CorasWorks® rPrograms™
Enterprise-wide Program Management Application
rPrograms Implementation
Scenario
rPrograms is designed to support a very flexible architecture that allows it to
be used in a broad set of implementation scenarios. This flexible architecture
is the key to being able to centrally manage work and information, no matter
where it resides.
Scenario 1: Standard Enterprise Implementation
In many
cases, rPrograms may be installed and implemented on a single Microsoft
SharePoint server or on a server farm consisting of many “integrated” Microsoft
SharePoint servers. On these servers, rPrograms can be built in a variety of
ways, depending on the specific needs of your organization. For example,
rPrograms could be built in a single SharePoint site collection, or could span
multiple site collections. Or, it could even be spread across virtual servers.
How you build it depends on a variety of factors, including your security
requirements, the number of programs and projects you’ll be managing, and your
back-up needs.
But
regardless of how and where you build the application, it still resides on
either a single server or server farm. As such, you are able to centrally
manage and access all the work and all the information from projects that reside
on the server or server farm. You are restricted to only that work and
information. And within a large majority of organizations, that is more than
sufficient to meet their program management needs.
However,
there are scenarios where you may need to work across “unconnected” or
distributed servers or server farms. These scenarios are covered in the next
section.
Scenario 2: Distributed Enterprise Implementation
There
are many examples of why an organization may need to connect to remote,
distributed servers or server farms. It could be to work with other portions of
the organization or to work with partners and vendors in a supply chain
relationship. Whatever the reason, rPrograms includes the ability to support
these distributed scenarios and “connect” these distributed servers and server
farms.
The
Remote Roll-Up Connections of rPrograms allow organizations to dramatically
expand the scope of program management beyond the bounds of the single server or
server farm discussed above. These Roll-Up Connections enable organizations to
integrate work and information from across distributed servers and server farms,
bringing it into the rPrograms interface where it can be viewed, accessed, and
worked on. It presents a true, real-time view of work and information from
across the enterprise, no matter where that work is being done or where the
information resides.
Below
are some specific examples of this distributed enterprise implementation.
-
Extranet Outside Your
Secured Network - It is quite common for organizations to use a
collaborative platform to work with external suppliers, customers, and
partners in an Extranet scenario. With rPrograms, organizations can create
a separate Extranet environment running on a server outside of their
firewall or internal secured network. Using the Remote Roll-Up Connections
of rPRograms, organizations can connect to this extranet and integrate the
work being performed by the external parties into the rPrograms
application. Now, all work can be seen and managed centrally from behind
the firewall.
-
Branch Offices – One Way - Many organizations have a headquarters location and branch
offices. All of the offices could use a central server farm. However,
often the branch offices have their own servers for their work. With
rPrograms you can connect to these branch office servers and integrate their
work into your centrally managed programs at the headquarters level.
-
Dispersed Business Units
– Two Way
- Larger enterprises often have geographically dispersed business units.
Each business unit may have different uses of rPrograms. Yet, they will
probably each have work occurring in other divisions. Using rPrograms, each
organization can connect their application to the other divisions. Each
application is centrally managed, and yet the required information from the
other divisions running on different infrastructures is available to them.
-
Cross-Organizations –
Toward the B-to-B Global Workforce - In today’s world, objectives are commonly
achieved by the work of multiple organizations. From one organization’s
perspective, this would consist of their external workforce of partners,
suppliers, vendors, and customers. Using the Remote Connection
capabilities of rPrograms, you can now connect the work of other
organizations into your application. This means that as they do their work,
in their environment, you will be able to see the status and information
real-time within your application. The only requirement is that the partner
organization has a minimal configuration of SharePoint with rPrograms.
A variation of this could include an ASP model, where
partners, suppliers, vendors, or customers leverage an ASP version of rPrograms,
instead of building out their own environment. This would be defined as “secure
separation.” However, you still leverage the benefits of the rPrograms Remote
Roll-Up Connections to see and manage the work of all the third parties.
Imagine you are using rPrograms to manage a program to
build and bring online a new manufacturing plant. From your perspective, you
want to see all of the work going on within your organization and with all of
the outside contractors. The contractors have a different perspective. They
view their work with you as an engagement. To them, your work is one of many
engagements they are involved in for your company. In this scenario, they are
using rPrograms to manage their engagements. Using rPrograms, you will be able
to see the work they are doing remotely as part of your Program Management
application and they are able to manage your contract as part of their
integrated engagement application.
Microsoft currently has four different SharePoint platforms in the market. When
you are trying to implement an application that connects with other
organizations, or even other branch offices or business units within your
organization, it cannot be assumed that they will all be running on the same
platform. The rPrograms Remote Roll-Up Connections allow all of the scenarios
above to occur in a completely heterogenous environment where each organization
can be working on any of the four Microsoft SharePoint platforms.