Latest news for 2008        

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Use the link below to view Newsletters from this year or review articles from a previous year from the archive

October 2008 Newsletter - Version 2.3 released and the plans for version 2.4, a review of the developments around OGC and Agile methodologies, update on the plans for Community Edition and the Project Management Event Diary

July 2008 Newsletter - Plans for the new version 2.3, Article on Starting your project, PRINCE2 supported learning offers, PIAB on your phone and a review of the uptake of PIABOffice the hosted service

May 2008 Newsletter - Changes to Enterprise Hub, launch of the new Managing Successful Programmes Method template and release of version 2.2.

March 2008 Newsletter - article on preparing a project scope and announcing Managing Successful Programmes Method Template update.

January 2008 Newsletter - announcement of new 2.2 and Report Manager module releases, Year End Offer and Project Challenge spring show

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Archived Years

2007 Archive

After May 2007 a switch was made to putting news updates out only by newsletter.

PROJECT in a box version 2.0 announced

Details have been released on the new version of PROJECT in a box Professional which includes a whole host of new functionality as well as an improved licensing model and new deployment capabilities.

Find out more about the new version 2.0 and how it can improve your project delivery. [21 May 2007]
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Managing Successful Programmes Method Template

Now you can add Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) to your PRINCE2 capability in Professional edition with our new Method Template.  Like with our provided PRINCE2 materials, our MSP Method Template includes diagrams and materials from the manual under licence from OGC to give you an authentic and familiar MSP management envirnment.

Find out more about the MSP template and other standard method templates. [21 May 2007]
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NEW Professional Edition Personal Version Launched

Over the last year our sales to the corporate market have seen triple digit growth with the quantity and implementation size of customers both increasing and a recognition that our Professional Edition suite represents great value.  However, over the same period our sales to individual users haven't grown as quickly largely due to the £250 starting point of the Professional edition introductory Bundle.

Reacting to this feedback we are delighted to today launch a Personal Version of Professional Edition.  Personal Version will have all the functionality of the Full Professional Edition except it is restricted to just one user and cannot be connected to other Professional Edition (Full or Team) software.

Personal Version has a new improved installer for ease of standard installation and licensing and is available for just £99 including first years support and upgrades for free. [3 May 2007]
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Server Hosting

Sometimes you want to get up and running as quickly as possible or have the peace of mind of knowing there is an expert looking after your system.  Alternatively you might have an outsourced IT supplier and desperation has driven you to decide that the solution for you is to get us to host your server enabling you to have quick, easy and secure access over the Internet.

Now there is help as PROJECT in a box have launched their hosting service providing you a secure, robust and cost effecive home for your server capability and giving you the ability to access your project information from anywhere with internet access.  Further details of the hosting packages are provided on the site. [16 March 2007]
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Presentation on Public.TV

PROJECT in a box were delighted to be involved in the very successful Project Management in the Public Sector Conference arranged by Ten Alps in Manchester on the 28 Feb 07.  The day was attended by over 220 delegates from a wide range of public sector organisations some very interesting and thought provoking presentations from leading figures in the Project Management world.  

The presentations were all filmed and many of them are now available in abridged form via the Public.TV website.  You can view our MD, Malcolm West's, presentation on 'making PRINCE2 work for all your projects by clicking here and the powerpoint slides used for the presentation can also be viewed in conjunction if required. [5 March 2007]
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International Seminars Programme

Following the success of our Seminars programme through the UK over the last year we have decided to add a number of international dates in Australia and Singapore both of which are strong growth areas for PROJECT in a box.

The first event will be in Brisbane on the evening of the 17th April 2007 and will be jointly hosted with Yellowhouse.  This free event will be open to Yellowhouse contacts as well as existing Community and Professional edition users.  If you are interested in attending please contact PROJECT in a box or Yellowhouse for details.

The second event will be in Melbourne on the evening of the 19th April 2007 and will be jointly hosted with Rational Management.  This free event will be open to Rational Management contacts as well as existing Community and Professional edition users.  If you are interested in attending please contact PROJECT in a box or Rational Management for details.

