RationalPlan 6 – Project Baselines, Reports, Clients Management, Improved Scheduling and Microsoft Project Integration

RationalPlan 5.7

Stand By Soft launches RationalPlan 6 a new major version that comes with lots of new features and improvements especially for the web based interface. To be noted the possibility to work with baselines and Earn Value Management technique, generating reports, clients management, improved projects scheduling with timescales up to seconds, custom columns and new filters, data export etc. Compatibility with Microsoft Project files was also enhanced, while integration with Google Drive was updated to the latest V3 version.

The upgrade from RationalPlan 5 to RationalPlan 6 will be free for customers that have purchased the product in the last year. Older version 5 customers will be able to upgrade with a 50% discount.

RationalPlan is a project management software suite that is available either as stand alone products or as a cloud service. It is used by individuals and companies that need a solution to manage their projects in an efficient way.

New features in RationalPlan 6

  • possibility to work with baselines and Earn Value Management technique when managing projects
  • reports were added to Portfolio view: calendar report, resource assignments, costs, project info, task cost distribution, resource cost distribution, resource work distribution
  • added project status column in Timesheet view and corresponding filter in My assignments view
  • On-Premise products (Single and Multi) are now available within the Microsoft Store
  • Clients view was added and also exporting clients to Excel
  • updated “Tasks for resource…” filter to be able to filter for tasks without resources assigned
  • added custom columns for Portfolio, Clients and Resources and a corresponding “not contains” filter
  • added expand all/collapse all buttons in Gantt view and a level expand functionality
  • improved the scheduling algorithm to keep the completion date when changing task duration
  • export projects in several formats (.srp, .xml, .xls)
  • updated Google Drive integration to V3
  • added minutes/seconds timescale for micro-projects
  • edit the task name directly within the tile component when working with task lists
  • Improved compatibility with Microsoft Project
  • Bug fix regarding ALAP constraints
  • Bug fix: guard against milestones when computing the % complete to avoid division by 0 and hit NaN value
  • Bug fix: do not allow to remove the last rate for a resource

(more…)

By |2022-11-24T11:55:34+00:00October 4th, 2022|News, RationalPlan|0 Comments

Managing Projects Using Project Baselines

Baselines in RationalPlan Project Management SoftwareA baseline as the name suggests is a line that is being used as a base for future measurement. It is a reference. In Project Management, the term baseline refers to an accepted and approved project plan. Usually known as project baseline, it is a must for a project manager that wish to monitor and evaluate the success of the project. Without it there is no possibility to compare the current status of the project with the initial estimated one.

Once established what the baseline is, the next important step is to store it for future use. If it is not stored, then it cannot be used to compare against it and it is meaningless. For a project there can be saved multiple baselines depending on the project size and how often the project plan changes.

To obtain the best efficiency a project manager should best use a project management software to create the detailed project plan. After it gets approved the manager should save it as a baseline project plan. During the project execution, comparisons can be done between the initial baseline estimates and the current status to compute variances. This comparison can be done either manually or automatically by software tools. Of course the second approach is preferred.

Types of project baselines

Since a project baseline includes many data from a project it is difficult to manage it as a whole and usually it is broken into several parts. This makes the complexity of baseline management easier to deal with. Project baselines generally include:

  • Scope baseline – the technical, physical and functional requirements for deliverable products
  • Schedule baseline – the project schedule and all of the elements supporting the schedule
  • Cost/Budget baseline – an approved budget usually in a time distribution format used to estimate, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project
  • Quality/Risk baseline – the set of known possible changes (uncertainties) that could impact the performance of the project (more…)
By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 24th, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Tracking|1 Comment
Copyright 2024 RationalPlan
Go to Top