The Progressive Roll Out of Cognibox PO Version 3 is Carrying on

Par: Nicolas Larivière
Directeur de Projets, Services en ligne.

All the SIM team is mobilized for the progressive deployment of Cognibox PO version 3. For the past 3 weeks, more than 2000 hours have been dedicated by fifteen employees, to the update of the software; programmers, designers, analysts, technicians, customer service agents and other members of the extended SIM team.

A Challenging Transition

The transition has been more challenging than expected and we have been confronted with hardships. Several among you have taken the time to share with us operational bugs and data clashes you have noticed. Your support has been precious to the focus of our efforts on the critical points and for this, I thank you. Today, I wish to underline our commitment to post online a reliable and efficient service, and to keep you informed of its development.

Progress Status

At this time, some difficulties remain but, all the data and features available in version 2 have been released and are operational in version 3. While many improvements made possible by this new version are already noticeable: I am specifically thinking here of the data treatment speed, the strength of the research tools, the superior quality of the graphics in terms of appearance and readability, and user friendliness of the navigational interface.

The notes and validation stati have now been re-established in the qualification files. The subcontractors can subscribe to the system and fill out their file for all contractors. Some utilities involving mainly administrative purposes are to be completed, for example:

candidacy summaries;
requirement model assignements;
creation of documents.

At present, we are working on the deployment of these utilities, which will be available soon. Meanwhile, the requirement model assignments and the creation of documents can be done through our customer service. I will keep you informed of the developments when they are available.

New Structural Presentation

Numerous subcontractors and contractors have mentioned having difficulty finding their way through the new structural presentation of the data managed by version 3. I aim to settle the reasons which have brought us to make this modification, and which guidelines have brought us to it.

The management of the data in the preceding version was based on pages containing many questions. These groups of questions were bound together and couldn’t be divided. In validation mode, the contractor proceeded to a unique validation for a group of questions. The notes and conversations were also managed by groups.

Initially conceived to manage the health and security qualification only, Cognibox PO has gradually shifted into a more thorough qualification system, in response to the needs expressed by the existing users, and also those conveyed by the new contractors who have adapted to the system over time. We have had to add flexibility to manage “question by question” and settle upon a structure for the data which will allow us to continue to evolve and introduce new users and contractors while conserving a certain presentation logic, which was getting more difficult in the preceding version.

An Opportunity for improvement

The structure remodel has also been an opportunity to rethink the phraseology of many questions, to avoid misinterpretation. Furthermore, each question is numbered, which will ease tracking and monitoring. Finally, for the contractors who will want to create new requirement models or refine their present models, the reorganization by area of activity will make it much easier. The growth is not over: the new structure will make it easier to incorporate questions adapted to the needs of each region or country where Cognibox is present (a new reality!).

The Impacts on the Data Validation and Notes

Changing from the previous structure “question groups” to the new one “question by question” has generated important difficulties for transferring the validations and notes included in the subcontractor files. The new structure being somewhat in conflict with the previous data structure: most of the data had to be verified and changed individually to ensure its soundness and relevance. This was the trickiest part of version 3. That is now finished.

Tell Me What You Think

Several other improvements will be made to version 3 in the course of the next few days and weeks. We will release other notices as the deployment goes along. Now, however, I encourage you to express yourselves freely on the new version of Cognibox by leaving comments, suggestions or questions, in the comment box below. Since day 1 of this project, we have developed Cognibox in partnership with you, and we wish that this tool will continue to meet your needs.

Best regards,

Nicolas Larivière
Project Director
Online services