We are also looking to arrange an event in Singapore on the 23rd or 24th April.  If you are interested in attending or joint hosting please contact PROJECT in a box for details. [5 March 2007]

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Hosting service announced

In response to a number of recent requests we are delighted to announce the launch of our hosting service.  This will enable us to host and administer your PROJECT in a box server for you so you can get up and running quickly and robustly.  When used in conjunction with our .NET files only installed client or browser based Enterprise Hub capabilities this could make deployment of your system a breeze.

An annual fee will be charged for the service depending on the number of users you are looking to use and the service level required.  For further information check out our hosting service section. [5 March 2007]
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Year end offer announced

Last year our year end offer was so popular we have decided to reintroduce it again but as you would expect we have improved it further by adding an additional higher level of savings for our Corporate package customers.  This means you can now save up to 30% on your purchase if you place your orders before the end of March 2007.

See the year end offer page for more information. [8 February 2007]
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Fantastic Value for PRINCE2 training

We are delighted to be able to announce two new services we are providing with our PRINCE2™ training partners.  Firstly we have teamed up with CUPE to provide their Supported PRINCE2 Learning courses through via our website.  We have even introduced a great value bundle so you can get full Practitioner training and a licence for Professional Edition for just £900.

Secondly we have provided real time access to search the full PRINCE2™ training database at Focus Projects which gives access to the PRINCE2™ courses of over 50 organisations in 100 locations across the UK.   You will find these links in the panes in the left column of many pages on the site.  [17 January 2007]
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2006 Archive

Practical PRINCE2 implementation at Toshiba

"We have now been running with PROJECT in a box for a year and it is used by a core team on around twenty projects.  However with the Outlook integration facilities we can easily share documents with team members such as external contractors who don't have access to the system.  I would say this file based nature is one of the system's greatest advantages" - Richard Saywell, Toshiba Information Systems (UK)

Now you can read the full case study as published in the December 2006 Issue of Project Manager Today

[4 December 2006]
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Professional Edition 1.3 released

Professional Edition V1.3 was released on the 6th December 2006 and again marks a significant leap forward in capability with extensive Outlook interactions including a check in from Outlook ` and a range of reporting enhancements which include Dashboards and user tailorable Highlight reports.  A host of changes under the dash enable you to now share documents between projects and to include links to documents, tools and resources managed elsewhere for more complete integration with your other management systems.   Whats more these advantages don't impact on the ever popular flexibility of point and click navigation and using your own existing tools.  Listening to you we have now also included the ability to auto extract reporting content from your MS Project2003 plans.  There was a rush from our 130+ existing customer organisations to upgrade to this latest version and as a free upgrade who can blame them!   Further information is available from the Professional Edition page [6 December 2006]
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Public Sector event 28 February 2007

For those of you complaining that we haven't been visiting the north a great deal for seminars and events you will be delighted to hear that we will be at the Public Sector Project Management event in Manchester on the 28th February 2007.  Malcolm West will be speaking at the event on the subject of “Making PRINCE2 work for all your projects”.  This will be a practical talk exploring how to bring a project management capability to all those people across your organisation who need it.  This will draw on the experiences which resulted in being awarded the Sir Monty Finniston award in the late 90’s and how this has been revised and applied to PRINCE2 more recently.  Details of the show are available from www.projectmanagement2007.co.uk [30 November 2006]

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Community Edition passes 10,000 users

The 18th of August was the 18 month anniversary of the launch of Community Edition and shortly after this  on the 23rd August the number of registered users who have obtained Community Edition via their PRINCE2™ training provider or by downloading from the website reached an amazing 10,000! We couldn't help ourselves but to do the sums and were delighted to find that this effectively equates to a new user every 78 minutes.  The chart (right) shows the typical user profile based on the last three months of records. [20 September 2006]

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Functionality for Professional Edition V1.3 announced

