GRAVITY HOLDS EVERYTHING TOGETHER

Remain Software, a leader in Application Lifecycle Management with over 20 years expertise, announces general availability of a new and exciting ALM Workflow Management solution, named Gravity. This in-house developed product is perfect for organizations of any type or sizes that desire easier, faster and more visible management of multiple and complex processes, involving one or more departments and teams. Gravity can be of great support especially for IT departments looking for process automation, modern and robust way of working, improved collaboration and smooth communication among all team members. The software will be officially available for customers since April 2013.

Gravity is a brand new approach to Application Lifecycle and Workflow Management. The new Remain Software solution is targeted especially at software developers, IT executives and Business analysts, who will benefit from using Gravity to a great extent and within a very short period of time with several extremely useful functionalities.

Designing workflow

“Business Process Modeling seeks to improve process efficiency and quality.  With this in mind, organizational strategy can be easily executed with properly designed, clear and well communicated business processes, which can be achieved with Gravity.” – says Wim Jongman, managing director at Remain Software. Gravity enables defining documents (e.g. Attributes, Planning and Estimates, Description, etc.) and designing a customized workflow which  precisely shows the end-to-end path of these documents or tasks that take place in an enterprise - from assignment to production. Once the workflow is designed, Gravity will enforce the whole process. Tasks can be quickly assigned to responsible people, and once performed immediately checked as complete. Flexibility of Gravity also enables changing processes while they’re running and adjusting the entire workflow to the changes made by the user.

Workflow management system extension according to users’ needs

What makes Gravity different from other workflow management solutions is the possibility of tailoring workflow according to users’ specific needs, with their own, personalized activities (like sending e-mail or managing a calendar, or more complex steps like starting a build on the build-server, enforcing users to enter sign-off information, etc.) Regardless of activity complexity, Gravity work management is always very simple and enables users to manage all activities within one solution.

Events control

The guaranteed-delivery event management within Gravity enables subscription to anything that happens in the system.  Gravity will post events for every action that it performs. The event system will make sure that the event is delivered by storing it in the database and performing its delivery as soon as the user is signed-on.

Gravity already comes with a number of event processors. However, more event processors performing all sorts of tasks like auditing, process triggering, notification, e-mail and so on can be added. The result is full control over any change that takes place in the system.

Workload control and predictability

Using Gravity, project management can be facilitated on both detailed and summarized levels. Project managers will benefit from the ability to manage individual task time estimates and team member workloads. This enables full control and visibility of project workloads and time requirements for an entire project. Workload and time predictability bring significant benefits for a company and result in better project planning.

Gravity also helps each user manage his or her own work. With the ability to personalize views, documents, information, processes – in general, everything that goes through Gravity, users can concentrate on information and tasks they’re actually involved in and know exactly when and what to do. Gravity allows users to control single tasks as well as entire projects.

Improve communication flow

Gravity facilitates information flow between multiple teams and team members. It registers all changes that take place in enterprise and sends notifications regarding these changes whenever and wherever the user wants. It is also possible to define what kinds of changes are important and if the user would like to be informed about them.

A noteworthy advantage of Gravity is that it allows users to specify notification receipt times and location where they’d like to receive them – such as mailbox, smart phone or any other device.

Streamlined communication within Gravity also means that changes/requests/problems can be defined and assigned to particular employees. To make the communication clearer, these changes can be described in stories and then split into multiple tasks with defined deadlines or time-frames. The user responsible for completing the task will be immediately notified about it.

What’s more, each Gravity user can see work assigned to both themselves and that of other users.  They can view task status and when their tasks are scheduled for completion.

“Utilizing the features and functionality of Gravity users will reap the benefits of streamlined communications, resulting in significant teamwork improvement, increased productivity, and substantial time savings.” – says Marco Kok, managing director at Remain Software.

Comply with laws & regulations

Last but not least of the features that Gravity users can benefit from is laws & regulations compliance. With properly designed workflow, users can streamline processes, facilitate work management, and track and record all process stages. Since all data is registered within Gravity, ad-hoc reports can be easily created, which can also support regulatory reporting requirements such as ISO, Basel II, SOX, and others.

What makes Gravity unique?

Several features make Remain Software solution different from other workflow management products.

• Service Oriented Architecture,
• Multi-Platform Framework (IBM Power Systems, Windows, Unix, MAC and/or Linux platforms),
• State-of-the-art technology (as Eclipse, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), OSGI, Multi-platform (Java) and Multi Data base),
• Improved security with authorization and authentication,
• Database independence and extensibility (20 supported relational databases, like DB2, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL, etc. and other databases on request),
• Personalization functionalities,
• Methodology independence (AGILE, Scrum, Waterfall, XP, etc.).

Software Change Management on IBM i platform & Gravity synergy

Remain Software customers who currently use their Software Change Management solution TD/OMS can also benefit from using Gravity. Utilizing Work Management, it is easy to make a connection between the Gravity Work Document and the TD/OMS Request and Fix. Within Gravity a very granular document structure can be created so that TD/OMS will be enriched with options to create Projects, Releases, User Stories and other types of documents before work is promoted to TD/OMS fixes. When TD/OMS fixes are completed, a message will be send back to Gravity.

Gravity Work Management module can also be used to create required documents, and launch a preliminary process before the actual development starts. After TD/OMS processing is finished, the workflow can be completed in Gravity which enables complete, full-circle Enterprise Change Management.

Users will quickly notice how workflow management functionalities combined with TD/OMS can significantly improve software development process quality.

Gravity Business Benefits

• Time and money savings
• Workflow control
• Requirements management
• Workload predictability
• Improved collaboration
• Work quality improvement
• Future-proof technology
• Significant increase in employee and machine productivity
• Improved team communication and collaboration
• Laws and compliance regulations (SOX, ISO, COBIT, etc.)
• Methodology independence (AGILE, Scrum, Waterfall, xp, “the next great thing”^TM, etc.)

Gravity distribution

Gravity will be available for purchasing from Remain Software and their international Value Added Resellers. More info can be found on the website www.remainsoftware.com/partners

About Remain

Remain Software, established in 1992, is an independent software vendor delivering innovative solutions that support the entire Application Lifecycle Management, from requirements through design, development up to deployment and testing.

Software Change and Workflow Management solutions offered by Remain Software are robust and deliver added value that customers expect and count on. These in-house developed products help organizations to simplify and automate processes, improve workflows and teamwork and streamline their software development for the IBM i (AS/400, System i), Windows, Unix and Linux. All of these features bring organizations significant profits.

The Software Change Management solution TD/OMS (Object Management Software) contains an OMS/LANSA module to manage and control all LANSA objects.

Simplified and standardized Application Lifecycle Management, time and money savings, improved teamwork productivity and communication are just one of the benefits which altogether result in high quality applications and customer satisfaction.

Remain Software is an agile customer focused organization, supported by an extensive partner network. More than 20 years' experience and a positive track record allowed Remain Software to become the recognized Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions provider in the world and a market leader in Benelux.