Program Management Tool (PMT)

Managing large technology programs which require the integration of distributed data from heterogeneous data sources is a challenge faced by organizations the world over, and NASA is no exception. How this challenge is addressed can make or break the success of a program.

A recent case study by NASA found a 40% discrepency rate within Program reporting documents.

One of the most significant challenges faced by any organization is maintaining the integrity of data up and down the management chain. In most organizations today, a multitude of legacy and more recently designed information management systems are used to track program and project development progress. As a result, many reporting functions require data to be copied and pasted between systems, or between systems and business documents. The result is that the integrity of data as it flows through the organization can very easily be compromised.

A recent case study performed at NASA shows just how much data can be compromised as it is passed up and down the management chain. A review of a series of documents intended to report the same milestone information in a $500 million program uncovered a data discrepancy rate of 40%. In other words, of all the data reported in these documents, 40% of it was inconsistent from document to document. This is the direct result of information having to be manually re-entered between various information and reporting systems being used within the Agency.

With the integrity of an organization's data compromised, managers can no longer be confident that decisions being made are based on accurate information.

Program Management Tool (PMT) is a novel approach to addressing enterprise-wide management of development program information. Designed to not only address the issues of data integrity between information systems, PMT also provides a robust system for analyzing project life cycle costs, reporting project schedules and timelines, monitoring and tracking cost estimates and financial data, developing project risk assessments and generating monthly reports and presentations.

To make all of this happen, PMT leverages another RIACS developed technology entitled NETMARK. This revolutionary technology provides the foundation for some of PMT's most advanced features, including the systems data translation pipeline and its schema-less XML database architecture.

With this functionality at the heart of the application, PMT provides users with the unique ability to work both online and offline to collect information. By using standardized business documents created in Microsoft Office users can disconnect from the network, gather required data, and then re-connect to enter data into PMT. But instead of having to copy and paste the collected data into a web based form, users upload the Microsoft Office document directly into PMT and it does the rest via NETMARK's data translation pipeline.

PMT also benefits from other NETMARK capabilities as well, such as the ability to rapidly search multiple documents and data sources, and low system maintenance and administration costs as a result of NETMARK's schema-less design.

PMT has been designed from the ground up as an enterprise level application to address the issues of data integrity and visibility throughout an organization. By using standardized business documents in addition to a web interface, PMT leverages the best of traditional web-based applications and desktop productivity software to dramatically reduce data entry errors, exponentially accelerate report generation, and give both management and workers the up-to-date information needed to operate efficiently.