Project Management Software

Project management software comes in many different levels of sophistication with prices ranging from or more. Software itself does not make project managers more effective; it just makes them more efficient.PM software does not teach you how to define scope, communicate to the project sponsor or make clear assignments to your team members. It just let's you accomplish these and many other PM tasks more efficiently. So, before we look at the different kinds of PM software let's talk about the kinds of projects you manage and the levels of PM skills. Any software-oriented project manager today is quite familiar with Microsoft Project as a standard for personal project management software. The project management professional expectations for project scheduling are often set by Microsoft Project, whether or not Project is their personal project management software of choice. Microsoft Project does maintain the Project Management Institute project scheduling standards as referenced earlier in this article, further establishing the importance of maintaining these standards when selecting web-based project management software.One simple way to test project scheduling compatibility with the Project Management Institute standards is to use Microsoft Project files as an import and export test to the web-based project management software. Set multiple task predecessor relationships within a Microsoft Project file and import that file into the project schedule for the web-based project tracking. It is not enough to review the schedule after the import, because a lot of web-based project management software will alter the data by changing the schedule relationship into hard coded task dates that will no longer calculate after they are imported into the web-based project tracking. You must complete the test with the procedure in the next paragraph to make certain that the project schedule will continue to perform on the web-based project tracking as would be expected within Microsoft Project.

Project Tracking

Change multiple task durations and relationships within the imported project on the web and make absolutely certain that the web-based project tracking dynamically recalculates accordingly. This should include changes to the task schedule and proper calculation/recalculation of the critical path lengthening them when testing web-based project management software. The process of rapid development and deployment often requires schedule acceleration. Proper risk management also requires schedule acceleration to efficiently process a reschedule as project risks are overcome and/or avoided during the course of the project. It may sound simple, but it is quite common for web-based project management software to incorrectly calculate these rather rudimentary schedule acceleration processes.Another benefit of testing the Microsoft Project import and export with your web-based project tracking is that many industry standard project templates are available online from various trade organizations in a Microsoft Project file format. Properly managing an imported Microsoft Project schedule will allow you to fully leverage these templates.

Software Management Applications

At the high-end are PMs managing multiple projects or operating in a mature project organization where utilization is managed across all projects And there are executives with accountability for portfolios of projects. Here we need project management protocols to bring consistency to project planning and tracking . While software never ensures a consistent PM process this environment adds to the requirements of the previous levels. We now have the need to consolidate multiple projects and require consistent information so decision-makers can prioritize projects, allocate resources, schedule and track a pool of people working on multiple projects. This process is a lot more complicated than it sounds. It requires organization processes for portfolio management and software that can identify conflicting demands for the same resources as well as allow the executives to set priorities among projects that require the same resource. This category of user also generally wants to create detailed project budgets and have the software come pretty close to mimicking the company's cost accounting system. But they want actual cost data a lot sooner than the accounting department provides it. In this category, users often want sophisticated risk assessment tools, learning curve and resource loading features as well as detailed performance tracking.

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