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The European XFEL project at DESY has introduced a distributed project management system (DPMS) based on Microsoft Project Enterprise to keep track of schedules, resource usage, investment planning and actual costs. The XFEL project is organized into more than 40 work packages (WP) which address the different technical subsystems, global infrastructure and general tasks. Each WP is led by a work package leader (WPL) who is responsible for the WP budget, schedule and resources. The DPMS enables WPLs to directly create and update project plans for their WP, and it automatically creates high-level aggregated views for the project management office. Along with the system introduction, processes for distributed project planning, controlling and reporting have been established. One of the key challenges which can be resolved with the DPMS is to identify and track dependencies among different WPs, and to determine and escalate the impact of changes in one WP to other WP schedules. The DPMS is in operation since early 2007. The paper gives an overview of the system and the established project management processes and reports experience.
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