The status of project specific ''''to dos'''' give an indication of the progress of the project. This information is more than ample for effective management

(2) Ability to manage multiple projects - Developer is indifferent to the project for which he works. He simply has a list of things to do with a timeline for each. Thus moving from one project to another is a very simple process.

(3) Productivity - A lot of developer time is normally wasted in fighting with problems that may be better handled by me. A list of ''''things to do'''' coupled with clear instruction that any problem taking more than 10 minutes to resolve needs to be escalated means that the developer can move on to the NEXT ''''to do'''' while the problem resolution is done by someone more capable.

(4) Time registration: Time registration captures the time spent by developers on various projects and (at a lower level) activities. This information is then available to the user in the form of various reports that tell ''''who has been working on what for how long''''. This helps in

(a) Better job allocation: Graphical reports tell you for instance how a certain developer''s time is spent (i.e. activity). This information captured over a period of time can help channel the work that he is best suited for or is more comfortable with.

(b) Decision making: The reports go a long way in helping take decisions. eg. We moved into a new space some time back without realising that power supply to that building was from a panchayat (due to historical reasons). I was contemplating moving out again after we faced 20 power cuts within the first 15 days. But since this was not quantified, I decided to capture the downtime (due to power cuts) using the tool. What came out was that 5% of the time was lost due to powercuts. So as far as we did not lose our temper and kick the monitor and saved our work every five minutes, we did not have much reason to worry. I could avoid a costly option because of the information that it provided.

(c) Eliminate waste: Since each developer has to account for the complete period of work, it forces them to ensure that they are doing something productive (in other words not working on their resume). Else keying in the data would become very difficult.

(d) Profitablity: The tool tells you which projects are profitable and it also helps you in your bidding process. eg. most vendors typically bill for development but also deploy the solution on the customers server. What we found (in many smaller projects) was the time spent on deployment FAR exceeded that spent on development.

(e) Selling process: Data collected over a period of time tells you WHAT type of projects (based on ''''project templates'''') are more profitable. eg. we realised that we were making more money on ''''workflow automation'''' work than on ''''website development''''. Thus our selling process is focussed on picking up those type of orders.

(f) Trainign and other development activity: Can be focussed on those aspects of the delivery that we are weak on.

(5) Being opensource, I can always write my own reports if need be.

Achievo is a free download easily installed on a PHP enabled server and MySQL server. It is opensource which means you can write your own reports. The only problem that I faced with Achievo is that is it very heavy and I was forced to upgrade my machine to run it normally. But considering that the UPGRADED machine is in reality the ENTRY level machine these days, it does not really matter. Achievo is available on their site https://achievo.org

Review is continued in the comments