A project planning tool born from the needs of embedded system development projects.

The PlanMinder

Managing project plans should be easy. This is why The PlanMinder is built around automatic scheduling and automatic feedback from daily work reports. Your plans will always be up to date. When scope, priorities or availability changes, you will immediately see the effect it has on your plans.

Developing new embedded systems is difficult, and your projects will be facing risks and uncertainty. And yet you still need to commit to budgets and deadlines, coordinate the efforts of your team members, and handle lead times and both unexpected problems and known risks.

Uncertainty calculations will quantify the risks you are taking, and let you make better informed decisions. It gives you early warnings to adjust plans and avoid missing deadlines.

Automatic Scheduling

The PlanMinder separates plan from schedule. Define activities, assign them to people and prioritize them. Make time estimates with uncertainty, and add dependencies between them.

The PlanMinder calculates when, and displays it in a Gantt like chart. Report the work you do, change priorities, time estimates and availability. The schedule is automatically updated. Your plan, that captures the core of the project, needs to be changed much less frequently.

Illustration of the automatc scheduler in The PlanMinder.

Automatic Scheduling

Risk Management

You don't know exactly how long things will take when you start, and what problems you will encounter. In The PlanMinder all time estimates includes an estimated uncertainty. Using Monte Carlo simulations The PlanMinder calculates how this uncertainty accumulates across all scheduled projects for every milestone. Both for calendar dates and budgeted costs.

You can make informed decisions on what risks you are willing to take, and prepare contingency plans to implement if necessary. Monitor how the probabilities change as work progresses to get an early warning, and avoid last minute crunch.

Illustration of how deadline uncertainty calculations helps you mitigate risks.

Timeline

Embedded systems development from idea to plan animation

Schedule-independent project plan

Model your projects

Plan for external activities, such as the manufacture and delivery of a prototype. Include the uncertainty of delivery time in your plan.

You can include discrete risks in your project plan. EMC-testing is a common example. There is a risk your design will fail, and you will have to spend extra time to resolve it and make a new prototype. This can be modelled in your plan.

Add checkpoints to model your quality assurance system, like to enforce a design review before ordering a prototype.

Keep track of developer availability through the work schedule. Vacations, overtime and employees with responsibilities beside the project can be handled.

Project Schedule

Level up your Project Management

The PlanMinder can be used for any type of project, but it was developed from many years of experience with embedded projects and electronic product developement. If you are working on a team that does anything similar, this is the tool you need.

The PlanMinder will help you before the project starts, with time estimates and risk assessments. Avoid the pitfalls of whishfull thinking by letting the tool calculate what you can do with the resources you have, and how the risks and uncertainties accumulate.

During the project, The PlanMinder will reduce the administrative work, and still let you have a plan that is up to date. The world will change, and so should your plans. With The PlanMinder there is no resistance to change, and you can use the scenario mode to explore alternatives before you make decisions.

After the project has finished, the records you have created will help you improve over time. Written records beats subjective memory, telling the story of what actually happened. You can compare your estimates and actual outcome the next time you are planning and estimating similar activities.

Less work - Better plans

The PlanMinder combines and adapts several well known principles into a tool that gives easy access to all the benefits, all the time.

Bad planning is a health risk

Stress and burn out is the number one work related health risk for engineers and developers. Unreasonable expectations, uncertainty, and lack of influence over the work situation are big contributors to these risks.

The PlanMinder creates schedules based on what is expected to be possible, not on wishes and needs. Over-assigning work becomes impossible. When problems occur, automatic feedback makes them and the effect they will have visible and possible to adapt to.

For project managers the future becomes more predictable, and problems can be discovered earlier when there still is time to do something about them. The more reliable and detailed information The PlanMinder gives for long-term planning benefits all involved.

Empower your team

The automatic feedback from time reports makes The PlanMinder flexible. You do not need to strictly follow the schedule The PlanMinder has created. Your team members have access to all the information about priorities and dependencies, and can make their own decisions. Time reports will have the schedule and plan updated accordingly.

This enables your team to focus on the overall goals, helping each other out and working as a team. Time report records makes sure individuals get credit even if they help out outside their personal responsibilities. This is not only good for producing maximum value, it also benefits work satisfaction, engagement and health.

Screenshots

Getting started is easy

Changing processes and starting to use new tools can be daunting. The PlanMinder is designed to make this easy. It is a project planning tool. It will not try or require you to replace all your other tools and processes. It handles project plans and schedules, and it requires team members to report what they have done every day. Everything else is optional.

Once you start using The PlanMinder you have a two month free trial to evaluate if it works as you expect. You can start in a smaller scale for one project in parallel with your existing routines before making a definite switch.

Learn more:

Videos: The introduction video series is a good starting point to learn what The PlanMinder is about.

Demo: The PlanMinder ships with a Demo mode. It contains some example projects with project history, and lets you experiment locally on your computer without a server.

Manual: The help pages guides you through all the details about The PlanMinder. The question mark button in the app takes you directly to the relevant chapter.

Server: To set up a server for your team, start by reading "The PlanMinder is a self hosted service", with links to more detailed guides.

Setup: The guide "Setting up The PlanMinder for Your Organization" goes through a few things your team needs to consider when starting to use The PlanMinder.

Other valuable guides and articles are available on the Resources Page, for example:

Support: For any questions you are welcome to contact us by e-mail theplanminder@auspicia.se .