Project Management Software
Project managers often speak a language all their own. That language has been
reflected in a special class of software since shortly after the advent of computers.
Project management software was developed to track activities and tasks, to facili-
tate understanding of the project, and to find a way to communicate that under-
standing to others. Project management software packages (e.g.,Microsoft Project,
Sciforma Project Schedule, Niku Workbench, Planview, Primavera, Artemis Pres-
tige, and so on) have the ability to produce project reports. Although those reports
take on wildly different appearances, they share common data sets regarding project
work, resource allocation, precedence relationships, and cost and tracking informa-
tion. They share the ability to present information in a spreadsheet format or in a
series of reports. They share the capacity to modify the presentation (to varying
degrees) to facilitate understanding.
The tools are not, however, common desktop applications outside the project
management community. Also, although most project managers have a copy of one
project management program or another on their desktop, they cannot expect
their peers who are not project managers to have the same tools. Thus, from a
9communications perspective, the information from project management software
needs to be transferable to other tools and applications, including spreadsheet
and word processing programs. For many project managers, the most critical
component of a project management software package is not the robustness of its
algorithms, but the tool’s capacity to have outputs copied into a spreadsheet.
In selecting project management software, the project manager should take the
tool’s exporting ability into account as a mission-critical capability. Tools that
severely limit what information can be transferred out and how that information
can be transferred will limit the ability to communicate