Thanks to the excellent feedback we’ve received so far, we have added new features, updated the user interface, and are launching our new series of video tutorials explaining how to use StreamFocus.

You can now create your own custom project and workflow templates, allowing you to customize StreamFocus for the kind of work you do. These are reusable for providing a guided series of steps, with options, to assist in getting your work done.  You can also use the templates to filter your to do lists and documents.

The Collaboration features have been enhanced, allowing you to create a contact and invite them into StreamFocus to share documents and workflows. You can manage who can view, edit, or own any object.

These video tutorials (screencasts) show how to use StreamFocus:

• Introduction
• How to Plan a Project
• How to Create Templates
• How to Create Contacts, Workspaces & Collaborate
• How to Work & Create Documents

Thanks again to our beta users, and we look forward to making StreamFocus even better with your feedback. If you would like to join the limited beta, please sign up.

We opened for beta a couple weeks ago. Since then we’ve received some great feedback, and we’re continuing to improve the product and invite more people for trials. Peter has written a great review. He points out a number of weaknesses in the UI, all of which I agree with. Much of our early work was spent on developing the ideas for the software and how to organize projects and workflows and our collaboration system. We have improved the UI a lot in the last month and still have work to do. We’ll be adding a few ajax elements to streamline use where plain html isn’t sufficient, but without overloading it. We appreciate the feedback.

We do need to create more documentation and explanation of how the system works. We’re planning a screencast, a short video, explaining the underlying principles of the system and how to make it work for your projects. It’s not difficult once you know the steps to take. Currently, an overview of the concepts is on the homepage.

In addition to the beta, Fred and I made a presentation of the product for AIASF, where we met a few people in the architecture and construction field. As small business owners, they have a few employees, but the number of tasks gets beyond the number they can manage in their heads. This is what StreamFocus is designed for. Tasks can be entered ahead of time, by days, weeks or months as you need and a critical path established that sets the sequence those tasks must happen for the project to move ahead. Organized into workflows, the team members will know which tasks to work on now - those that are in the critical path - rather than being confused by non top priority tasks that should not be worked on yet in their to do list. If priorities change, the team member task lists will automatically change when critical path links are moved in the project plan area. The automatic priority system works for any team, from 1 to any number of team members.

We’re continuing to expand the beta by giving out more invitations. Please sign up. We look forward to learning what will work for you.

  
After 2 years of research and over a year of programming, we are happy to announce the launch of our Limited Beta.  Here is information on our concepts, features, pricing, and screenshots.  We look forward to collaborating with our users on making StreamFocus even better.

The Problem

My architectural firm began work on a large project with a team of 7 people, and we needed a way to manage the firm’s many tasks. We started using web based project management tools to organize our activities. At first, it seemed like a great tool. Tasks would be created and assigned, email reminders would automatically be sent, comments about the tasks could be made and viewed. In a short time, however, the quantity of open tasks became larger.

With a large project, the key is to always work on the top priority task. The web system provided no intelligent way to help determine what the highest priority task was. Entering deadlines for tasks is useful, but when a project-critical task is delayed because of an immediate deadline on a less important task, especially if the deadline is self-generated, the consequences can be dire for the success of the project. Task dependencies are also a nice tool, but again, someone has to spend time massaging these relationships on a daily/hourly basis with the currently available tools.

Our number of tasks became overwhelming. The only answer I could find was to actually have a new position created to focus on organizing these tasks, but then I would have to spend a great deal of time explaining how to prioritize in addition to the new person actually going through all these tasks to set priorities as they came up. In other words, the task management system slowed us down, added costs, and threatened the success of our project. Eventually, we threw up our hands and abandoned the web project management tool.

What We Need

The most important thing we need to know is: which of the many tasks that need to be done is the top priority. The other big issue is: what information do we need to have before starting on a task. We found that so many times tasks would be started and then have to be revised again (and again) later because information needed to complete the task was missing at the onset. This amounted to a great deal of lost time and productivity on the order of 30-40% of time spent working. Additionally, we needed to have the information necessary for the task available immediately while the task was being performed. Another 10-20% of time was lost looking for information for tasks.

