140 results about "Milestone" patented technology

A schedule for a complex activity is obtained by a scheduling system using a method of constraint-based iterative repair. A predetermined initial schedule is iteratively repaired, repairs being made during each iteration only to portions of the schedule that produce a constraint violation, until an acceptable schedule is obtained. Since repairs are made to the schedule only to repair violated constraints, rather than to the entire schedule, schedule perturbations are minimized, thereby reducing problems with the dynamic performance of the scheduling system and minimizing disruption to the smooth operation of the activity. All constraints on the scheduling activity can be evaluated simultaneously to produce a solution that is near optimal with respect to all constraints. In particular, consumable resource constraints can be evaluated simultaneously with other constraints such as, for example, reusable resource constraints, temporal constraints, state constraints, milestone constraints and preemptive constraints. The scheduling system of the invention is much quicker than previous scheduling systems that use, for example, constructive scheduling method. The system of the invention can also be easily modified to add, delete or modify constraints. Because of the minimization of schedule perturbation, coupling of all constraints, speed of operation, and ease of modification, the scheduling system of the invention is particularly useful for scheduling applications that require frequent and rapid rescheduling.

This invention relates to a method for implementing an off shore / off site activity in an organization, with most optimal skills transfer process. The said process includes the steps ofassessing the suitability of outsourcing and whether the activity should be carried out on-site, locally or remotely, based on pre-determined parameters and decision ratios,planning the process including the minimum groundwork required before the actual process can begin,identifying the various milestones in the process and the deliverables in each milestonesmonitoring the progress of the migration process and the ways and means to take corrective action, and,evaluating the results of the development.

A server at the edge of a broadband network distributes multimedia content streams to clients, while ensuring that the first data delivered to each client is key data (milestones) needed for correctly decoding the stream content. This is obtained by buffering the packets in the incoming stream and transmitting the packets from the buffer in an outgoing stream, starting with the most recent milestone placed in the buffer before a request to join the respective incoming stream is received. As the writing to and reading from the buffer are performed at different rates, the incoming and outgoing streams are eventually synchronized, at which point the client may be switched to receive the incoming stream directly.

Tracking forms allow tracking of the completion status and implemented quality standards of a building construction project. A tracking form is prepared for one or more tasks requiring completion at the construction site. Each task is assigned two components on its tracking form: a quality control indicator form, which contains one or more quality control indicators indicating whether certain quality standards are met; and a completion indicator, which indicates the completion status of a task. The completion status may be a discrete binary value, or may instead be a continuous value. Preferably, the workers performing the tasks complete each task's quality control indicator form and completion indicator during design and construction as milestones relating to the task are completed, or at the end of some predetermined time period. The completion indicators relating to the tasks are logged so that the completion status of the project may be monitored, and the information recorded on the quality control indicator forms may be sampled and checked to verify that construction quality standards are being met.

A method of selling articles of manufacture which utilizes an electronic communication system to identify a plurality of articles of manufacture, from a plurality of manufacturing entities, which are available for purchase by said plurality of potential purchasers. The steps of the method include: Identifying pricing milestones in each of (1) a manufacturing phase and (2) a distribution phase, which correspond to an increase in commercial risk. Determining a separate price for each of said pricing milestones to establish a range of prices for said selected ones of said plurality of articles of manufacture, taking into account a change in said commercial risk as said pricing milestones are experienced. Making conditional offers for sale to potential purchasers at each of the pricing milestones, with the conditional offers specifying at least a minimum number of articles which must be ordered in aggregate before the conditional offer becomes binding upon a manufacturing entity. Communicating with potential purchasers and aggregating commercial commitments from potential purchasers for each pricing milestones and thereby selling articles of manufacture. Such that each pricing milestone corresponds to a period of availability in which costs of future supply chain activities or savings related to avoidance of future supply chain activities are reflected in an offer price. The method may also include the use of a trusted intermediary, which may use a virtual exchange.

An improved method for facilitating the peer review process in scholarly publications is presented. This improved method streamlines and compresses the review process, eliminating unnecessary delays and costs inherent in the traditional process. The present invention implements a computer based manuscript tracking process the uses the World Wide Web to allow ubiquitous access to the manuscript under review. This ubiquitous access works in conjunction with automatic generation of potential reviewers and instant notification to authors, editors, and reviewers of significant milestones in the peer review process. Authors are allowed to communicate with anonymous reviewers to reduce the number of revisions leading to approval. Additionally, multiple authors are allowed to collaborate during the manuscript creation process as well as the manuscript review process. This allows several geographically disperse authors to conveniently co-author a manuscript. It additionally allows the author or several authors to respond to comments from the reviewer prior to an editor reading the review.

