How Does KnowCount Work?

Functionality

KnowCount is a software as a service platform that has three main functions: analyzing skills data, calculating Project Skills Readiness Level, and presenting results visually. Project Skills Readiness Level calculation is based on a scientific method.

Project Skills Readiness Level calculation is the heart of KnowCount. It is based on a scientific method for measuring capability of organizations.

After Project Skills Readiness Level is calculated it is presented in visual formats. There are many reports ready for use to compare the Project Skills Readiness Level of developers, projects, teams and even companies.

Architecture

Here is the architecture of KnowCount. It is not cloud-native but cloud-ready. KnowCount can be installed in both CLI, SaaS, and On-Premise versions.

KnowCount comprises three major components - Local client, SaaS platform, Organizational dashboard.

Local client is an application responsible for the analysis of local Excel files that contain team skills, project roles with skills and the person-to-role mappings. The client application needs to be installed on a computer with network access to the folders where the target Excel files are cloned. One organization can have many such client applications installed on different computers. Each such client application can analyze a different set of Excel files. For instance, each department can have their own Excel files and their own KnowCount client application. However, all data collected by all client applications will be stored under the company name. Hence we recommend organizations to maintain only one KnowCount client application.

Local client sends the results from the analysis to SaaS platform.

SaasS platform is the main component of KnowCount deployed on cloud infrastructure. When deployed on cloud infrastructure, KnowCount runs on Amazon Web Services. There we run the latest patches, inside a private network, with strict access permissions. Your data is secure at every step. The environment is isolated and firewalled, IP-filtered, VPC/VPN with ACL. Instances are always up-to-date, and configured with scalability, redundancy & backups.

SaaS platform is engineered to:

• Capture all collected data.
• Calculate Project Skills Readiness Level and other metrics.
• Generate reports based on various statistical models.
• Present the reports on the Organizational dashboard.

Organizational dashboard is a single web application (SPA) available 24/7 from anywhere in the world. It can be accessed from virtually any desktop and mobile device or screen size through a web browser. Organizational dashboard is secure, flexible, and scalable to meet spikes in demand.