Patent ID: 7113923

Claim:
A program office management system, comprising computer software stored on a computer readable storage medium and operable to: store, in a program office database, informational data associated with accounts, projects, and programs; store, in the program office database, financial data associated with the accounts, projects, and programs; store, in the program office database, schedule and progress data associated with the accounts, projects, and programs; store, in the program office database, data associated with personnel, roles, and security access information thereof; store, in the program office database, a plurality of predefined tactics wherein each of the plurality of predefined tactics comprises an approach taken to affect change on a project; associate one or more predetermined project milestone categories with at least some of the plurality of predefined tactics; store, in the program office database, update data associated with the progress, actual expenditures, and labor resources of the projects and programs; wherein the data associated with the security access information of personnel comprise a role definition of a coordinator having authorization to assign one or more persons to the at least one business unit, assign at least one role to each person, and add projects and accounts for the at least one business unit; wherein the data associated with the security access information of personnel comprise a role table operable to store at least one valid role, and an authorization hierarchical organization of the at least one valid role, wherein the authorization hierarchical organization is associated with increasing levels of data access; wherein the data associated with the security access information of personnel associates at least one of the valid roles relevant to the project to each person; display data stored in the program office database according to a predetermined security scheme based on the security access information stored in the program office database; upon selection of a first tactic, comprising one of the plurality of predefined tactics, by a user for use on a particular project, automatically associating with the particular project at least one milestone having a particular milestone category that was previously associated with the first tactic; and receive the update data on a periodic basis.