You will find that Rational Project Conductor is an effective and scalable solution to complete your software delivery projects and programs on time, within budget, and with high quality. As a scalable solution, it supports Functionally Distributed Architecture and applies Development Intelligence to mine decision support information from the software repositories. Development Intelligence helps leverage information that is available in various applications across the software lifecycle to make appropriate inferences and decisions using dashboards.
With Rational Project Conductor you can plan and execute projects in dynamically changing conditions to optimize the value and minimize the cost of software development and delivery. Rational Project Conductor provides the ability to perform the following tasks:
Optimized for agile teams and methods, MCIF can automate the implementation of any method. Although product-independent, MCIF is supported by IBM Rational Jazz offerings that transform software delivery by helping teams collaborate, automate, and report more effectively. Read more about the Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF) at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/mcif/.
Rational Project Conductor addresses the majority of the following knowledge area processes of the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK):
Some of the knowledge areas are optimized with the support of other Rational products, which are described in the following sections.
Rational Project Conductor leverages the Jazz-based project management capability and expands the collaborative application lifecycle management. Rational Project Conductor integrates with other Rational tools in the software and systems delivery environment, such as Rational ClearQuest® and Rational Team Concert™, and provides a comprehensive view of real information in the ecosystem.
Program managers can use Rational Project Conductor as a tool to assess and allocate resources to projects. For example, when a project is nearing completion and another project is ready for execution, the program manager compares resource needs and allocates them to a new project. The program manager and the newly appointed project manager continue detailed project planning and monitor program health. Using Rational Insight, the program manager can share reports on various execution metrics with the project manager, and readily address the issue.
Project managers can use Rational Project Conductor to establish project goals and metrics. During project execution, the project manager can associate the new project with the other projects in Rational Team Concert, and existing work items in Rational Team Concert are unified with the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
Team members can use Rational Project Conductor to review the list of assignments during project execution, view the list of high priority plan items by iteration, and their task dependencies. The project plan is updated when the team member completes the assigned work items. Progress report based on the completed assigned work items is rolled up to the WBS structure.
Import and export functions help you use data from other project management systems such as Microsoft Project. For importing and exporting projects, Rational Project Conductor supports the XML file format from Microsoft® Project.
Using Rational Project Conductor, you can import WBS along with constraints from Microsoft Project XML file, similarly, you can export WBS elements to Microsoft Project XML file. You can also import and export projects project dependencies, assignments, and calendars. During the planning phase, the project manager can leverage pre-defined project templates from the Project Management Office (PMO) to create new projects in Rational Project Conductor.