20th PLANTA User Forum: Two Days Full of Inspi­ra­ti­on and Exch­an­ge of Experiences

Pre­sen­ta­ti­ons with PM Use Cases, Inter­ac­ti­ve Work­shops, Net­wor­king, and a Fresh Breeze

PLANTA’s 20th User Forum was, once again, a par­ti­cu­lar­ly exci­ting event mark­ed by high tem­pe­ra­tures. It almost seems to be a tra­di­ti­on that out­side the­re is a bak­ing heat while indoors heads are spin­ning with inspi­ring pre­sen­ta­ti­ons, inter­ac­ti­ve work­shops, and inten­si­ve net­wor­king. Cus­to­mers and employees were equal­ly thril­led by the uni­que atmo­sphe­re and par­ti­ci­pa­ted vivid­ly. After an eventful pro­gram­me throug­hout the day which con­vey­ed pro­found pro­ject manage­ment know­ledge and expe­ri­ence from day-to-day pro­ject manage­ment prac­ti­ce, the evening pro­gram allo­wed the par­ti­ci­pan­ts to enjoy a plea­sant bree­ze and cool drinks while crui­sing on the Rhi­ne. A wel­co­me coo­ling down which allo­wed ever­y­bo­dy to rech­ar­ge their bat­te­ries for the second day. Many par­ti­ci­pan­ts took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make new cont­acts both during the evening pro­gram and during this year’s exten­ded breaks bet­ween pre­sen­ta­ti­ons and work­shops. Fur­ther­mo­re, the par­ti­ci­pan­ts exten­si­ve­ly tes­ted the new PLANTA soft­ware at the demo coun­ters. This year’s raff­le pre­sen­ted ano­ther point of attraction.

The User Forum offe­red a wide ran­ge of pro­ject manage­ment topics, inclu­ding agi­le and hybrid approa­ches, port­fo­lio manage­ment, data pro­tec­tion in pro­ject manage­ment, and Pro­ject Manage­ment Office (PMO). Tes­ti­mo­ni­als of renow­ned com­pa­nies such as Signal Iduna, Hei­del­ber­ger Druck­ma­schi­nen, Losan Phar­ma und Thys­sen­krupp Uhde pro­vi­ded exci­ting insights and show­ed best prac­ti­ce examp­les from the sec­tors of insu­rance, mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring, phar­maceu­tics, and plant con­s­truc­tion. The work­shops by met­is­lea­der­ship and VISTEM pro­vi­ded prac­ti­cal tips for agi­le task manage­ment, mul­­ti-pro­­ject manage­ment, and port­fo­lio management.

One of the high­lights of this year’s User Forum was the key­note by Prof. Dr. Schö­nert from RFH Colo­gne. She gave five essen­ti­al tips for suc­cessful­ly tur­ning ide­as into pro­jects, empha­si­zing, a.o., the importance of Focus (key words “Voli­ti­on” und “72 hours rules”) and the importance of get­ting sup­port­ers, sin­ce suc­cess can rare­ly be achie­ved alo­ne. In a live demons­tra­ti­on, she show­ed how AI can be a key fac­tor for suc­cessful pro­ject planning.

At its 20th User Forum, PLANTA gave a live pre­sen­ta­ti­on of the new fea­tures of its upco­ming soft­ware release: in PLANTA pro­ject and port­fo­lio the focus was on usa­bi­li­ty impro­ve­ments of input/output fields, con­text menus, and tool­tips, exten­si­ons in port­fo­lio manage­ment (e.g. Gantt chart, new charts, web port­fo­lio), mini work­flows with Micro­soft 365 (Adap­ti­ve Cards), chart cus­to­mi­zer, mas­ter data syn­chro­niza­ti­on via LDAP, opti­mi­zed update pro­ce­du­re. For the agi­le plan­ning and col­la­bo­ra­ti­on tool PLANTA pul­se, exten­si­ons in the area of user-defi­­ned fields, pro­ject manage­ment, and noti­fi­ca­ti­ons were pre­sen­ted. In hybrid use of the tra­di­tio­nal plan­ning com­po­nent PLANTA pro­ject in com­bi­na­ti­on with the agi­le PLANTA pul­se com­po­nent, the most signi­fi­cant opti­miza­ti­on is the auto­ma­tic syn­chro­niza­ti­on and impro­ved ope­ra­ti­on. One high­light of the pre­sen­ta­ti­on was the inte­gra­ti­on of AI in the PLANTA soft­ware: “PLANTA GPT” is a gene­ra­ti­ve AI on the basis of PLANTA’s Online Help which pro­vi­des the user with quick ans­wers to his/her ques­ti­ons on soft­ware operation.

The­re is always a next User Forum: the PLANTA team alre­a­dy works full steam to put tog­e­ther a pro­gram­me for 2024 which is just as inspi­ring and infor­ma­ti­ve and reflects the needs and inte­rests of our customers.