Top tips for a connected project world

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Richard K. Faris, Primavera executive vice president, told users at the 2007 Primavera UK user conference that technology, People and software need to interact efficiently over the web Richard Faris told his london audience that 'In order for true, predictive modelling to occur in organisations, everybody needs to participate,' and for that we are all beginning to use Web-based applications. Organisations,he said, are often virtual organisations, where responsibility for performance relies on a host of participants,'We need the ability for suppliers and vendors and subcontractors to be able to update their own schedules, tell us what their products or services are required in projects, because they change everyday.' 'It is also essential,' he said that 'these systems be role-appropriate.' 'I don't need a one-size-fits-all tool; I need something that focuses on my needs for specific information, and I need to be able to input information as easily as possible. Software should be role-based and today's technology allows us to have Web-based applications that are highly interactive.' Collaboration-the new way A military-style command and control system, with information being passed up the chain of command, and decisions being made and sent down the ladder no longer works in today's world, said Richard, because things happen too fast;decisions have to be made immediately. 'We can;t wait for information to flow up and decisions to flow down. In the new way, people work together and understand that problems are to be shared, information is to be shared and decisions are to be made collaboratively. This is the model for making the quickest decisions,for having the most agile organisations, and for making sure that decisions are made at the right level with the weight of shared information.' 'So, instead of top-down, we're talking peer to peer. That changes how we look at software and how the software should be used.'he said. Interoperability Another key point,he told the audience,is that systems need the ability to have interoperability; ystems working together. Information needs to be shared among different systems. 'In our projects, information has to be linked with other points of information. Systems,suchas financial, ERP, HR and estimating, have to work together, and better than they have in the past, we want to be able to use systems together in a way that gives us more than those systems give us separately,'he said. 'Loose' Web technology 'We are now moving,' commented Richard,'into an era of loose, Web-based applications. This will provide a services-orientated architecture where each application does what it does best and they're tied together in a loose way by Web services. The new way to think about the web is as a platform for computing, a platform for integrating applications in ways we never could before.' 'You get the information you are interested in and you customise it yourself. And now you see enterprise vendors embracing these ideas as we move forward into the web-based world.'