optimizing project delivery Cobra For organizations seeking to improve project cost control through earned value management.

Transcription

1 optimizing project delivery Cobra For organizations seeking to improve project cost control through earned value management.

2 Measuring the health of your projects, however complex. You may feel that your project is in good health if you are managing to hit deadlines but, do you know whether it has cost you more than you planned to reach the current stage? Most scheduling, and tracking tools do not adequately handle cost issues. Managing and reporting on cost is an integral part of project management. To compete in today s demanding world, cost issues cannot be ignored, and the best way to manage cost effectively is through earned value management. Successful organizations are able to answer the difficult questions: My actual costs are less than my budget. Does this mean my project is doing well, or are we behind schedule? What will it cost to finish the project, and is it within budget? How are these changing labor rates and currency exchange fluctuations going to affect the final cost of my project? Cobra is a powerful system for managing project costs, measuring earned value, and analyzing budgets, actuals, and forecasts. It offers seamless integration with leading scheduling tools and unmatched flexibility to meet even the most exacting cost management requirements, such as the rigorous EVMS standard required by the US and other governments. A powerful earned value management system for those concerned with project cost control. Manage and analyze budgets earned value actuals forecasts Integrate with leading scheduling systems Open Plan Primavera Project Planner Microsoft Project Top-down planning for estimating proposal pricing what-if modeling Executives Access information about final project costs, labor costs, cash flow, and staffing requirements. Cost Analysts Produce roll-up cost summaries or detailed reports. Use Cobra s powerful forecasting and what-if analyses to calculate final project costs with confidence. Government Contractors Meet the rigorous EVMS standards required by the US and other governments.

3 Earned Value Measurement Simply analyzing budget versus actual costs often gives an incorrect picture of project status. For example, if a contract is 10 percent under budget, this might appear as if the contract is doing very well. Yet, when the project status or earned value is added to the analysis, it shows that only half of the originally planned work has been performed. Therefore, the contract is behind schedule, and the completed work has cost more than originally planned. Earned value is a means of putting a dollar value on project status. This allows you to formulate a three-way comparison between budget, actual costs, and project status in order to evaluate the true health of your projects. Baseline Management Managing a time-phased baseline is easy with Cobra s spreadsheet-style dialog boxes. Budgets can be entered weekly, monthly, or yearly to let you determine the level of detail needed to manage your projects. Cobra s userdefined calculations allow overhead, G&A, cost of money, and foreign currencies to be calculated, and much more. Changes to the baseline are automatically tracked, including details of who made the change, and the amount that was changed, along with any additional comments. Each change to the baseline can be kept separate, and different rate sets can be used with each change. These features, along with Cobra s strict security, allow a performance measurement baseline to be controlled. User Interface Cobra displays the budget, actual costs, earned value, and forecast on a single screen, simplifying data review and analysis. Earned Value Techniques Cobra removes the subjective nature of statusing activities by providing the following earned value techniques: level of effort, weighted milestones, percent complete, units complete, 50-50, 0-100, 100-0, user-defined, and percent complete by resource. Actual Costs Cobra allows actual costs, accruals, and commitments to be tracked. Actual costs are entered manually or via a transaction file generated from an accounting system in either a current period or cumulative-to-date format. Powerful Forecasting Final project costs can be calculated with confidence using Cobra s powerful forecasting ability. An unlimited number of time-phased forecasts can be created. Typical forecasts that are maintained simultaneously include: Optimistic, pessimistic, and most-likely forecasts for client reporting. A forecast loaded from a schedule, or entered manually, for managing the contract and reporting internally. Several different statistical forecasts to increase confidence in the manually entered forecasts. Using indicators such as the Cost Performance Index, accurate forecasts can be calculated that include project status and past performance. Multiple forecasts based on the effects of future rate changes.

4 Budget Element Calculations Each resource can have up to 32 results that define the total resource cost. The need to create composite rates is eliminated because Cobra can exactly model the burden cost structure of your organization. Complete Schedule Integration Cobra expands the functionality of leading scheduling tools to handle cost management needs with very little user intervention. Cobra s Integration Wizard allows work breakdown structures, resource definitions, and rates to be loaded directly from the schedule. Time-phase budgets and forecasts are loaded from resource assignments on the activities. The Integration Wizard also loads other information such as activity status, code assignments, earned value techniques, and rate set data from the schedule. This allows all control and reporting requirements to be handled in the scheduling software. The Integration Wizard A user-friendly Integration Wizard connects directly to Open Plan, Primavera Project Planner, and Microsoft Project. Integration with other scheduling tools is made via transaction files. The Integration Wizard guides the user through the configuration process in easy steps by providing on-screen information and picklists of fields from the schedule. What's unique about Cobra? Spreadsheet Reporting Cobra can generate customized spreadsheet reports that can be saved directly to Excel or as HTML files. You can also create custom Crystal reports, which can be integrated into Cobra to look like a standard Cobra report. Powerful Cost Calculations Cobra s powerful cost calculations and unique forecasting capabilities make it the most powerful costing system in the industry.

5 Flexible Reporting Cobra offers extensive reporting capabilities that are both flexible and easy-to-use. Using the Spreadsheet Wizard you can choose criteria for subtotals and fiscal periods, along with the cost information that you wish to report at runtime. This makes it simple to produce reports that show budget, forecast, actual costs, proposed modifications to the baseline, commitments and much more. These reports can be saved directly to an Excel spreadsheet or to a HTML file. Such unmatched flexibility allows you to report data in a variety of formats and to distribute the information easily. Spreadsheet Wizard The Spreadsheet Wizard guides you through choosing criteria for subtotals of the report. This allows you to produce either rollup cost summaries using a multitude of codes or to create detailed reports, making the combination of report outputs virtually unlimited. Cobra Reports Cobra has 60 standard reports including CPR1-CPR4, Variance Analysis, CSSR, and NASA 533 reports. Custom Crystal reports can also be integrated. Oracle, SQL Server, and Sybase The Cobra solution is scaleable by allowing data to be stored in Oracle, SQL server, or Sybase when the project data gets large. Cobra System Requirements Pentium or compatible PC Windows 2000 (128 MB RAM recommended) Windows XP (256 MB RAM recommended) Windows Terminal Services / Citrix

6 Welcom USA Welcom UK Corporate Headquarters N. Barkers Landing Rd 26/28 Church Rd Suite 350 Welwyn Garden City Houston TX Herts. AL8 6PW tel: tel: +44 (0) fax: fax: +44 (0) Welcom Partners Europe/Africa Austria Germany Israel Italy The Netherlands Russia South Africa The Americas Argentina Brazil Canada Mexico Asia Pacific Australia China Korea Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand The Welcom Suite The Welcom product suite is a totally integrated solution for enterprise project environments. Open Plan enterprise project scheduling Cobra cost and earned value management WelcomHome Web-based project collaboration Welcom Support Services Welcom offers a complete range of services to facilitate a successful implementation. Consulting Training Technical support welcom.com 2004 WST Corporation. Open Plan and Cobra are registered trademarks of WST Corporation. WelcomHome is a trademark of WST Corporation. All rights reserved. All other product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.