An interactive computer-implemented apparatus and method for capturing and monitoring performance in a call center, and for promoting competition in productivity and quality metrics among employees comprising: a relational database, for use by all employees in the call center, comprising a competencies module defining competency requirements for each job in the call center, an individual employee development plan module linked to the competencies module a performance appraisal module for automatically calculating an overall performance rating for each employee, and a query and reporting facility, a database of employee demographic information, functional knowledge database comprising pre-defined employee functional knowledge elements required across all job codes of the call center organization; a competencies database comprising the organization's pre-defined employee competencies, the competencies linked to strategic goals of the call center organization, each competency assigned one or more proficiency levels, each proficiency level comprising one or pre-defined milestones, each job code assigned a targeted competency proficiency level; a development plan database for capture of employee-inputted development goals for one or more competencies, development goals selected from milestones per the competencies database, the selected development goals reviewed by a supervisor; a performance appraisal database for capture of the employee's supervisor-inputted performance ratings for a specified period, the performance ratings comprising distinct components of quality, productivity, and behavior, the behavior component further comprising a development rating, the development rating based on the employee's attainment of one or more employee's development goals per the development plan database, the rating for each component assigned a weight, the weight being a percentage of the maximum merit increase rate, the overall performance rating being the sum of the performance ratings for each component, the overall performance rating used to calculate the employee's merit increase, a periodic performance review database for capture of supervisor-inputted information from periodic performance reviews held with an employee, and a reports facility comprising instructions enabling administrators, employees, and supervisors to query one or more databases, the reports facility generating viewable and printable reports on-demand.

A project management system and method are provided wherein projects can be managed easily and with minimal manual data entry. Project management software, embodying the project management system of the present invention, can run on a computer network or user workstation, without requiring a dedicated host server. The project management system of the present invention provides at least one graphical interface, to permit a user to easily create and / or edit a project, tasks, subprojects and milestones, using the mouse or other pointer device. A resource window can be provided, conveniently and consistently located in all main views of the system, to assist the user in efficiently operating the project management system. Further, projects can be automatically updated without repetitive data entry, using data entered once by the user performing a task.

A “milestone bar calendar” is displayed on a user's display screen of a computer, PDA, cell phone, etc. In a typical arrangement, the bar calendar will be displayed horizontally across the top of the screen, integrated with toolbars that are typically found on most graphical user interfaces. In a preferred embodiment, twelve months, starting with the current month, will be displayed in the milestone bar calendar, and markers for upcoming milestones / events will be displayed within the bar, associated with the appropriate month. Designating a marker with a pointing device provides details regarding the milestone / event.

A computer-assisted method of assisting a health care provider in diagnosing and treating a patient. The method includes preparing an event-based sequence relating to a disease for which the patient is diagnosed and treated and accepting answers from the health care provider during at least one clinical contact with the patient to a plurality of questions relating to the disease, a stage of the disease, an intervention of the disease, and a response to the intervention. The method also includes segmenting the event-based sequence into a plurality of milestone events for use by the health care provider in diagnosing and treating the patient.

Computer implemented systems, methods and computer program products for assessing and designing customized reward-based learning sessions. These technologies involve determining factors for a student's peak academic performance, such as: 1) their preferred type of reward trigger; 2) their preferred timing of the learning objective relative to the reward; and, 3) the nature of the reward (time to use an electronic device, cash, store credit). The reward trigger is the type of event that most motivates a student to learn, such as achieving an academic milestone, demonstrating effort and improvement in lessons, and random rewards for participating in educational sessions. The timing of the learning objective relative to the reward may be measured as the time at which the user initiates operation of an electronic device, the time at which the user engages in a learning or testing exercise, or the time at which the user receives the reward.

A computer-implemented method and system for validating a task of a plurality of tasks of a project. A computing application executes routines to automatically identify errors associated with one or more tasks. The routines generate exception reports that facilitate correction of the errors via user-determined selections of actions or via corrective actions automatically displayed by the computing application. The error identification facilitates validation of project elements including milestones, dependencies and deliverables, key work products, tasks in a work breakdown structure (WBS), predecessors and successors in the WBS, resources, work and labor rates, links between project plans, and an update of a project. Further, the error identification facilitates an analysis of schedule conflicts between give and get tasks.