Professional Edition V1.3 will be available in November and provides a whole host of new features and technical enhancements to make it even easier to deliver your projects, programmes and portfolios.  Notable are the increased support for integration with Outlook and MS Project to support the no fuss, practical implementations many of you use.  Reporting also gets a further round of improvements as does the document management capabilities.  As with all our improvements and modules it is up to you whether to use them, if you want to keep it really simple we won't burden you with functionality you don't want to use.  Further information is available via the press release [6 September 2006]
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Orkney Island Council extends use of PROJECT in a box

OIC have announced the extension of their PROJECT in a box implementation to now include the new Enterprise Hub.  This extension builds on top of a successful deployment of Professional Edition and P2ABC over the preceding months. Further information is available via the joint press release [4 September 2006]
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Pricing and Product range changes

The first of July sees some significant changes come into affect with the Professional edition product model.  The changes have been put in place primarily to simplify pricing and on-line sales.  The main changes are as follows:

• P2ABC will automatically now be included in all Professional Edition sales as standard (it had been taken up by 92% of Professional Edition customers since it became available for that platform)
• Professional Edition (full and team) licence prices have been increased to cover the inclusion of P2ABC
• The first discounted Professional edition offer has been withdrawn
  

The other main change is the introduction of Community Editionplus which is effectively a bundle of Community Edition, P2ABC and P2GM to support the post training user with additional capability.  P2GM and P2ABC will no longer be available independently for Community Edition.

These changes have been reflected throughout the site, in all the literature and on-line store.  They will be rolled out to our partners over the coming weeks. [1 July 2006]
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New Overseas Partners announced

We are delighted to announce the expansion of our partners programme which now sees us strengthening our presence in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.  Yellowhouse provide a welcome addition as their ATO PRINCE2 training status significantly improves our ability to deliver complete PRINCE2 solutions to the Australian Market.  Working with Denzo and partner companies Quanto and PPM in South Africa and New Zealand respectively sees us adding new method templates to the Professional portfolio for their popular BFPM™ methodology.  [30 June 2006]
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Enterprise Hub launched

Enterprise Hub provides a step change in access to your Professional Edition projects enabling you to provide view only access to your entire organisation via a browser interface making it much easier to engage with part time project team members or share progress with the wider organisation.  Enterprise Hub also supports RSS news feeds and forums to help you develop and promote project management capability within the organisation.  Further information is provided on the Enterprise Hub page [30 June 2006]
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Method Manager launched

For some time now our users have been telling us that the ability of Professional Edition to support many different project methodologies or derivatives of standard methods like PRINCE2 or P2ABC enables them to deliver their projects more effectively.  Users have always had the ability to create new method templates or modify the standard ones we provide by editing the template XML configuration files but we have now provided Method manager to make this even easier to do.

Method Manager provides a GUI much like the file explorer already used within Professional Edition so now you can manage your methodologies yourself without any technical knowledge.  Compare this to other vendors who would have you go back to them to make changes to their hardwired PRINCE2 structures, charge you for it and still only let you have one methodology variant at any one time!  Further information is provided on the Method Manager page [5 May 2006]
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P2 Guidance Module launched

Building upon our undisputed reputation as the leaders in the provision of authentic PRINCE2 software we are delighted to announce the launch of our P2 Guidance Module.  This module can be used on Community or Professional Edition products and provides the user with over 25,000 words of authentic PRINCE2 guidance packaged into 70 bite sized topics covering all the processes, sub-processes, components and techniques of PRINCE2.  Delivered via an easy to use Microsoft help file it is context sensitive to where you currently are in the PRINCE2 process and with over 500 cross referencing links the required guidance is never far away.  A must for any PRINCE2 user.  Further information is provided at the P2 Guidance Module page [3 April 2006]
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Leicestershire County Council sign up with PROJECT in a box

Leicestershire County Council have today signed up with PROJECT in a box for a corporate licence for use of Professional Edition, P2ABC and P2 Guidance Module across their ICT portfolio of projects. Further information is available via the joint  press release [31 March 2006]
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Summer Seminars programme launched

