The Status Reporting Tool

Demo Step 1 of 4

Background

In this online demonstration, you will be working with a fictitious U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) contractor, ACME Technologies. We have chosen the DoD model because it lends itself so well to matrix tasking and reporting. In ACME’s case, they have won two awards, Project A and Project B. Both awards call for labor categories which were bid at 50% of an FTE. These include a Subject Matter Expert (SME), Database Administrator (DBA), Systems Architect (SA), and Tech Writer (TW). Each project also calls for full-time programming and Quality Assurance (QA) staff members. ACME staffs one SME, one DBA, one SA and one TW each of whom works 50% of their time on each project. At the end of each month, ACME must provide a Monthly Status Report (MSR) to the government which details what each employee did for that project during the prior month. Thus, the SME, DBA, SA, and TW will appear on both reports, but the programming and QA staff will appear on only one report.

Besides the need to report on activities related to the government projects, ACME is constantly on the look out for new ideas which can be explored as business opportunities. Thus, ACME itself has a reporting template it asks each employee to complete. Thus, when the SME, DBA, SA and TW log in, they will see three templates; Project A, Project B and ACME. The others will see two; their respective project and ACME.

Project Structure

ACME’s organizational structure involves “gray lines” of communication. That is, the DBA reports to the IT Manager for their annual performance review, but also reports to each respective Project Leader for the respective projects. Thus, in the Status Reporting Tool “Users” section, the DBA appears under the IT Manager, but they also belong to both Project Groups, making them responsible for completing Status Reports for each project. The Project (not the Organizational structure) reporting structures appear below. Note that each Project has government oversight, so each has a read-only account for a “Government Program Manager”. While you will have to login and out multiple times to see each position (unless you want to take our word for it), you are demo to login to the DoD demonstration as any one of the following by using a username that is the first name of the person in lowercase and the password of “demo”; e.g. john/demo.

The Project Structure should not be confused with the Organizational Structure of ACME Technologies. A key point of the Status Reporting Tool is how it can bring teams together, often matrixed across multiple projects, but still allow an individual and their manager to have a complete picture of the individual’s contributions and performance. To illustrate, the following screenshot shows the Organizational Structure of ACME Technologies. Note that while someone like Lori Garciapasa would report to both Sam Adams (Project A’s Leader) and Bud McCullough (Project B’s Leader), her annual performance review will be conducted by her manager, Jerry Framer. The Status Reporting Tool allows Sam and Bud to see Lori’s contributions to their projects while still allowing Jerry to oversee her performance. Jerry will see Lori’s status reports for both projects, but not the status reports of others they are not directly responsible

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