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128 ROLE-BASED NEEDS FOR RESOURCES

the project portfolio, these views would entail a high-level survey of the data, gen-
erally across programs, projects, functions, cost accounts, locations, and so on.
Another common condition is that these groups are, for the most part, viewers of
the information, rather than suppliers of data.

There is no need for these people to interface directly with the planning and
scheduling tool. In fact, if the only way that they could get at the information was
to work directly with critical path scheduling software, they are likely to be de-
terred from such activity. This is because the complex nature of these formats
tends to be intimidating to the casual user. What these users need, rather, is ac-
cess to the projects information, in formats that are not intimidating and do not
require the learning of new computer protocols.

The natural solution, considering today’s technology, involves designing the
management-level subsystem around a webpage format. When properly de-
signed, these formats have the opposite effect—drawing the managers to the
information, rather than frightening them away. The solution, however, is
more involved than just printing data output in a webpage format. This re-
quires the publisher to predetermine, for each user, exactly what they want to
see. This will not support the needs of these users. Their needs are dynamic,
and so access to the information must support this need. The web browser
must be a doorway into the vast system of project data, rather than a fixed
snapshot. While each of the users should be able to have a doorway that is de-
signed for their specific perspective, once they have passed through the door-
way they should be able to choose among several rooms of information, and
should be able to drill-down, filter, and rearrange the data to respond to their
specific need-to-know.

Specific Needs

The formats described above will provide a simple, yet effective means of getting
at the essential data of the project portfolio. However, it does not assure us that
the desired information will be available, and in a way so as to provide the stories
required to support the day-to-day decisions of these executives. There is a world
of difference between data and information. If the data cannot be arranged in
ways to provide insight into the projects situations, then it is essentially useless.
For instance, the CFO needs to view the data arranged by various budget cate-
gories and cost accounts. The strategic planning executive needs to have the data
segmented by program initiatives. This cross section would also be of interest to
several other senior managers.

The functional managers are most interested in viewing data by skill and re-