From November 2020 to May 2021, LEO Consulting implemented the project of introducing the portfolio and project management system – OnePlan, for MODUS X company. The team was composed of: Oleg Snurnikov (Project Manager), Oleksiy Prosnitskyy (Project Sponsor), and Vitaly Denisov (Power BI Developer).
Responsible for the implementation from MODUS X was the Project Office, namely the manager of transformation and process automation – Vadym Melenevsky.
We talked with Vadym about the collaboration that took place and we are sharing the results of our conversation in this case.
About MODUS X company
MODUS X is a team of 550+ experienced specialists who design, develop and implement business applications, comprehensive IT and cybersecurity solutions, and data-driven products, helping companies achieve their strategic goals.
The company supports the workflows of 60+ companies in various sectors: from retail, trading, manufacturing, utilities, etc., ensuring the reliability of infrastructure, data availability and compliance with cybersecurity requirements.
MODUS X provides support for the digital transformation of the DTEK corporation, which was the first in the Ukrainian energy sector to embark on a large-scale digital transformation.
Situation Description
At one point, the DTEK company initiated transformational changes in the field of IT and cybersecurity involving advanced digital technologies and processes. In my opinion, the path chosen became natural for the company – evolutionary and in some cases revolutionary, as there are few ready-made solutions for the energy sector, moreover, they do not fully meet the needs of the business. So the idea arose to create a team, which is now a separate IT company MODUS X as part of the DTEK group, which would cover ambitious and strategic needs in the energy sector.
Regarding the project management system, we initially dealt with R&D. One such tool was Microsoft Project, which we piloted for 4 months in 2019 together with LEO Consulting. As a result, the project team concluded that this tool is not flexible because it was created for projects implemented according to Waterfall (cascade project management model), which became a significant limitation for us.
We continued to search for an alternative solution that would be no less functional than Microsoft Project. The criteria we used to select a project management system:
- Ability to manage project portfolios in the system.
- Flexibility and adaptability. The tool should comply with the established methodologies, processes, and approaches of our company. Often we use hybrid Agile/Waterfall or classic Agile methodologies, such as Kanban, Scrum, or Lean.
- Compliance with corporate requirements for project data security.
- The possibility of integration with other tools, for example, SAP, SharePoint, etc.
- Modeling of individual projects and project portfolio as a whole.
- Formation of online reporting 24/7.
About OnePlan
OnePlan was one of the project management systems under consideration.
We decided to pilot the system, evaluate its capabilities from different angles, built a test environment where we tried to “break” it with invented business logic. As a result, we came to a positive decision to use OnePlan. Since 2020, we have been using it on a permanent basis at MODUS X in industrial operation. We even “packaged” part of the operational linear activity into OnePlan, although of course, this solution required many changes in settings, according to processes.
Figure 1. Visualization of the OnePlan IT solution interface
OnePlan is a flexible tool adapted to our project management model, as it allows to simultaneously implement Kanban projects, Scrum projects, SDLC projects, and PLC projects. For each type of project, specific processes and stages of execution, such as PoC or MVP, are set up in the OnePlan system. At the same time, the project manager controls the ‘magic triangle’ of project management – terms, budget, and scope.
I like the model of new OnePlan releases. Rolling Release implies continuous development and implementation of releases. OnePlan company releases about 12 releases a year, announcing intentions and plans for improvements, which allows tracking the direction of system development and planned changes.
Despite OnePlan’s flexibility, the system incorporates a certain project management philosophy, so some aspects, such as exclusively Forecast without ETC&EAC, we have to bypass.
Nevertheless, OnePlan meets our needs and will be used for some time. We use approximately 90% of OnePlan functionality – from simple portfolio roadmaps to functions calculating the involved man-hours of the entire project portfolio.
A feature of OnePlan is that it does not have a desktop version, it is 100% online. There is a mobile version of OnePlan, but we do not use it from a security point of view, as our company can be a target for cyber attacks.
Figure 2. Visualization of the OnePlan IT solution interface
Disadvantages in OnePlan
The documentation and manuals from OnePlan are inconvenient. A lot of things are unclear until you test them at work. Part of the description and screenshots from the instructions do not correspond to the real state of the product, block diagrams are missing. Lately, I have noticed positive changes in this direction, and although the documentation update happens with a certain delay, it is becoming more qualitative.
About competitive solutions
In addition to OnePlan, we considered other solutions such as RedMine, EasyProject, and products from Atlassian, known as Jira. Although Atlassian has many diverse products that integrate well with each other, at that time we noted that additional modules required significant effort to administer, so the choice fell on OnePlan considering all its advantages.
For MODUS X, the search and testing of different solutions turned out to be justified.
About cooperation with LEO Consulting
There are several reasons why the work with LEO took place. Firstly, LEO Consulting won the tender for this implementation. Secondly, LEO Consulting showed itself well in the pilot project with Microsoft Project. Thirdly, we had a very pleasant and warm communication in cooperation.
We knew that LEO Consulting has a strong team, and also an advantage was that they have experience and high qualification in deploying and setting up project management systems.