The present invention provides systems and methods for planning important events such as weddings, milestone birthday parties and the like. A suite of computer-implemented applications perform various aspects of event management, including guest list and seating management, task planning, vendor selection, budget control and gift recordation and tracking. The data gathered, processed and stored by different portions of the application suite is used seamlessly by other portions of the application suite to synergistically enhance the overall functioning of the system. The system may be a web-based Internet implementation where brides and other users can input and manipulate the information for the event planning system. Guests are provided a unique URL to a web page about the wedding, which contains information about the bride and groom. Guest preferences can be input and that information used to coordinate seating. The budgeter provides the user with task and vendor details to optimize planning.

The present invention provides a method and system for automatically providing infrastructure maintenance for a customer in response to a customer form / report / ticket in a communications network that includes a core communications (voice and data communications) service and an Access Provider service. Typically, the system includes a Work-Flow Manager and a maintenance program scheduler. The Work-Flow Manager is arranged to trigger, for each customer form / report / ticket, each automatic software program / engine of a plurality of automatic software programs / engines in response to an associated milestone event for the customer form / report / ticket. The maintenance program scheduler is coupled to the Work-Flow Manager and is used for invoking at least one predetermined maintenance software program based upon predetermined criteria being met by the form / report / ticket. The method includes the steps of: generating a ticket / customer repair request regarding a problem; diagnosing the problem; testing to determine whether the problem has been fixed; generating clearance and analysis codes; notifying the customer that the system has repaired the problem; and closing out the ticket / repair request upon successful repair of the problem.

An improved method for facilitating the peer review process in scholarly publications is presented. This improved method streamlines and compresses the review process, eliminating unnecessary delays and costs inherent in the traditional process. The present invention implements a computer based manuscript tracking process the uses the World Wide Web to allow ubiquitous access to the manuscript under review. This ubiquitous access works in conjunction with automatic generation of potential reviewers and instant notification to authors, editors, and reviewers of significant milestones in the peer review process. Authors are allowed to communicate with anonymous reviewers to reduce the number of revisions leading to approval. Additionally, multiple authors are allowed to collaborate during the manuscript creation process as well as the manuscript review process. This allows several geographically disperse authors to conveniently co-author a manuscript. It additionally allows the author or several authors to respond to comments from the reviewer prior to an editor reading the review.

A system for managing at least one program including a plurality of projects for at least one organizational unit includes at least one program office database which stores informational data associated with the accounts, projects, and programs; financial data associated with the accounts, projects, and programs; schedule and progress data associated with the accounts, projects, and programs; personnel data associated with persons having responsibility associated with the accounts, projects, and programs, the personnel data including a unique person identifier for each person; security data having an assignment of at least one role to each person and an assignment of at least one update authorization to certain persons having oversight responsibility; data associated with translating progress milestones defined in the projects to tactics defined in the system; and update data associated with the progress and actual expenditures of the accounts, projects, and programs. The system further includes at least one user interface operable to display and allow access to the data stored in the program office according to a predetermined security scheme based on the person identifier, role and update authorization assignment stored in the at least one program office database, and further operable to receive the update data on a periodic basis.

A development management system and method are disclosed for providing substantially real-time monitoring of the progress of a product development and a projection of completion of the project based on objective criteria, which can be plotted against the planned time to completion and budget for a project. The principle of the development management system and method as applied to a software product development is to perform detailed and empirically sound measurements of the source code, changes being made in code, defect measurements, and productivity measurements to build a highly accurate measurement of a project's status and velocity. The development management system and method also provide a real-time view, at a highly granular level, into the status and velocity of the project to enable projection of when the project will finish, what budget will be expected, and how each milestone of the project is progressing.

Under the present invention, milestones or points of closure are provided at predetermined locations within a workflow of an application. Typically, the milestones are provided at completion points of tasks in the workflow. To this extent, as the user proceeds through the workflow, he / she is associated with the milestones corresponding thereto. The associations are stored (optionally with any corresponding data) in a persistent storage. In the event of a failure, the milestone associations are used to transport the user back to the last milestone with which he / she was associated.

A project management system and method are provided wherein projects can be managed easily and with minimal manual data entry. Project management software, embodying the project management system of the present invention, can run on a computer network or user workstation, without requiring a dedicated host server. The project management system of the present invention provides at least one graphical interface, to permit a user to easily create and / or edit a project, tasks, subprojects and milestones, using the mouse or other pointer device. A resource window can be provided, conveniently and consistently located in all main views of the system, to assist the user in efficiently operating the project management system. Further, projects can be automatically updated without repetitive data entry, using data entered once by the user performing a task.

