Incis experience proves an inspiration

By ADAM GIFFORD

Being in charge of the Incis project turned out to be the kiss of death for Tony Crewdson's 22-year career as a police officer, but it also provided the inspiration for a new piece of software for managing projects.

When the Government pulled the plug on the $100 million police Integrated National Crime Information System in 1999, Crewdson saw it was time to leave the force.

The police told the ministerial inquiry into Incis that 70 per cent of the project was delivered for 70 per cent of the contracted price, including significant technology advances in operational support.

But with a reek of failure over the project Crewdson felt he wanted to find ways of running large projects better.

After leaving the police he did some consulting for the State Services Commission on e-government initiatives and undertook a search for project management software.

"I couldn't find any tools which were any good, so I decided to build a product which would change and redefine that space."

Many project planners rely on Gantt charts, graphical renditions of tasks and priorities, that can be generated by common programs such as Microsoft Project.

"People have a view projects are about tasks. We have the view they are about people, risks and assets. People fixated on Gantt charts will get it wrong," he said.

"Unless you bring in a tool like ours you don't see the interdependencies, you don't see the resource-allocation issues."

Plan Wise, launched last year, is starting to pick up sales. Current users include TVNZ, Land Transport Safety Authority, Wellington City Council and Hosting and Datacentre Services (HDS), which offers a hosted version. PlanWise costs about $50,000 for 30 users and can be up and running in 10 days.

Wellington City Council IT programme management manager David McLachlan said PlanWise was being used by about 50 staff working on IT projects, and would eventually be used by about 400 staff.

He said PlanWise would allow council units to link projects with the district plan, the foundation of the council's business.

"PlanWise gives us all the information in one place with the right links to outcomes and strategies. We can go in and view an outcome in the district plan and understand all the projects which are helping to deliver to that outcome and where they are at."

Wellington City had chosen the hosted service.

"It was a quick way of implementing. It meant we did not have to come up with capital expenditure and it gave us a good look and see of the product.

"One way of looking at it is we have hundreds of copies of Microsoft Project in the organisation which we don't use all of, so if we cut back on licences we can save all that."