For service companies such as my architectural firm, the material we work with is primarily information, and the processes are to a large extent mental. Managing this complexity seemed daunting, but the reward is to gain back the 50% of lost productivity and dramatically improve quality for our customers. This potential improvement in my firm was well worth finding an answer.

We needed a management system that allowed us to focus on the top priority task we needed to do, to focus on the exact information we needed to complete that task, and to not let us start a task until we had assembled all the necessary information and other processes to complete the task to avoid rework.

It was these problems that led to the development of StreamFocus, an on-demand project and action management application, with which we achieved a 50% productivity increase with better quality.

©2007 Organon Technologies LLC

Case Study: Architecture

We’ve been using StreamFocus at my architectural firm for the past 6 months, and we are having a dramatic experience: 50% increase in productivity, a large increase in quality, and happier clients and staff with a growing business. This sounds impossible, but it’s a fact.

Please read these articles to find out about the main features enabling us to achieve this large productivity boost:

• Project Templates establish Project priorities and organization
• Workflow Templates and constrained Workflows prevent costly rework and provide easy to use project and action management
• Information made available contextually for the action at hand allows users to move easily from one action to another and stay fully informed on the information they need to get the top priorty job done and collaborate in a powerful way.

With StreamFocus, we are able to customize our project and Workflow templates to optimize our business and continue to improve the flow and quality of our work. Additionally, because the action sequence is captured in the Workflow templates, users are able to benefit from that captured knowledge and operate at higher levels with less direct management input and greater satisfaction levels - allowing me to focus on designing a great project with less time spent managing.

©2007 Organon Technologies LLC

Case Study: Architecture - Back to: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality?

The guiding principle of my firm’s priorities is enabling the fastest completion time possible for a given project with the highest level of quality for our clients. We used methods from Toyota’s Lean Management with advice from the Lean Software Institute to restructure our business priorities in the following client focused way:

1. We have found that the most important productivity boost has been to listen more carefully and more frequently to our Clients. In the past, a delay in asking for and getting client feedback would lead to wasted effort on designs no longer considered relevant by our clients. A client’s decision can radically alter the entire workflow of a project. Understanding and acting immediately on client feedback is now our top priority.

2a. In order to start construction, permits are needed by various regulating government agencies. Without these permits, we cannot build and/or construction can be stopped: Permitting is our second priority.

2b. The most expensive and critical part of a project is the Construction process. A request for information, a change order, or an application for payment as well as other issues during construction, when not acted on immediately, can have devastating impacts on project delivery and construction costs. Construction issues are also our second priority.

3. As architects, we have to integrate our design with the many complex systems that make up a modern building. If we create details and specifications for a part of a building prior to knowing the final engineering design, we will waste the time we’ve spent in that area and delay the project because of the additional time needed to redesign the area. A day delay in getting information from our Engineering consultants equates to a day delay in completing the project as a whole. Coordinating with our engineering consultants is our third priority.

4. What we architects usually love to do most is design and produce drawings. But because our work can be turned upside down by a functional change request by our clients, by a regulatory change by the authorities, by an unknown issue during construction,or by a change in the engineering design, Architecture is our fourth priority.

We automate these client-focused priorities by setting up the following Project template hierarchy in StreamFocus:

Generating Projects and SubProjects with Project Templates

Once the Project Template hierarchy is established, Projects and Subprojects are created that inherit both the characteristics of the template and the underlying priority. The following is a simplified example of a Project hierarchy:

Setting Priorities Between Projects

Priorities are automatically set between projects based on the priorities established in the Project Template. If two Workflows have available actions in separate projects, and one of them is in a higher priority subproject, that Workflow will be the higher priority. If the two Workflows are in subprojects of the same priority, the Project with an earlier deadline will take priority. Additionally, within a priority level in a set of subprojects, each subproject can be assigned a priority so that an Workflow, all other priorities being equal, will then use the subproject priority.

Next: Constrained ActionStreams Prevent Costly Rework

©2007 Organon Technologies LLC

Case Study: Architecture - Back to: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality?

