Archimedes originally created Felix, an animated robot that communicates emotion through facial expressions, for the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw. He has become the most popular interactive exhibit ever created by Archimedes. Today, you may run into Felix in a growing list of cities around the globe.

How Structure for Jira Helps Bring Science to the World

Archimedes Exhibitions is a “one-stop shop” for innovative experiences. From brand spaces to high-tech interactive installations, their creative output travels from their headquarters in Berlin, spans the globe, and reaches millions of people.

For example, their Max Planck Science Tunnel has toured the world since 2000. Archimedes also built Felix the Robot (pictured above) – an emotionally intelligent robot developed by a 20-person team in just 3 months. They once built an exhibit that involved shipping 12 railroad cars from Germany to India, where it was viewed by 7 million people. (No big deal.)

In other words, this is next-level project management.

Members of the Archimedes team working on project ELIXIER – "experience-based learning through interactive experimentation in mixed reality environments."

Even more impressive? The entire project life cycle is in-house – from creative to engineering, from fabrication to deployment. Their team of 50 can quickly scale to 100 based on project needs. And they run it all – from planning to procurement to installation – on the Atlassian suite.

But it wasn’t always this way. For years, all they had to help them manage the chaos were out-of-control email threads and outdated spreadsheets. Meanwhile, requirements have drastically shifted. Archimedes was challenged by shrinking budgets, condensed project timelines, and tight delivery windows.

They knew they needed a tool that could keep up with change and provide the mission-critical data they lacked.

Archimedes' Project Management Challenges

Archimedes desperately needed a single source of truth. With several cross-functional teams working on up to 50 projects at a time, there were many critical challenges their new tool needed to solve.

• Labor cost tracking – 60% of the Archimedes project budget is labor. They needed precise tracking, excellent labor reports, and universal buy-in. All work tracking needed to be in the new tool.
• Managing material procurement – The other 40% of project budgets? Materials. With more than 500 procurements per project, a smooth procurement process and perfect expense tracking was a must.
• Approval process – Large purchases needed approval, and it had to be dead-simple to prevent project delays.
• Tracking resource availability – Certain resources have limited availability, so work performed with those tools needed to be planned with high accuracy. Most notably – the CNC milling machine was used across every project and could cause major delays without accurate planning.
• Comprehensive reporting – Tracking materials and man-hours would do no good if reporting wasn’t highly visible and configurable. Flexible reporting by project, project part, and portfolio was a requirement.
• Shifting staffing arrangements – With a team that could fluctuate by up to 100%, the tool needed to be friendly and adjustable enough to accommodate new team members seamlessly.

Simply stated, their goal was to get live project data, leading to better transparency and more accurate forecasting. A tall order for such a complex, cross-functional team.

Luckily, the answer would be simpler and more seamless than they thought. The Atlassian suite, plus a few key apps (including Structure for Jira and Structure.Gantt).

The Solution – Jira Software + Structure

Archimedes might never have considered the Atlassian Suite for broad-scale project management, if their software team wasn’t already achieving great results with Jira. They took a look and realized that Jira could be much more than a software development tool. With a few key apps from the Atlassian Marketplace, Jira could become as flexible as they needed.

Structure quickly became a mission-critical component of Archimedes’ successful Jira deployment. It allowed thousands of issues to become organized and crystal-clear. Custom views could be created, shared, and edited in a snap. And Structure made it simple to slice and dice the data for fine understanding of potential process improvements.

Now the Archimedes team sees Structure as indispensable.

“Since virtually all aspects of the projects are managed in Jira, this results in a large number of related issues and pages, which would be impossible to manage without the Structure app. It allows all members of the team to create all kinds of project perspectives and see very specific data, organized in a convenient way."
—Stephan Spenling, CTO and Chief Science Officer, Archimedes Exhibitions

The teams loved their new tool so much, they achieved a 99% adoption rate. This was only possible because the system was mapped to the culture, not the other way around.

Of course, there were some process changes involved. The workload has shifted toward designers, who now must complete more administrative tasks in Jira. But the payoff is clear – there’s much less trouble for project managers downstream, because the information in Jira is more accurate.

Today, Archimedes uses Structure and Structure.Gantt to plan and track tens of thousands of ongoing activities across up to 50 simultaneous large projects. Now that’s scalability.

Need to scale your Jira projects like Archimedes? Learn how Structure for Jira can help by requesting a demo today. Our Structure for Jira specialists will be happy to show you the ropes.