What's New in that latest version of Harmony

What’s new in Harmony Version 9.16?

With Harmony, we aim to provide a simple, easy and fast software tool to enable Managers and Theory of Constraints experts to Design, Validate and Communicate Strategy & Tactic (S&T) Trees for their organizations, to effectively and efficiently Plan the implementation as well as to Monitor and effectively Manage the implementation of their S&T (Execution Management).

Harmony is made up of 5 integrated modules that covers S&T Design, Validation, Planning, Execution and achieving a Process of Ongoing Improvement (POOGI)

To ensure Harmony remains simple and easy to use by both experts and novices alike, new developments are focused on adding only those features which our growing base of Harmony Beta users have indicated as critical within the design, communication, planning and or execution management of S&T's within their or their customer’s organizations.

 

In response to these requests, the new version of Harmony (9.16) include:

Strategy & Tactic Design

• Modifying S&T Tree structure
  • Add Parent – the new version of Harmony now allows users to add a parent S&T node, not only to add a parent to a level 1 S&T node (e.g. when it is realized that the level 1 S&T node is actually level 2) but also enables a parent to be added to any node at any level while retaining the integrity of the rest of the S&T.
• Addition of Goldratt and Personal S&T Libraries
  • Goldratt S&T Library – this S&T library contains all the generic S&T's that was designed and approved for release within the public domain by Dr Eli Goldratt. These generic S&T's provide the base for users to design their own customized S&T's for their organizations, with the ability to simply drag-and-drop sections of generic S&T's or even a full generic S&T onto their custom S&T/Users cannot add or delete from this library. Users can also select in the File/Preferences menu to be notified if Dr Goldratt has added new generic S&T's or released new versions of generic S&T's
  • Personal S&T Library – this S&T library contains all the generic S&T's that have been created by the user, which they want to re-use as the base of other customized S&T's For example, the VP of Strategy of a Retail Chain could design a generic S&T for a Supermarket within their chain and save it within their Personal S&T library to be used to create customized S&T's for specific Supermarkets. To add S&T's to your Personal S&T Library, simply right click on the left viewing pane in the “Personal S&T Library” and selecting “Add to S&T Library”
• Defining Groups and Allocating Groups to S&T nodes
  • Defining Groups – the definition of groups for grouping S&T nodes together within a level provides both a practical mechanism for checking sufficiency within a level of the S&T as well as an aid for communication of a level. The new version of Harmony allows the user to define customized labels for grouping nodes within a level. Typical groupings that are used in an organization transition S&T is “Base Growth” and “Enhanced Growth” for level 2 and “Build”, “Capitalize” and “Sustain” for level 3 nodes. The “Define Groups” functionality can be found as a new icon in the S&T Design module or can be initiated by simply right-clicking on any S&T node and selecting “Define Groups”.
  • Allocating Groups to Nodes – any groups defined with the “Define Groups” functionality can then be allocated to a specific node. For example, if S&T nodes 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 should be grouped together as part of “Build” (referring to “Build a Decisive Competitive Edge”) then the user would allocate “Build” group to each of the S&T nodes 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 by either clicking on the new “Allocate Nodes to Group” icon or by simply right clicking on these nodes and selecting “Allocate/De-Allocate Groups to Node” and then selecting the “Build” group from the list.
• Multi-language Display and Printing Support
  • Multi-Language & Character Display – the new version of Harmony can now support display of all Asian language characters such as Japanese etc.
  • Multi-Language & Character Printing – the new version of Harmony also supports printing of Asian language characters such as Japanese etc.
• Global Find & Replace
  • The new version of Harmony now allows global find & replace of words or phrases. This makes customization of a generic S&T much quicker as a user can open a generic S&T from the Goldratt or their Personal S&T library and for example finding and replacing “The Company” with the name of their own company.
• New Global User Preferences for:
  • Custom Text – the new version of Harmony now gives users the option to replace the traditional “Necessary Assumptions”, “Strategy”, “Parallel Assumptions”, “Tactic” and/or “Sufficiency Assumption” titles used in the Edit/View S&T node with custom text for non-TOC audiences. e.g. By selecting “Customized” on “Necessary Assumption” Harmony will display “What is the need for the change?” rather than “Necessary Assumptions”. Each of these labels can be customized by the user to show customized text or even a different language within the View/Edit Node details screen to replace the standard text.

 

