The desire to innovate, challenge the status quo, and break away from the past is alive and well in the telecom and infrastructure deployment industries, as it is in many others.
Despite this, mastering time, dates, and milestones remains the cornerstone of all radio and fiber deployments, regardless of the technology. After consulting with several clients, we decided to return to the fundamentals by developing the Date Matrix.
The Date Matrix is an advanced planning tool that provides a comprehensive and customizable view of a project’s key dates (e.g., lease signing date, construction start, completion). It allows project managers to gain accurate, instant insights into their project’s progress. This new feature is the result of collaboration with several clients, highlighting our strategy to simplify our users’ daily tasks and solve complex problems for them.
The Date Matrix revolutionizes how project managers view and interact with deadlines, forecasts, and milestones. This feature enables project managers to create custom tracking templates that seamlessly integrate with existing task and process management workflows.
The strength of the Date Matrix lies in its ability to display baseline, forecasted, and actual dates simultaneously for each project phase. This comprehensive view allows teams to:
At the heart of this matrix is an intuitive visual representation of a project’s key phases, each marked with a unique color-coding system. For example, progress markers distinguish forecasted dates on track, forecasted dates behind schedule, and actual dates, enabling proactive tracking.
This approach provides project managers with clear, immediate insights into project status, helping them identify each phase quickly and obtain an overall view of ongoing projects. Decision-making becomes faster and more informed.
Olivier Lespinasse, Product Owner at IT-Development, explains: “By displaying completion percentages, project managers can see delays accumulating and take the necessary decisions.“
The Date Matrix includes an intelligent calculation system that considers each project’s unique characteristics. It automatically adjusts forecasted timelines based on parameters like new or existing structures, rooftop installations, and more. This ensures a more precise and realistic projection of deadlines.
This new feature drastically improves how users interact with project data. Project managers can now update key dates directly from the matrix view, eliminating the need to navigate through project instance details. This streamlined access offers several benefits:
The Date Matrix offers many benefits:
ClickOnSite adopted a comprehensive approach to developing the Date Matrix, drawing from industry best practices while leveraging its expertise.
Our team thoroughly analyzed the solutions offered by leading project management software providers, identifying the most appreciated and effective features. Additionally, we collaborated closely with our partner, BuildAndRun, whose experience in planning tools proved invaluable. This synergy enabled us to integrate proven features while adapting them to the specific needs of our telecom sector users.
The Product Owner says: “With the Date Matrix, we aimed to enhance the services ClickOnSite provides to users, especially telecom project managers.“
However, we went beyond merely replicating existing solutions. Our development team innovated by creating unique features tailored to the specific needs of mobile network operators and tower companies.
“This new feature aligns perfectly with ClickOnSite’s strategy to deliver optimal solutions to its users, addressing their expressed needs. It results from close collaboration with clients and a deep analysis of the daily challenges faced by mobile network operators and tower companies in infrastructure project management. Our primary goal was to save them time when communicating with stakeholders about project progress. Today, that goal has been fully achieved!“
The development process posed several challenges. Our team carefully designed an intuitive user interface and implemented a no-code configuration system for management rules. We also focused on performance to ensure a smooth user experience, even with frequent updates.
The result is a solution that combines the best of established practices with targeted innovations, offering users a powerful tool tailored to their needs.
ClickOnSite remains committed to enhancing telecom project management. The next step is already underway, with the introduction of configurable milestones that will form the basis for automated reporting, further enhanced by default dashboards.
Stay tuned for updates!
And discover today how the Date Matrix can improve your project management by contacting us for a personalized demo.
