Today’s post is from Mr.Jason Westland who shares his experience with project management softwares.
Project Management Software can make the many jobs of the project manager much easier, facilitating progress from inception to completion. Good software for project management should include most, if not all, of the following:
Project Management Software comprises a variety of different programs, and are available for purchase (proprietary) and for free (Open Source). Some project management software is web-based, and others are not.
Genius Inside, established in 1997, provides collaborative project management software solutions. Their suite includes various modules: portfolio management, resource management, Gantt chart, risk management, document management and the integration with Microsoft Project. Organizations can better address challenges like business process improvement with the help of this software suite. The Genius Inside project management software can be used online or in-house.
Clarizen, Inc., founded in 2005, provides on-demand, collaborative project execution software that allows businesses to manage all of their projects and resources in a single environment. This project management software facilitates collaboration and project execution. This project management software is completely web based (SaaS) and has the ability of CAD designers attach CAD drawings to a project and to move between the project view and design view. Other features include Project Scheduling, Collaborative Planning, Time Tracking, Task Management, Budget Tracking, and Reports & Dashboards.
A web-based project management software solution is Easy Projects .NET. With Interactive Gantt Chart functionality among its set of modules, other features include activity, request and issue tracking, portfolio management, real-time conferencing, and estimation analysis, and support for Microsoft Project file import and export.
An open-source project management software solution is eGroupWare. Its primary functions include contact management, appointments, projects and to-do lists. Users can access eGroupWare in many ways, such as via the web-based version, using different supported groupware clients in-house, and even by mobile phone or PDA. It also has translations for more than 25 languages, including right-to-left language support, and a standard X-AMP System which can be used on any operating system.
It is important to find the right project management software for the team size and project result. It may take trying different software solutions before the best for the project at hand is found. The sorts of tools used in project management software can vary widely, depending on the industry they were developed for. However, there are elements that are important for any project: scheduling, calculating critical path, and providing information.
Perhaps the most important element of project management software is the ability to provide information in a useful way. Typical elements or issues include task lists for people, allocation schedules for resources, overview information on how long tasks will take to complete, early warning of any risks to the project, information on workload (for planning holidays), evidence, historical information on how projects have progressed, and in particular, how actual and planned performance are related, and optimum utilization of available resources.
Jason Westland has been a project manager for the past 15 years. He has recently published a new book called “A Project Management Life Cycle” and owns his own project management software company. If you would like to find out more about Project management software visit his website at projectmanager.com
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22:52, 15.04.2010
The class of software termed “project management software” is, in reality, project scheduling software which uses often complicated mathematical algorithms to redistribute resources and rearrange activities in order to make the most effective and efficient use of a limited set of resources to complete a project within a specified time and budget.
However, a huge number of project fall into a category of small, low budget or short-duration projects.
Needed is software that at its core is outcome, not calendar, based in its approach to helping you plan and manage projects successfully.
Tonya
17:33, 28.04.2010
Project managers can understand the difficulty level of managing various projects together and that’s the reason why Project Management Software becomes more important for a successful outcome.
17:06, 03.05.2010
In this post, I found the good points about the project management software. Its very understandable and important things about the software. Web-based Project Management Software makes project management more easier and its becoming important these days.
18:44, 15.07.2010
I have read couple of articles on your blog and could say it was really interesting, thanks for sharing that.
04:52, 19.07.2010
Very good information, I get a lot of knowledge from here, but I also discuss similar things on my blog.
17:08, 21.07.2010
[...] Project Management Software – A guest post from Jason Westland … [...]
19:54, 15.11.2010
I think one of the main problems that a lot of managers face while working with PM tools is that they are unable to get an accurate status of the project…until it is very late ?…what we call as 90% syndrome…So, the team keeps reporting the progress as steady until you reach 90% completion (as reported by team) …and then it forms a plateau at 90% i.e. the progress is really slow after that…This is primarily because of false reporting of progress by team in the initial stages of the project…In this regard I really like the approach of 2-plan team they calculate progress (% completion) by computing tasks-completed/number-of-tasks. And the best part is ? …it is an open-source alternative to basecamp and other webbased pm software
01:18, 22.11.2010
Have a look to pm-software.org. This site has several reviews about project management directory .