Development of ProgramScope began in 1997 in response to a major cellular telephone tower deployment project in Brazil. Goals were quickly formulated to create a new and efficient methodology for managing the deployment by treating each cell tower as a standalone project, BUT, all information associated with the deployment of each tower was standardized. Although this methodology may sound intuitive it was unique in its approach. ProgramScope effectively provided geographically normalized information and status reporting across the entire network deployment program. This standardization of process, data collection and utilization resulted in efficiencies that were unparalleled in previous projects of similar scope. The success of this effort made ProgramScope (or, ARMS as it was then known) the program management standard throughout Brazil on what was the world’s most aggressive wireless telecom project at that time. The Brazilian project provided primary development direction for ProgramScope for the next three years.
In January 2000 a commercial version 2.0 of the product was released. Significant enhancements in this release were instrumental in the selection of ProgramScope by a joint venture company organized by Ericsson and Tecnosistemi, an Italian-based engineering firm that delivers engineering services in Latin America. Under this contract, ProgramScope was utilized for the delivery of engineering services throughout Latin America. The product continued to evolve and improve and version 3.0, released in March 2002, marked a quantum leap forward with features such as fully a web-based user interface, extensive configuration capabilities, process and workflow functionalities, and significant improvements in database performance.
September 2002 marked another major milestone when ProgramScope was competitively selected by Bechtel Telecommunications over eight competing offerings as a solution to provide all aspects of Program Management for the telecommunications global business unit.
The extensive requirements driven development and exhaustive field testing that resulted from these projects proved conclusively that ProgramScope possessed the functionality, reliability and scalability to handle large enterprise deployments. This proved to be a key factor in March 2006 when Clearwire selected ProgramScope to be the Program Control solution for the roll-out their national wireless WiMAX network. Clearwire uses the ASP verision of ProgramScope hosted by Connectria to perform site acquisition, to manage tower construction, maintenance and be the Plan of Record for all data related to their national netwrok. At Clearwire, ProgramScope is used to track an average of 170,000 changes per week, to generate over 5,000 comprehensive business reports per week and to serve as the central program management and information backbone for over 1,200 internal users and subcontractors. Subsequently, Clearwire awarded VQS a five year contract to provide ASP hosted Program Management services.
ProgramScope continues to aggressively develop additional feature sets and performance capabilities based upon customer requirements and field experience. New versions of the product will contain features and capabilities for enhancing the enterprise's performance and scalability in today's business environment. And, while the task is massive and sometimes complex, the goal remains quite simple — providing Empowered Program Management.