A centralized, online clinical study system configured to coordinate aspects of a clinical study can include a training module configured to evaluate whether users have completed training for selected workflows for the clinical study that are available from the clinical study system, and to provide training to registered users for the selected workflows. The system also can include a financial engine configured to determine when a participating site meets or exceeds a milestone of the clinical study and to initiate a payment to the participating site. Further, the system can include a module configured to receive and verify clinical research data and to designate the verified clinical research data as official source data for the clinical study.

Disclosed are a method and system for transforming organizations from a supply driven to service oriented, demand driven IT organization. The IT Service Management Technology Enablement Model provides a method for supply-oriented customers to move to an advanced, demand driven service utility. The method outlines the key technical enablers that need to be put in place to achieve specific milestones as they move from a supply driven to demand driven model. Key milestones include: aligning IT to the Business (communicate); productizing IT (Structure); IT as a Factory (Standardize); and IT as a Utility (Commoditize).

The method and system for managing a project with multiple tasks and milestones by defining probabilities of key project events and assessing their performance risk. Each task of the project is described as a waveform propagating from this task to an assigned milestone, and each milestone is described as a coherent superposition of task waveforms. The probability of any milestone is obtained by comparison of probabilities of non-perturbed and perturbed milestone, which caused by delay of a task or combination of tasks.

A system including at least one computer configured as a server that contains a database of deal information, business rules, libraries and templates for deals for at least one business entity is provided. The system further includes at least one client system connected to the server through a network. The server is configured to prompt a user to create a deal, including identifying deal team members, notify members of the deal team of tasks to perform and milestones accomplished, receive documents relating to a deal from a client system that are submitted for approval by a user, and provide access to the deal documents through a client system for review and approval.

The present invention relates to a project assessment method and software featuring processes and tools for the implementation and assessment of large, business critical, and high risk business programs and projects. The method provides a work breakdown structure life cycle; a set of work breakdown structure milestones, selected from health check, monthly status, and certification milestones; assessing each milestone based upon process, delivery, and certification process assessment areas; determining best practices; optional feedback mechanisms; and reports at each step to evaluate and provide structured recommendations regarding the status or execution of a project.

The present invention discloses a portal capable of gathering and correlating data spread from multiple databases in multiple relevant but disparate information data sets, and an associated method. In some embodiments, the portal can relatively easy generate a new data set including a body of relevant but disparate information to be viewed through the prism of an individual's life. For example, by intuitively generating text-based and photo / video-based information of interest to the user measured by, for example, (i) periods of time (e.g., between the user's birth date and a milestone birthday, a wedding date, or an anniversary); (ii) geographic places (e.g., the user's hometown, the place he or she went to college, favorite vacation spots); and / or (iii) interests (e.g., favorite sports teams, foods, hobbies, etc.), as well as other variables that can be built into the search engine and database and / or provided by at least one user.

Frameworks and methods for executing large-scale build and operate programs, such as sporting events, and particularly an Olympic Games. A framework of interlinked build, operate, and management processes is formed in accordance with the program requirements, which are specified in terms of deliverable products or service levels. Links between individual processes can only be traversed when exit criteria are satisfied. Methodologies are described that can be used to determine the exit criteria. Once a framework is established, a schedule control plan, by way of significant milestones, is determined. The milestones are chosen to correspond with links between processes that span process streams or project teams.

A network based and automated engineering manufacturing analysis system as described herein is configured to manage producibility characteristics of a project or program throughout the lifecycle of the project or program. The system utilizes a collaborative data relationship and management tool that maintains metadata to create relationships between different information types for the project or program. The system relies upon real-time collaborative status updates that identify whether participants (e.g., vendors, designers, suppliers, and manufacturers) are satisfying requirements related to producibility characteristics. One example system designates a set of specified requirements for each project milestone level, and expects participants to provide electronic files, documents, or artifacts that evidence satisfaction of such requirements. The system processes requirement status updates in substantially real-time such that all participants can view the current project health and status at any time during the lifecycle of the project.

Disclosed is a method, system and service for developing an end-to-end process for managing acquisitions including, developing strategies and identify an appropriate company for acquisition, managing a transaction and negotiating a deal, integrating an acquired acquisition, and tracking performance against defined business case targets and milestones.