In StreamFocus, a Workflow is a connected flow of actions that creates a value for the customer. A Workflow template establishes a company-wide template for carrying out a Workflow. The diagram below is a simple example of a Workflow template:

Flow Constraints Within a Workflow

Within the template, constraints are set to control the flow of actions. A solid line indicates a mandatory path, and a dashed line indicates an optional path. An oval shape is an action, and a triangular shape is waiting for action. So in the above diagram, the “Building Survey” action can not be worked on until “Signed Contract” is waiting for action. After performing the “Review Survey” action, either the survey is approved and information can be sent on to the “Survey Files” wait for action, or errors were found in the survey and thus the survey information is sent to “Building Survey Revisions” wait for action and then sent back for revisions in the “Building Survey” action.

Flow Constraints Between Workflows

Constraints can be set on a Workflow which indicate that other Workflows must be complete prior to working on it. This allows for dynamic priority setting when unforseen issues arise. An example Project hierarchy:

For example, the Workflow “14. Model Structure” in the lower right of the diagram above has an available action to work on under SubProject “1. First Floor Plan” and is currently the top priority. Then the structural engineer submits revisions to his design because of an unforseen issue with the existing structure which affects Workflow “11. Prelim Design”. Because this issue is in Project priority 3, it overrides “14. Model Structure” and becomes the top priority on the project. Additionally, because “14. Model Structure” is constrained by “11. Prelim. Design”, “14. Model Structure” is no longer available to work on until “11. Prelim. Design” is complete.

Setting constraints between Workflows allows simple but effective project management. The combination of Project priorities and Workflow constraints allows for dynamic setting of priorities that flow with changes that occur on most projects, helping the team stay focused on the top priority and avoiding costly rework.

Next: Contextual Information Retrieval

©2007 Organon Technologies LLC

Case Study: Architecture - Back to: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality?

How much time do you spend looking for relevant information when working on a project? For my information-intensive firm, a lot of time was spent looking for product brochures, the latest project prints, old project prints, the latest phone call information from the client, that beam redesign fax from the engineer, the latest email from the Planning Department with the new deadline, etc. It was overwhelming, especially when larger teams were trying to use the same information.

Contextual Focus

With the help of StreamFocus, our high-speed scanner, and scans converted to pdfs, all the information we need for any Action is immediately available. In looking at an Action view, all the relevant information is there including the ability to add information, such as phone call, emails, etc with the click of a button. We know who is working on that action currently and in the past. Additionally, when selecting an Action to view, StreamFocus shows the context to the Workflow and subproject the Action belongs to. This context focus is displayed highlighted at the top of the screen with the ability to move up or down the focus hierarchy changing the context of what is displayed in the various system views.

For example, if you are viewing the participants for the structural engineering coordination action within “13. Final Design”, the structural engineer and his staff as well as your staff interacting with the engineer will be displayed and all others who created or were conveyed information about the action. If you select up the hierarchy to the next subproject level, “Contract Documents”, all of the participants in all the information created and conveyed below that level will be displayed, and so on. A real-time view of all the relevant participants on a project is obtained by simply clicking on the Project name at the top “200701_Vincent”. This same contextual display is true for other views such as Information, Sessions, and in the case of Architecture and Engineering, Products and Keynotes.

Team Collaboration

In addition to the personal productivity gain contextual action information has given us, we have also gained dramatically in team collaboration. For example, at any given time I can see exactly which Action any other team members are working on. If a team member asks a question, with a click on their Action, I am presented with the same contextual Action view that they have so that I can quickly grasp their context, such as the latest call from the engineer or a sketch with a red-lined area of concern, and can answer quickly. This tool is as equally powerful when the team is in the same room or scattered about in different countries. The right information at the right time in the right quantity is a very powerful tool.

Back to: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality?

©2007 Organon Technologies LLC

StreamFocus is an on-demand project and action (task) management system that keeps teams focused on creating value for customers.

This article has been moved to the home page, see the StreamFocus Software Introduction.