We have teamed up with a number of our ATO partners to announce a range of high value Seminars to take place up and down the UK during the early summer.  These events will have several speakers and also the chance for one to one sessions on important topics related to project and programme management.  To sign up simply go to our Summer Seminars page, leave your details and we look forward to seeing you soon!  [25 March 2006]
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New version of Professional Edition goes live

Version 1.2.1 of Professional edition is now available for download from our site and we have seen a steady flow of existing users already keen to upgrade to this version. Professional edition has had a number of usability improvements added as well as Portfolio management capability, a range of new Reporting wizards and further increases in the project tailoring capability. The Project Tailoring is particularly significant as users (with appropriate permissions) now have full control over the Project Management methodology and processes the system runs to, putting Professional Edition streets ahead of the competition on price and technical grounds. Further information is provided in the Technical Guide [20 Feb 2006]
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PROJECT in a box partner with MASS Systems

PROJECT in a box are delighted to announce the partnership with MASS Systems which we see will bring many advantages to our Solutions offerings. Read full press release . [20 Feb 2006]
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P2ABC methods for PROJECT in a box

PRINCE2™ is great and we all love it, but as it becomes applied more and more widely it is frequently being applied to lower risk, less novel projects as it is described in the manual, and this results in an unfair view that it can be unwieldy and expensive. To address problem we have launched P2ABC which provides new lighter methods to help organisations tackle their smaller and less risky projects with something more appropriate. The additional methods AccessP2 and BasicP2 sit together with the full PRINCE2™ method (CompleteP2) to provide a family of methods that can help an organisation standardise it's approach to project delivery. Users can tailor these methods further if they want for individual project circumstances or use them out of the box and they are fully supported by our Community and Professional Edition software. We had been frequently asked by our users to recommend some standard 'lighter' PRINCE2™ methods but there just weren't any available, until now that is. [16 Jan 2006]
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Range of Enterprise Solutions Launched

We are delighted to announce that we will now be offering a range of Solution Packages delivered in conjunction with a number of our partner organisations. These solutions will provide a one stop shop for the organisations looking to develop PRINCE2™ based project management cultures in their organisations. Solutions available will include corporate software licences and combined training and software packages plus a whole range of implementation consultancy support to fit the modest need through to the Global implementation. [6 Jan 2006]
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2005 Archive

Professional Edition reviewed in Project Manager Today

Professional Edition was the subject of a very good review by Steve Cotterell in Project Manager Today magazine (Jan 2006 Edition). The review concludes with the opinion "Despite its imperfections, all of which can be easily fixed, I was impressed by PIAB-PE, it does what it sets out to do and takes a lot of the pain out of PRINCE2™". For those of you who don't subscribe to PM Today we have included the review (941Kb) here in PDF format for your convenience.

Community Edition passes 5,000 Users

It seems difficult to imagine that in just nine months we could have raced to 5,000 users of Community edition worldwide! Looking to the next year things look even more rosy as more of you upgrade to Professional edition including now our first few customers from Australia and South Africa. We also have plans for new plug in modules for the community edition to address the questions many of you have about what's coming next, more news on that in January. For now from the team at PROJECT in a box, Merry Christmas. [21 Dec 2005]
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E-Capacity Edition now available

Finally we are happy to say that we are able to release the E-Capacity Edition to users from local government organisations. This collaboration between PROJECT in a box and the E-Capacity Building Programme provides the traditional Community Edition functionality augmented with two additional simpler methodologies in line with the E-Capacity maturity model. We will shortly begin to contact pre-registered users with download details, any new users registering will see a small time delay before their download links are issued as we are required to vet for LA credentials. [8 Dec 2005]
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Plans for new Professional Edition in January

Thats right no resting on our laurels, PROJECT in a box are delighted to announce that we will be releasing version 1.2 of Professional Edition in January 2006. Included in the new release will be:

• Portfolio management - group your projects, compare performance and publish the results in a mini site. New role of Portfolio manager who can also aggregate and report status.
• Reporting enhancements - including ability to report on activity by management product, to include project finance status and user defined content in the management reports.
• The ability to use different navigation diagrams and a tool to help you define and manage your own new project templates.
• User specified document level characteristics - further customise your system by setting status options or providing categorisation for management and specialist products.
• Project Financial Management tools - to help you keep better track on project finance.
• Project migration tools - to help you move your projects between Community and Professional Editions.