• Archiving/Unarchiving of S&T's (zipping S&T's with its Hyperlinks)
  • Why it is needed? – Harmony allows users to hyperlink one or more files in any format to a specific Necessary Assumption, Strategy, Parallel Assumption, Tactic or Sufficiency Assumption within any S&T node to provide additional clarity or details to viewers of the S&T. One of the challenges with previous versions of Harmony was the sharing/distribution of such S&T's that included hyperlinked files. Typically, the hyperlinks was defined to match the directory structure of the S&T designer’s computer or server. However, when this S&T was shared with or distributed to other users via email or flash-drive, these users directory structure where the hyperlinked files are stored might differ and therefore necessitated the new user to recreate all the hyperlinks within the S&T to match their computer/server’s directory structure to ensure hyperlinked files can be accessed via Harmony.
  • Archiving S&T's with Hyperlinks – The new version of Harmony now allows any user to “zip” any S&T that contains hyperlinks by simply selecting “Archive for Distribution” option from the File menu.  The user simply specifies the name of the Archive S&T and location for saving after which Harmony will archive the full S&T with all its hyperlinked files embedded into a Harmony zip file which can then be shared/distributed via email or portable storage device to other stakeholders.
  • Unpack Archive Distribution File – The new version of Harmony now allows any user to unpack or unzip any S&T with all its hyperlinked files that were archived with Harmony’s new “Archive for Distribution” functionality. Users simply select the Archived S&T file (suffix of “.toczip”) and selects the location for un-archiving. Once they open the un-archived S&T with Harmony from this location, all Hyperlinks will work correctly.
• Multiple Language Spell Checker and Dictionaries
  • Standard Dictionaries – users can select from 6 standard dictionaries which include English (US), English (British), Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Spanish.
  • Additional Dictionaries – users can easily download and activate additional dictionaries that include dictionaries for Afrikaans, English (Australian), Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French,  Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Legal (English), Medical (English) Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Scientific (English), Spanish and Swedish
  • Dynamic (In Context) Spell Checking – as users would expect from an text editor, the new version of Harmony will check spelling in all the languages the user have selected while users are typing in the dictionary language selected (misspelling are shown with red underlining) and the Spell Checker will also display a list of recommendations for correction on right click in all the languages selected (e.g. Harmony can check and suggest spelling  corrections in more than one language simultaneously)

Strategy & Tactic Validation

• Build-in Harmony Flash Player  – the new version of Harmony now comes with a build-in Flash Player for viewing Flash presentations or movies that have been hyperlinked within an S&T. Flash provides the opportunity to protect IP and offers a high compression media format. To convert Microsoft PowerPoint ™ presentations, we can recommend the free iSpring Powerpoint to Flash converter. (www.ispringsolutions.com/free_powerpoint_to_flash_converter.html)
• New “Introduction to S&T's” file – the new version of Harmony now comes with a new “Introduction to S&T's” that include the latest insights into designing and validating not only the traditional “Transitional S&T's” but the new “Organizational S&T's” which uses the same logical S&T structure to define the responsibilities of each job within an organization and which can be used to identify and remove conflicts, overlaps and gaps between responsibility and authority within the organizational structure.
• S&T Export to Microsoft Excel  ™ – users can now select to export all or only selected details from the S&T into Excel in a “work-breakdown-structure” format including all the Strategy and Tactic planning details that were specified within Harmony such as Strategy & Tactic owners, Task Participants, Time to achieve the Strategy and Time to Implement the Tactic, Actual progress, Check Lists, “Waiting for” and “Recovery Plan”. The new version of Harmony also solves the problem that some users reported in getting additional and unwanted line-breaks in the exported Excel ™ file.
• Printing of S&T Tree – the new version of Harmony contains enhanced printing functionality and users now has additional options for selecting printing of both the complete or selected parts of the S&T Tree as well as the descriptions of the Necessary assumptions, Strategy, Parallel Assumptions, Tactic and Sufficiency Assumptions for each S&T node (one per page)

Strategy & Tactic Planning & Execution

• New S&T Grid View – Even an S&T with only three or four levels contains a significant amount of information that makes it quite challenging to review to identify information gaps or contradictions or to identify which S&T nodes a specific person has been assigned to as either Strategy Owner, Tactic Manager and/or Task Participant. The new version of Harmony provides the option to view the S&T in a grid view with different fields being represented as different columns in a grid. The default sorting sequence of the grid is the S&T node numbers, but as can be expected, the sequence of the grid view display can be changed simply by clicking on the column heading that the user wants to use as sort criteria. Additional fields can be added or removed to the grid view simply by right clicking in the title row of the grid and selecting, which S&T fields to add/remove. Currently, users can use the Grid view only for viewing and not for editing. The functionality to edit within the Grid view will be included in the next Harmony upgrade.
• New Strategy Management Functionality – the new version of Harmony allows users to assign multiple Strategy Owners to a specific Strategy in a S&T node (e.g. For larger organizations where the same Strategy has to be achieved within a number of business units). For each Strategy Owner, users can, during the Planning phase, define different Strategy Measurements, Targets, Baselines and “Estimated time to achieve” as well as different buffer status settings (when a strategy should turn “red”)
• Tactic Tactic Management Functionality  – the new version of Harmony allows users to assign multiple Tactic Owners (Task Managers) to a specific Tactic in a S&T node (e.g. For larger organizations where the same Tactic has to be implemented within a number of business units). For each Tactic Owner, users can, during the Planning phase, define different Task Participants, Pre-requisites, Check Lists,  “Estimated Time to implement”, as well as different buffer status settings (when a tactic should turn “red”)
• Active Buffer Management – the new version of Harmony also allows users to capture “Waiting for?” and “Recovery Plan” details to keep Strategy Owners informed of the current status of implementation, what are causing delays and what is being done to recover the time lost.

We hope you enjoy the new upgrade and look forward to your comments or suggestions for future improvements


Please send any comments or suggestions to Dr Alan Barnard at alan@goldrattresearchlabs.com