Project Management Software
The most popular PC-based project management software is Microsoft Project. However, the guidelines that will be provided here apply to similar software from other vendors. Some specific guidelines are given in Fig. 6.7. You can find more detailed guidelines in the book, Breakthrough Technology Project Management, second ed., by the same authors.
There are some basic problems with most of the existing project management software packages. First, they were initially designed for use by single users. Hooks have been provided for collaboration, but at the heart they are still single-user-oriented systems. Project management in modern international projects is a collaborative widespread activity. Thus, the most suitable project management tools would be based on the Internet and would employ a Web browser.
A second problem is that the existing software allows either total read-only or read–write access at the file level. If you are going to do collaborative project management, team members have to update their own individual tasks within the project plan. Therefore, they require write access to only specific tasks.
A third disadvantage is that many of the software tools have excessive features. Some of the features that should be discouraged are:
-
Spell checking. This is not a good feature since you will have to employ standard abbreviations for most tasks to keep the length small to show the GANTT chart.
-
PERT chart. Try to avoid PERT or sequential views of the project. This is especially true in international projects. Why? A PERT chart can encourage sequential thinking. People will not start a task until the predecessor is completed.
-
Automated resource leveling. This should be done manually and in a collaborative way.
-
Most of the reports that can be generated. The problem here is that the reports cannot easily be customized.
As a rule of thumb, it is recommended that you will end up using about 10–15% of the software. But it is a useful percentage. If the percentage is so low, why use the tool? Politics. There is nothing like a GANTT chart in which you have highlighted the tasks with issues and risk in a different color. This will give you support and put pressure on management to resolve issues.
All that aside, a key benefit of project management software is that you can customize the data elements in the software. After all, behind the project management software is a database. Another benefit is that you can customize the views and form as well as database queries or filters for the project data