Are you finding it difficult to get the benefits of
Product Based Planning (PBP)?

In the real world of projects

• keeping track of a developing and changing product based plan
• ensuring consistency between the various elements
• moving seamlessly into the domain of activities, resources and scheduling

is (at the least) challenging without some software support - to record and check the outputs from your planning workshops, and to help create the necessary documentation for interested parties.

To make a real difference, you need a tool that "understands the rules" of PBP, is intuitive to use and guides you gently in the right direction. And, when you are ready to move into the realm of MS Project, offers a straightforward interface that preserves the dependencies that you carefully built into the PFD.

Then you need ChangeAide (previously known as P2WORLD)

Software Product Description

ChangeAide Release 3.0 is a software tool designed to assist project managers using the "product-based planning" technique defined as part of the PRINCE2® Project Management Method. In addition, ChangeAide integrates a number of additional concepts from Managing Successful Programmes (MSP)™. This software also supports other project management processes such as the Project Management Institute - Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) and Atern (formerly DSDM).

For further information about the product, please visit the online help for ChangeAide.

Features

ChangeAide has an intuitive graphical user interface, which uses interactive diagrams and tables to assist in the following activities:

• Producing a complete Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) diagram; (Also known as a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
• Producing Product Descriptions for each Product on the PBS;
• Producing a Product Flow Diagram (PFD) for the products identified on the PBS;
• Preparing Project Activities to structure the work to complete all of the products;
• Establishing and maintaining a Project Log;
• Producing Product Description Reports and Project Activity Reports in various formats.
• Exporting documents in various formats, including Printer only, DHTML, PDF, Excel, Word.
• Producing stage PBSs and PFDs as the project progresses.

Benefits

• Reduces the amount of project manager time needed to create and maintain consistent Product Based Plans.
• Creates a single unified document per project, containing synchronised versions of most of the diagrammatic and textual project documents required in the Planning (PL) process within PRINCE2®.
• Provides interactive tracking of all these project documents and the relationships between them.
• Includes help files and integrated tutorials to show how to use the toolset.
• Provides example projects to demonstrate an integrated view of a Product Based Plan.
• Provides valuable support in learning and applying the underlying PRINCE2® methods.
• Eases the creation of plans for Microsoft Project.
• Provides a Visual Status mechanism to highlight incomplete products in ongoing projects.

Product Environment

• ChangeAide can be installed on windows based PCs running Windows XP or later.
• ChangeAide exports and imports relevant Microsoft Project plan information.
• ChangeAide is available in English (full support) and Dutch (partial support).