Douglas County Colorado, currently the fastest growing county in the U.S., implemented Projectricity in late 2001 and is using Projectricity to identify and manage requirements, issues and change requests on a large multi-year effort to upgrade their internal business systems.  This is a multi-million dollar program consisting of many projects spanning departments across the county.

The TimeTracker Project
Douglas County’s first project required building an automated system to capture employee timesheet information county wide.  The county began with only a word processor to capture requirements. Even prior to selecting Projectricity, a key stakeholder after review of it’s capabilities stated that “the savings are obvious.”

Right away Projectricity demonstrated value.  The conversion to Projectricity came in 50-60% sooner than expected, according to Craig Vacura, Douglas County Project Manager on the TimeTracker project.  Projectricity quickly demonstrated it’s reliability and comprehensiveness as the county chose it to be the sole requirements management tool, despite original plans to use it in parallel with the legacy word processor-based approach.  “Projectricity met our needs and demonstrated self-sufficiency,” according to Craig.

Upon project completion, Craig reports that the project experienced an incredible 75% or more reduction in the effort required to manage project requirements.  He goes on to report that “the improvement in tech-writer morale was dramatic,” and that the time required for tech writing was reduced by 75%!

“The ROI began immediately,” according to Craig.

The Treasurer’s System Project
The Douglas County Treasurer’s Office is responsible for the billing and collection of all property and related taxes in the county   The effort to replace the existing system has resulted in the largest outsourced development project the county has undertaken to date.  Such an undertaking presents many risks and volumes of information that must be managed effectively. 

Projectricity was implemented at the start of the second release of the project.  The improvements were dramatic and immediate.  The project realized a “gain of 30% or more in reliability, accuracy, and reduction in the loss of information,” according to Martin Gee, Principal at ICSynergy, the firm responsible for the large outsourced project.  Typically, project managers are kept up nights concerned with lost requirements, and that issues are being tracked and worked.  With over 700 requirements being managed in Projectricity including many linked issues being tracked and resolved, Martin also concurs that with Projectricity, “stuff doesn’t fall through the cracks.”

Projectricity has now become an essential element in how Douglas County manages its requirements and issues, and is a quantum leap beyond their word processor or spreadsheet approach.  When asked what her response would be if she had to go back to using a word processor to manage requirements, Dorothy Becker, Business Analyst at Douglas County responded with “Blah!  I would be utterly disgusted,” while Martin Gee replied, “it would test my pain threshold.”