This will all be available for free to our existing users with a valid support and upgrade contract, via a patch release.[1 Nov 2005]
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Agile Projects join the Partner Programme

PROJECT in a box are delighted to announce that Agile Projects have joined our Partner Programme. Agile Projects provide PRINCE2™ training, DSDM training and services amongst a range of other training and consultancy services. [17 Oct 2005]
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Professional Edition Launched

PROJECT in a box are delighted to announce the launch of our Professional Edition. This is a significant milestone not just for PROJECT in a box but also the PRINCE2™ software market place as professional tools now become accessible to everyone. Professional Edition starts from just £250 and with a typical £2,000 price tag to implement to 25 users means it won't break the bank. Fully networked and able to work securely over the web direct from the box this is a step change to managing the day to day activities on your project. New logs, reporting and email integration further save your valuable time. Available from our new on-line store from today although several pre-release orders have already been delivered. [3 Oct 2005]
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PROJECT in a box to sponsor User Group Conference

PROJECT in a box are delighted to announce that we are sponsoring the Best Practice User Group Annual Conference 2005. This event which will be held again at the Stoke on Trent Moathouse, 23rd and 24th November 2005. The event will host a mixture of speakers and workshops coving all the Best Practice products including PRINCE2™. You will be able to see us in the break out area where we will be demonstrating our software range and providing advice to the many of our Community Edition users who will be present. [13 Sep 2005]
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The BLCC join our Partner Programme

The Business Learning and Conference Centre (BLCC) have joined the PROJECT in a box partner programme and will be making the Community Edition available to their PRINCE2™ delegates. Linda Greig of BLCC said "This is an excellent tool which will benefit delegates on our courses when they return to work on live projects in their own organisations". [8 Sep 2005]
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Professional Edition Beta test programme

The eagerly awaited Professional Edition moved a step closer today with the release of the Beta version for testing by the PROJECT in a box user community. The version is released almost complete just awaiting the addition of logs, help documentation and the server install. A 2nd Beta will follow in mid September containing these remaining items and improvements following feedback from the first release. [26 Aug 2005]
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2,000th User Announced

We are glad to announce that on the 3rd of August Ben Stanbury, an IT Project Manager at Electronic Arts the computer game company, became our lucky 2,000th user. Ben receives a free Professional Edition package which we will be visiting to install in the near future. [10 Aug 2005]
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Professional edition planned for BPPM

PROJECT in a box will again be exhibiting at BPPM (formerly Project World) this Autumn. The Show will be held at the NEC from the 12th to the 13th of October. We will be taking this opportunity to launch our Professional edition. We look forward to seeing you there. [20 Jul 2005]
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Working with the e-Capacity Building Programme

We are proud to announce we are now working with the e-Capacity Building Programme to help improve the standard of Project Management in local authorities. We are currently working on a version of Community Edition which will support the tools recommended for the three project management maturity levels. PROJECT in a box e-Capacity Edition will then be made available free to all local authorities by the programme or via download from this site. For more details on the partnership see the press release (56kb). [24 May 2005]
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PRINCE2™ Best Practice event

We will be taking part in this year's Best Practice Showcase in London on the 17th June. This is the premium event in the UK PRINCE2™ calendar enabling you to hear from a selection of the UK's premier PRINCE2™ speakers and to meet us to discuss the developments for PROJECT in a box. All our major partners are speaking in the seminar sessions and we will be displaying a prototype of our new Professional Edition which is currently in development. We look forward to seeing you there.
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Community Edition Launch Event

The community Edition was launched at BPPM on 2nd/3rd March in Olympia to great reviews. Thanks to those who visited the stand to get their demo and install disk, we were certainly kept busy with the demos and it was good to see such a good cross section of the users. Over 200 people took up the offer of a demo and an install pack.
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