Cheri Tell says Eaton figured out which programmers were doing a good job. Some users say TCA helps measure project progress, eliminate development bottlenecks, and rank project priority, all in a more proactive way than traditional project management software. TCA tools are still new enough that their track record is scanty, says Colleen Niven, vice president of enabling technologies at Boston-based AMR Research. Niven believes that TCA' s big contribution is that it helps IT departments do a better job of controlling workflow than do other methods. Niven also says that TCA software from companies such as Kintana of Sunnyvale, Calif., IntelliCorp of Mountain View, Calif., and ProSight of Portland, Ore., helps automate the business processes of an IT department's daily work.
Components are as simple as generating automatic e-mails to a supervisor when approval is needed.
For example, when labor hours to maintain the existing university budgeting system were defined, it became clear that purchasing a new budgeting module would cost less than upgrading the current software,Weir says. Comparative cost figures for a formal purchase proposal are still being collected. The software also has an impact outside the IT department. Since using the TCA software, Weir has found it easier to explain the status of IT department projects to university administrators. When I meet with the university's board and its chancellors, they ask me how the SAP project is coming along and how much we spent supporting it last month.