How Santa organizes the present distribution around the world
Every year, Santa Claus takes care of the distribution of countless presents worldwide. What he used to record in Excel until a few years ago, he now successfully manages with the open source project management software OpenProject.
”With OpenProject, it is finally so easy to keep an overview of all the wishes coming in worldwide. OpenProject saves me 4 hours of work every day, leaving more time for long winter walks. Present production and delivery is also well organized. Now I don’t have to worry anymore about a present not being delivered on time!”
Santa Claus
For managing all his tasks, Santa Claus in especially relies on the following benefits and features of OpenProject.
Security and data protection
In particular, the topic of security and data protection is of great importance to Santa. “I can’t take responsibility for children’s wishes being on servers somewhere around the world and the information being processed by third-party providers.” Therefore, Santa has decided to have his own installation of the OpenProject Enterprise on-premises version. His servers are located high up in the North behind a firewall and are administered by a crowd of hardworking Christmas elves.
Incoming e-mail functionality
The incoming email functionality of OpenProject is essential for Santa Claus for organizing all incoming Christmas wishes. It is especially important to him that e-mails to wishes@santa.org are directly turned into tickets in the system. This means that incoming wishes are recorded directly in OpenProject as work packages and Santa can evaluate and prioritize them, track the answers, and then release them for commissioning.
Project planning with Gantt charts
Santa organizes the planning of his projects, i.e. the present production and distribution, with Gantt charts in OpenProject. This allows him to manage all the corresponding phases and milestones at one central place.
Structured agendas and minutes for elves meetings
Santa is very happy about the dynamic meetings that OpenProject released right in time before Christmas 2023: He and his elves have a lot to discuss and quickly lose track of things without a structured agenda. Now every elf can add their own topics to the meeting agenda and attach work packages to a meeting.
Agile boards for present distribution
The agile boards in OpenProject support Santa Claus and his team of busy Christmas elves to coordinate the gift delivery. An agile board is maintained for each country, which then enables the Christmas elves to record and prioritize all tasks on the board. Santa Claus can always see the current status.
Stay informed about last minute changes with Baseline comparison
Yet another child has changed their wish list at the last minute! And there seems to have been a problem with the sledge transportation since yesterday evening. Luckily, Santa is no longer upset, because with OpenProject’s baseline comparison he can see exactly when which change happened and can react quickly. In addition, Santa has subscribed to all work packages that are particularly important to him as a watcher and receives changes immediately in his notification center.
News about Christmas updates
Santa likes OpenProject’s News feature to easily inform his elves about the ongoing Christmas project. If there’s an outbreak of the North Pole flu and Santa needs to call on everyone to lend a hand, or if Santa wants to announce that the reindeer team is ready for takeoff – he just publishes a News on OpenProject.
Custom theme and logo
Santa uses the OpenProject Enterprise on-premises version with a custom theme and logo. This allows him to customize the application to his corporate identity.
Time tracking
For the coordination with all external suppliers and assistants, Santa Claus uses the time tracking in OpenProject. All team members can book their hours directly to the corresponding work packages. Santa Claus has a clear visibility of how many hours have been spent on which tasks.
If you manage similar complex projects and are looking for a project management software for 2024, we highly recommend doing it the way Santa did. Get in touch, and we are happy to consult you – or start your 14-days free cloud trial here.
