Introducing Activity Pipelines™

MANAGEMENT INSIGHT

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Activity Pipelines is an interactive visual inventory system for your repository.		Inside an Activity Pipeline Each visual pipeline contains a set of colored blocks that represent the individual repository documents. Touching a block reveals the document title. The sequence represents the due dates of the commitments. The color indicates the relative time remaining on the commitment (or the time overdue). The height indicates the relative priority or importance. The width (where appropriate) indicates the relative effort. When width is used, there will be a "recycle" icon on the column or in the left most column heading. This will switch between fixed width and proportional display modes. And the presence of stripes indicate the presence of problems (more about this later). Thus, even without touching the pipeline, you can see if any of the work is overdue, near term, important or problematic. By comparing pipelines across projects or people, you can see the relative workloads and timeliness.
The Activity Pipelines facility lets you view the repository, not as a monolithic entity, but rather as an array of document collections. For example, all the issues in a particular project might be considered to be a collection. Another collection might be all the scope changes assigned to a particular person. One document can be part of many logical collections. Each individual pipeline is a visual representation of a collection of related repository items such as issues, risks, requests, etc. An Activity Pipelines presentation is an array of from one to thousands of individual pipelines organized in an interactive table. Each cell of the table contains an individual activity pipeline which in turn contains the documents of that collection. The Activity Pipelines design combines the time sense of Gantt style displays with the iconic status representation of a dashboard, the comparative power of bar charts, and the drill down convenience of views. It provides a truly simple and intuitive way to visualize and manipulate the commitments recorded in the repository.	Expanding a Pipeline into a Report Clicking a pipeline expands it vertically into a report in two stages. The first stage of expansion (headings) shows the document title, the priority badges (which designate the reasons for high importance), and the relative due date which is represented as a pushpin on a timeline. The second level of expansion (details) adds details such as the project name, due date, list of problems, a summary of the body text of the document, and a link to open the actual document. In some cases this includes a checkbox to select the document for modification (more on this later.) The detail blocks are also color coded so that recently created items are easily recognized.
Manipulating the Pipelines Presentation

Zooming The zoom action is the lens icon in the column or row header and at the right each pipeline. Clicking it will regenerate the display to show only the selected content. Focusing The focus of a presentation is shown as the title in the heading. When the focus is "Repository" it means that all of the commitments in the database are candidates for inclusion in the presentation. Clicking a row name will change focus to that subject. So, for example, if you are looking at "repository" and have rows showing projects, clicking on the row title will regenerate the presentation with the focus being that project.	Project Manipulation The green action panel allows a project manager to make changes to one or many of the commitments shown. When the action panel is shown, a checkbox will appear at the end of the detail area of each document. Checking the box will "select" the document for possible modification. Action Panel showing two selected documents (checkboxes above, names below) and the first part of the droplist of actions. Clicking GO will apply the selected action to the selected documents and regenerate the pipelines presentation. The action selector allows you to change the due dates, the priority, and the assignee of the selected items. You can move duedates in and out in time, or move them to the near future. You can set or remove project manager priority on the items, and you can change the assignee to some other participant. When the Go button is clicked, the selected action will be applied to all of the selected items listed above it and the presentation will be regenerated with the changes.	Totals The yellow Totals area show statistics such as the total number of items, the average age, and the average number of days late. And More Reports Clicking on the totals area opens a report access panel. Here you will find icons to generate Pie and Gantt charts, tabular reports, speciality calendars, and to create new commitments of the selected type. Insight To Go! Every format of Activity Pipelines presentation is RSS enabled. That means you can just click the RSS icon to at the lower left corner of the pipeline presentation to subscribe from any RSS compatible newsreader or browser. If you are a blog reader, you know the power of RSS to keep you aware of new information. So now you can get your project commitments along with the morning news!
Pipelines for Every Purpose
Selecting the Presentation The Activity Pipelines Selector allows you to specify what you want to see in the pipelines presentation including the selection of columns and row formats. Commitments Presentation Styles Columns are used to segregate different kinds of information. e.g. issues, risks, scope changes. etc. Repository. Shows all commitments. Projects. Show commitments for a particular project, all the projects you manage, or projects selected as favorites. Programs. Show commitments for all the projects in a selected program. Project Managers. All commitments for projects reporting to a particular manager. Users. All commitments for a particular person. Teams. All commitments for members of a named team. Organizations. All commitments for people in a selected organization. Stage Presentation Styles Here columns are used to represent the current state of projects or requests. Project Lifecycle. Shows the status of all projects, sorted by approval status. Process. Shows the projects in each stage of a selected process. Requests. Shows the stage and status of all requests.	The Project Lifecycle Format This sorts projects based upon their approval status and project manager. Blocks represent individual projects. The columns are "proposed", "approved", "on hold", "canceled' and "finished" Rows group projects by project manager. Color depicts the compliance of the project with the assigned process. If no process is assigned, then a "no process" color is applied as identified in the legend. If the project has red or bomb indicators in its project dashboard display, the project block will have "stress stripes" added to it. When the project item is opened to show details, the dashboard and process deficiencies, if any, will be enumerated in a section labeled "Problems". The Process Format gives you a "birds eye" view of all of the projects that are being directed by the selected business process. Each stage of the process is shown as a column, and each project as a color block in that column. Rows are used to group projects by project manager. You can use the row zoom icon (lens) to limit the presentation to those projects belonging to a single project manager.	The Requests Format This shows blocks representing individual requests. The columns are used to represent the stages of the request flow. Draft. Estimation & Approval. Waiting for Scheduling. Implementation. Completed. Deferred. Canceled or Rejected. Rows are used to group requests by requester or assignee, Colors are used to depict 'time in state' so as to show stalled items. The request blocks will vary in width based upon the estimated hours required for that request. Because requests can vary so widely, the range of block size is limited. The "recycle" icon will switch between fixed and effort-based width blocks.