The Project Group Extends its Range of Microsoft Project Add-Ins with a Vital Tool for Project Managers

Munich, Germany. 29 June 2006 - The Project Group GmbH (TPG), one of Germany’s premier providers of add-in products, consulting services, and training for Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM), today announced that Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S) has acquired an enterprise license for the global implementation of The Project Group’s Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA). MTA is the newest addition to The Project Group’s product range.

Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S) is a systems and solutions integrator for industrial and infrastructure plant equipment and a global provider of services for the plant equipment business, extending from planning and installation to operation and the entire lifecycle. In this business, stringent project management is absolutely essential. The MTA Client from The Project Group (TPG) for Microsoft Office Project offers a graphical illustration of the evolution of important milestones and provides a solid basis for clear reporting, enabling companies to make rapid decisions while managing their projects.

“We decided on the MTA Client from The Project Group because we found the solution could be integrated easily into our existing procedures. It also helps our project managers to pilot their projects and gives our financial controllers a quick overview of the delivery deadlines of each piece of equipment,” said Richard Simon, Infrastructure Manager of the Siemens I&S business unit Industrial Plants in Erlangen, Germany.

With the MTA Client for the Microsoft Project client, TPG has succeeded in completely integrating the data into the Microsoft Project project file. This makes the results of MTA much more portable and much easier to send to other people. Other solutions have always generated at least one additional file that has to be sent out along with the Microsoft Project file and has to be saved in precisely the right place on the computer.

“MTA is a simple but essential tool for reporting needs and for supporting project management decision-making,” said Johann Strasser, managing director and development director of The Project Group. “That’s why it was important for us to extend our range of add-ins for Microsoft Project with precisely this tool and in such a way that it would deliver optimal technical integration with Microsoft Project. We believe we have achieved this goal with the MTA Client, which, used in tandem with our MTA Server for Project Server, provides an enterprise-wide solution.”

As a standalone COM add-in, the MTA Client can be completely integrated into any version of Microsoft Project from Version 2000 onwards. The graphical output is configurable, prints out well, and can also be created as a PDF document. The MTA Client is available in English and German.

A test version can be downloaded at www.theprojectgroup.com/E/produkte/download_mta/downloads.... The MTA Server for Microsoft Project Server is also available from TPG.

How does MTA help project managers?
Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) is an easy-to-read combination of the history and prognosis of selected project milestones. It is used to graphically illustrate time-related discrepancies and provides a quick overview for reporting, underpinning the successful management of projects.

MTA works as follows: When milestones are updated, the completion dates are continually reforecast. The symbols are related and connecting them produces a curve revealing the development over time. The horizontal line shows the ideal completion date in the original plan. The rising line shows a delay in reaching a deadline and the falling line shows that completion will be achieved before the deadline.

With this easy-to-use tool, periodic updates enable scheduling bottlenecks to be detected in good time. MTA provides concise visualization of, for example, repeated delays in reaching important milestones, which has a positive effect on the deadline awareness of the project participants.


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IMPORTANT NOTE TO EDITORS:
The Project Group Informationstechnologie GmbH is a German-based company and is not related to the similarly-named The Project Group based in Houston, Texas.

About Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services
The Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S) is the integrator of systems and solutions for industrial and infrastructure facilities and global service provider for the plant and projects business covering planning, installation, operation and the entire life cycle. I&S uses the electrical and technical products of other Siemens Groups in order to enhance productivity and improve competitiveness of companies in the sectors of metallurgy, water treatment, pulp and paper, oil and gas, marine engineering, open-cast mining, airport logistics, postal automation, intelligent traffic systems and industrial services. In fiscal 2005 (to September 30) I&S employed a total of 31,700 people worldwide and achieved total sales of EUR 5.390 billion.
Further information and downloads under: www.industry.siemens.com

About The Project Group
The Project Group GmbH (TPG) based in Munich, Germany, is a team of internationally-recognized experts in IT solutions for enterprise-wide project management. TPG develops Microsoft Project add-ons and offers implementation services for Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solutions to large and mid-sized enterprises. TPG places particular emphasis on the integration of EPM in the financial controlling area as well as on IT support for Project Management Offices (PMO). TPG’s range of services is complemented by seminars for Microsoft Project users and developers.

The Project Group is one of the four Microsoft Premier Project Partners in the German-speaking countries. The company’s management team, composed of internationally-acknowledged specialists in EPM, collectively has over 50 man-years experience with Microsoft Project since Version 1 Beta appeared in 1989. The Project Advisory Council, an international advisory committee for the Microsoft Project development team, counts two of The Project Group’s executives among its total of twenty members worldwide.

The Project Group’s customer base includes global enterprises like Agere, Agip, ATLAS, Audi, Bosch, Cognis Specialist Chemicals, DaimlerChrysler, Israel Aircraft Industries, Irish Rail, Keiper-Recaro, MAN B&W, Microsoft, Miele, Roche, SAP, Schukra, Siemens, and Swisscom.

For further information please visit www.theprojectgroup.com/index_e.html
Press contact: Mr. Achim Schmidt-Sibeth
Email: AchimS@theprojectgroup.de
Phone: +49 (89) 61 55 93 51
Fax: +49 (89) 61 55 93 40

This release was published on openPR.