CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 February 2007
Product News
Next Generation Program Management for Agile Advantage Announced
Agile Software Corporation announced the second generation of Agile Advantage Program Management. Building on Agile's years of success with program management, the enhanced Agile Advantage Program Management helps customers maintain better visibility and control of their programs and program changes, leverage past program investments to more accurately plan for new programs, and integrate product chain partners more tightly and more securely into program changes. Agile Advantage is Agile's PLM offering for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
"SMEs often have multiple engineering locations, several design partners, and a supply and manufacturing chain, all working on one or more programs simultaneously," said Craig Livingston, vice president and general manager, SME solutions, Agile. "Working with such dispersed program participants can create problems such as keeping everyone aligned with program changes, issues, and decisions and ensuring that product chain partners are kept informed of changes. We drew upon Agile's deep expertise in product record management and secure roles and privileges management to make important enhancements to the next-generation of program management. By connecting program phases and milestones to our robust product record management, quality management, and product compliance management capabilities, we are able to deliver a more comprehensive, flexible, and easier-to-use program management solution to Agile Advantage customers."
The new Agile Advantage Program Management includes the following enhancements and changes:
Enhanced Program Visibility for Executives and Program Managers.
If executives and senior program managers do not have a single location which provides visibility into the active programs under their responsibility, they cannot be sure those programs are under control. Cutting and pasting information from multiple, disparate sources often leave managers "flying blind." New Agile Advantage Program Management delivers all active program information, all 'My Programs' information, and all 'My Phases and Milestones' information, to executives, program managers, and even product chain partners through the ease of single-click, global dynamic searches. Additionally, each user can create and save their own searches.
Robust Program Change Management.
Product requirements change, markets change, technologies change, compliance requirements change, and supply chain actions change. Any of these events will force changes to a minimum of one program variable (cost, completion dates, scope, etc.). Agile Advantage Program Management delivers the same robust change management capabilities to program processes as it delivers for ECO management. Program change order capabilities allow users to track changes to cost, dates, and program scope. With Agile Advantage Program Management, program revision histories and change orders provide key visibility. Most significantly, the program change order capability enables users to take full advantage of Agile Advantage's robust change workflow features, including auto notifications, FDA CFR Part 11 compliance approvals and history. Agile Advantage Program Management delivers a complete, market- tested, auditable program change process to meet the needs of compliance standards teams.
Leverage Past Programs Investments to More Accurately Plan New Programs.
New program schedules often are calculated by using a variety of task "guess-timates" which have little basis in reality, and result in inaccurate schedules. Yet within the same organization, a very similar program may have been completed at some point in the past, containing finalized, fact-based scheduling data. For SMEs in particular, it is imperative to harness this knowledge and realize a return on earlier program investments. Agile Advantage Program Management makes it easy to find similar programs in a company's history, 'Save As' the new program, and begin a new program with a realistic schedule. By exposing the pitfalls experienced in prior programs and enabling program managers to plan ahead and leverage lessons learned in the past, Agile Advantage Program Management's use of historic program data helps SMEs speed products to market while minimizing costs.
Agile Advantage Program Management will be available in late spring 2007. For more information, contact an Agile representative at 408-284-4000, or contact an Agile reseller partner.
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