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| Project Management Software |
Project management software exists in many different levels of
sofistication and variety of prices. This article aims to help project
managers realize what kind of project management software tools they
need and find out how computers can help them in everyday routine.
Before choosing some particular tool you should have a look at the
different kinds of projects to manage and corresponding PM skills. It is
very important to pick a project management software tool appropriate
for you and your organization. The following types of projects and
project management software should cover the field broadly, though any
categorization is very relative.
Project management software for small projects, usually in single functional area
At this level project managers usually plan and schedule only
durations of project subtasks rather than resource capacity or work
estimates. They do not need to track a project budget and their project
status reports contain only completion date tracking.
Project management software in this situation helps project managers to automate such basic routines like* planning project flow
* occasional status reports preparing
* producing Gantt charts
If your project management tasks are not intended to grow and such functionality is enough, you should not spend a lot of money nor waste your time on long learning curve about features youll never use.
Project management software for managing larger projects
Project budget is very important now, therefore we need a project
management tool to give us the capability to estimate resources and
money at every stage of the project. As more people are getting involved
in the project, software should provide the ability to create numerous
status reports – from simple total project cost to more sophisticated
ones.
As the size of the project grows, the number of project management
techniques increases. Requirements for project management software
change accordingly. At this level project management software must be
able to work not only with the static representation of start and finish
dates for each project subroutines, but it needs to be powerful enough
to simulate the project and reschedule it every time something changes
in project flow.
Project management software for huge multi-project environment
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| Project Management Software |
* material resources allocating (including finances)
* scheduling and tracking a pool of human resources
* sharing resources between multiple projects
* sophisticated risk assessment tools
* detailed project performance tracking
* creating a detailed project budget. This brings project management software closer to the companys accounting system
If you need a lot, you have to spend a lot. Project management
software for this purpose costs from $400 up to $3000 and even more.
Such packages usually have network versions and team communication
capabilities. Categorization above was rather comprehensive over the last years.
But modern project management reality changes constantly, therefore we
can talk about one more project management software category.
Project management software for managing multiple projects in small and mid-size businesses
It often happens that project managers face the need to manage
multiple projects simultaneously, using resources that can be shared
between them. But they do not need a huge and extremely expensive
project management software tool with thousands of not really needed
features. What should they choose? Concept Draw Project can be the
answer. It is a cross-platform (Mac OS X and Windows) project management
software tool that allows the project manager to automate project
routines – from planning and
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