Project Management Software

Why project management software? Nearly all aspects of business may be viewed as "projects":

• Engineering the next generation space shuttle to take precious human cargo into deep space,
• Software Development for a simple online database or a complete software product to be the "next big thing",
• Building the latest high-tech aircraft that travels non-stop from Singapore to New York faster than ever before,
• Construction of a chain of fast-food restaurants across the continent and beyond, cost accounting and organizing many contractors and enormous time lines, or
• Scheduling your next marketing campaign, synchronizing the design of collateral materials, direct mail, and media placement.

Managing projects requires a degree of professionalism that increases with the degree of project complexity. "Project Management" has, over the past few decades, broken free from standard management disciplines and evolved into a full-fledged, independent discipline standing solidly on its own two feet.

The ingredients of successful project management are common throughout the world - it demands quality information, discipline, goal-driven and teamwork skills from its practitioners. In today's complex business environments, foresight sees the action on the battlefront and generates applause and generous bonuses.  Hindsight ends up reviewed in management journals as case-studies, referenced in project management training courses as how not to successfully manage projects.

Indeed, the bar has continually risen for project management professionals.  The stuff of future senior management is nurtured and groomed in project managers - what with the heavy emphasis on communication, getting the best out of real specialists, and planning, forecasting & decision-making skills. A victim of the Red Queen Effect, which states that any evolving environment, continual progess is necessary just to keep up, Tracking and managing so many factors and functions require highly specialized software for today's modern project manager.

The entity which sponsors a project looks at it from the point of fulfilling four target functions - scope, quality, time and cost. These very functions then become constraints within which the project manager has to operate. Any project is also facilitated by four management functions - information/communications, human resources, contract or procurement, and risk. There are two further entities involved: Stakeholders, who have a direct stake in the project; and Constituents, who are affected by the consequences of the project. For example, in the construction of a six-lane highway, simplistically speaking, the government may be project sponsor, the construction or infrastructure industry play the role of stakeholders, and the general public the constituents.

A comparison and review of the available types of project management software will help you determine the best solution for your particular situation.

Free / Open Source

The market for project management software is choc-a-bloc with products.  Some are free to download or open source.  These are perfect for smaller companies without the budget for large-scale project management software, but still understand the value of solid project management principles.  These free/open source offer extremely basic functionality, such as rudimentary time lines, PERT charts, or Gantt charts, but offer little along the line of cost accounting, risk management, and mostly customer support.  When the software is free, the software defects you experience may not get fixed quickly, if ever.

Client Server

Some client-server project management software specializes in very niche domains, such as general construction, heavy engineering, software-development, highway contractors, electrical contractors, marketing, medical services... you name it.

Targeted mostly towards the desktop, these software provide rich features such as graphically rich Gantt charting, PERT charts, risk management, Critical Path Analysis, EVA, accounting, and resource utilization.

Online / Web-based

Sophisticated online web-based enterprise-wide project management software vie with each other to grab the users' eyeballs with interesting gimmicks and bells & whistles.  They allow project participants to report task progress, and report the details of their progress online.  This, in turn, allows the project manager to readily understand the status of the various participants and keep their eye on the ever-important critical path.

The true heavyweights offer web-based solutions that can be operated from anywhere in the world - whether on an intranet or a password-protected, 128-bit-encrypted internet gateway. This means that everyone from top management to traveling engineers and support executives, to the frontline workforce can access project-related information anytime. Not only that, outside subcontractors as well as customers can log onto their relevant portion of the project and get to track it. Plus, useful timesheet modules, project calendars and email notification helps the manager monitor and be proactive about both costs and time deadlines.

General Project Management Tools

Others, such as and Microsoft's "MS Project 2003" and "Visio" are noteworthy examples that are often benchmarked as jack-of-all-trades in software project management.  They do everything fairly well, but nothing tremendously.

At the end of the day, it would behoove us to remember that project management software are mere tools in the hands of the project manager. The best software cannot perform or deliver results unless deployed intelligently. And the best results that any software generates will still need a sharp brain and intellect to make sense of.

After all, when the chips are down, it is the project manager whose job and career are on the block. Not the software's!

Additional Resources

Project Management

Management

Leadership

Work Motivation

Biography

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