PLANTA Supports Hermes PM Method

Project Success without Effort

Projects become more successful if acknowledged methods and tools are used. Many methods provide orientation to prevent typical problems in the planning and controlling of projects. E.g. the linear waterfall model according to PMBOK – or PRINCE2 as a further development – help to prevent resource bottlenecks in parallel running or complex projects. Agile methods like Scrum and Kanban place a stronger focus on team work and customer feedback and allow for variable project scopes while taking customer objectives into account. The applicability of a PM method strongly depends on the maturity of project management in the company and on how well the adequate PM method is mapped in the PM software with respect to company processes.

PM methods are usually quite complex

Most PM methods come with a comprehensive documentation, emphasizing their complexity (PMBOK® Guide, 6th edition: 756 pages). A method with a completely different approach is HERMES, an open standard by the Swiss Federal Administration. This project management method comes with low complexity (4th edition 2020: 212 pages), modular structure and a plain and simple method structure. The user receives assistance in the form of scenarios for specific project procedures and in the form of checklists and templates for efficient project handling. Since 1975, HERMES is used in the Swiss Federal Administration and since 2015 its use is mandatory for “projects in the field of informatics, in the development of services ad products as well as in the adaption of business operation”. An option for agile development, e.g. with Scrum, has been added. Also numerous companies from the private sector have already successfully implemented HERMES.

PLANTA has integrated HERMES

PLANTA has integrated the HERMES project management method in its software system PLANTA Project and provides simple and comprehensible role descriptions and handy templates for quick and efficient project realization. A.o., tasks and their individual process steps can easily be assigned to the persons involved according to their roles.

Project managers receive a maximum of support in planning, monitoring, and control of projects. Swiss PLANTA customers thus comply with the directions of the ISB federal supervisory organ for informatics which ensures the implementation of the information and communication technology strategy (IKT) in the federal administration.

Streamlined and easily implementable PM method

PLANTA’s objective is to provide teams with the option to use this streamlined and easily implementable method for any kind of project in order to be able to control projects more efficiently. The HERMES templates integrated in the PLANTA system ensure a quick start and a structured project procedure with the HERMES procedure model. An important element is the uniform phase model with appropriate milestones (quality gates) depending on the respective scenario. Quality gates provide an option to have the project implementation phase structured more transparently by means of date bound project stage checks.