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Old 11-29-2012, 02:16 PM
schferk schferk is online now
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Join Date: 11-02-2010
Posts: 151
On ResultsManager and integration in general

In some post above, I think I said that RM was "ugly". That's not really true. The really ugly screenshots are right on their introductory page for RM, but squeeze too many different things / several real screenshots into just some "screen" there, and that doesn't seem to be a realistic representation of the thing (see below where in 70 minutes I did not see ANY such cramped & divided screen), so they harm their own marketing interests by seemingly "false representation". (EDIT : In fact I had been mislead by too a tiny and not enlargeable screenshot of theirs, that showed a screen cluttered with FIVE minuscule windows each representing another part of what RM is able of.)

Another thing is that RM makes ample use of the MM subbranch borders which I don't find pretty and which always remind my of ugly address tags for your luggage.

I have visioned a 70 min. "webinar" on RM here

http://www.gyronix.com/webinars/box/gtdsg0210/

and can now say that RM is far from being as "technical" as I had thought (= pulling up number and such), but does "real" PM within MM, but in a very "macro" way, i.e. the developer himself recommends doing the "global update" just two times a day, in the morning and then after lunch, because then, a bunch of macros start, needing their time to complete, and doing a lot of "gathering anew, again and again" and "re-creating all your consolidation stuff from scratch every time" (= I suppose this, no diffamation intended if I'm totally wrong here), so if I'm right (and I seem to be, from the above), MM (and with its lack of native clones, hence the necessity to build up "virtual clones" by just copying and building up the same things, again and again and again, while you wait for this crazy "external macros doing their duty" to come to an end) is, technically-wise, certainly not the PM tool of your choice if doing heavy PM work.

On the other hand, that MM-and-RM combi is able (with the above limitations) to deploy PM even to little groups, let'ts say 5 or 8 people, in a more or less interactive way, with personnalized views for the different group members (but as for real-time updating of consolidations of gathered data, I maintain my doubts, for the time being). So, let's remember UR's network capabilities here, and envision, as I said before, possible MM-UR integration, even for groups / little networks!

As said before, the whole RM tool seems to be a triggered-macro system, but an incredibly sophisticated one, and as such it seems to be no "real native sw" if I dare say, but an enormous (and very complicated and very smart) work-around - but then, you'd wish, at any moment, that all this elaborate functionality it provides, should be natively come from somewhere, meaning the real-time updating of every little bit that should be updated, instead of the seemingly building-up from scratch of the needed dashboards and such, two times a day, and not really knowing the state of your system when it comes to the details, in-between, and it's evident that these probs get worse with every collaborator who's joining the network.

AND, of course, RM is for MM-PM integration only, and there does not seem to be any connectivity to further needs, e.g. having the 100,000 or so data items within your UR db - also made available to anyone in the network, by UR's means, but then, how to administered within that MM PM system? Meaning, there would be a lot of further scripting be needed to be done, by the GyroQ functionality and on top of what RM delivers, with lots of possible problems from the interaction of such threads being triggered from several such external tools, all the more so within a network.

On the other hand, much of the RM functionality could be "mirrored" / replicated by GyroQ scripts, i.e. if there are things that RM does, and you would like your integrated system to do these, GyroQ scripts or a set of such scripts could do this (cf. the incredible MindReader tool constructed from such scripts, and also available for free at the above-mentioned activityowner site - I had just inadvertently left out the mention of their MR above; and another detail: that "how to get out a max of Gyronix products" site is maintained by sombody else, not by Gyronix, well, that's it's an absolutely outstanding resource, I said that before!).

I would have liked to tell you here, even RM is well worth it, but besides from the considerations above, there's another factor that makes me neither wanting to promote it, nor do I have the intention to buy it, at this time. Gyronix has made a formidable effort there, and for what it does, RM (not to be mixed-up with MR) should normally be "worth" the price. BUT: In the cited webinar, the developer 2 or 3 times (i.e. at least at about 48'45" and 55'00") shows and comments functionality in HIS version of RM, which are NOT included in the version he sells!

In fact, he mentions that these are available only to his customers who pay for his consulting services, and on their site, I must read that the consulting services (of the developer himself at least, don't know if there are also less expensive ones) are 700 bucks for 2 hours, see for yourself:

https://gyronix.infusionsoft.com/app...l?productId=59

What would you see if kinook told us that yes, there IS the intermediate consolidation level (that I've been asking for in this forum) in a special version of UR, as is trans-UR-db search and other goodies, but that's special version available only to kinook's consulting biz customers? Well, we all would have left the product, I suppose, and this forum would be dead, right? (For clarification: There is a standard, and a prof. RM, but the developer in the webinar mentions the price, 285 bucks, so this is NOT a misunderstanding on my side, the prof. RM having these features when only the standard version does not: No, he clearly states these feature are for those high-value customers only, and you bet I'd be very unhappy with that if I ever layed out 285 bucks plus vat for the crippled "prof." version.)

So, I think I'll do lots of GyroQ scripting instead, but interactively MM-MM, for - light (and, at this time, 1-person) - "PM", and for MM-UR and such (while having a close eye on the functional point of intersection, i.e. the "distribution" of "what should be done in MM, and what better be done within the UR / bulk info material part of the overall system?". The webinar doesn't address the question of where and how to stock the "material" and how to address it from that RM system, but then, we wouldn't be here in the UR forum if that wasn't the core question in our workflow.

Anyway, there's another aspect to this: Their product "DecisionMill" (297 bucks plus vat) should have been integrated into RM, instead of being sold separately, or, more precisely:

I strongly advocate integration of PM into decision making and vice versa, meaning both should be an integrated, iterative process.

E.g., you often must dive into a lot of detail, i.e. into a lot of "PM" style planning, in order to assez the financial (= inherent costs) and / or technical feasibility of parts of your projects, and so, your decision making depends on the realization = "PM" part, and vice versa: within the PM, there will be lots of alternatives, viable or not, and it's advisable to trigger decision-making techniques re the more important of them at least, since it could save lots of ressources (manpower, money, etc.).

In fact, the absence of both integrated decision-making features and "stuff storage" (or sophisticated linking functionality for the latter) in traditional PM tools is a predominant reason many people do PM in outliners and such, instead of trying to organize themselves within the (more specific, but otherwise twofold insufficiant) functionality of PM or PM-related sw.

Last edited by schferk; 11-29-2012 at 02:31 PM.
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