The general features of a project management software include scheduling, costing, budgeting, controlling, management and communication. However an important function of any project management solution is resource management. This covers all types of resources including human, equipment, materials and costs.

Nowadays businesses can work efficiently only by managing resources. With materials and costs things are pretty easy: you buy a stock and it is yours. Human resource management is not the same. You can not just own a human resource, but need to retain one. With the help of a resource management software, project managers can make sure that the right human resources are working on the right tasks and following a real-time project timeline. This is achieved based on several factors like employee’s skills, experience, and availability.

Resource planning software – must have features

In today’s global economy, when projects are spread across multiple regions or even countries it only makes sense that the right resources should make up a project team, regardless of their physical location. Even more project managers need to have powerful project planning tools capable of managing multiple projects with shared resources. At any moment in time they need to view resource availability and utilization even across multiple projects.

Tracking the time and costs using Time Sheets or Resource Sheets is one of the best solution. These tools contain data (total, actual, remaining, standard, overtime) related to the work and cost of the resources and their assignments. The data can be seen as totals or time distributed. As the project evolves the actual data represents the work/cost already consumed for the completed part of the project. The remaining data refers to the values needed for the remaining part of the project:

• Assigned – the planned work resulted from assignments
• Available – the unassigned work that can be done by resources according to their calendar
• Capacity – the total work (assigned + available) that can be done by resources according to their calendar
• Actual – the work already performed according to the completed part of the project
• Remaining – the work to be performed to complete the unfinished part of the project
• Standard – the work paid at standard rate (planned in the working hours of the resource)
• Overtime – the work paid at overtime rate (planned beyond the regular working hours of the resource)
• Overallocated – the work which can not be physically performed

An important feature that a resource planning software must have is the ability to handle multiple working calendars for different shifts and holidays. The capability to manage leaves, holidays, planned, unplanned work is necessary in relation to overtime work. It is a well known fact that overtime rates are always higher than standard ones and these should be avoided as much as possible in any project in order to not increase the costs and to fit in the estimated budget.

The possibility to have a time distributed sheet with different timescales is a big bonus. Sometimes it is needed to manage resource bookings in hours, days or even minutes. A flexible and dynamic timescale would do the trick. The system should also be very user friendly and easy to learn, allowing users to handle functionality with a minimum number of clicks.

An powerful resource management software can keep the overtime costs of a project as low as possible and thus can make the project management process more effective and finish the project on time and within budget.

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Project scheduling should be considered the central piece of any project management software. Without the possibility to easily schedule all the tasks of a project there would be little expectation regarding the efficiency of controlling complex projects. However, project management planning or scheduling software should simplify a project managers work and not complicate it.

The project schedule

The project schedule is the central part of the project plan and it is used to connect the tasks to be done with the resources that will accomplish them. It consists of a list of deliverables with intended start and finish dates. Deliverables are the lowest level elements in a schedule, which are not further subdivided.

In addition, the schedule provides project teams with a map for project execution and offers a baseline for tracking progress and managing changes. It can be used as a checklist to make sure that all necessary tasks are performed. If a task is on the schedule, the team is committed to doing it. In other words, the project schedule gives the means by which the project manager brings the team and the project under control.

The visual representation of a schedule is a timeline chart. It is created such that it depicts the tasks of the projects, the duration and the sequencing of them, and the major milestones of the project. The Gantt chart is the most popular timeline chart.

Prior to creating the project schedule the project manager must have a work breakdown structure (WBS), an effort estimate for each task, and a list of resources with availability for each resource. Once these data are established a project scheduling tool can automatically do much of the tedious work of calculating the schedule. However, before a project manager can use such tools, he should have an  understanding over concepts like WBS, dependencies, resource allocation, critical paths etc. These are the real keys to planning a successful project.

When establishing the project schedule a few important steps must be performed:

• Establish dependencies – The first step in building the project schedule is to establish the order in which tasks are going to be performed. The WBS structure will be used as input. A dependency will be created between two tasks if one depends on the other. There are four types of dependencies: Finish to Start, Finish to Finish, Start to Start and Start to Finish.
• Assign resources to tasks – The next step is to identify the resources required to perform the work. A resource is any person, item, tool, or service that is needed by the project. Based on its availability the schedule might get adjusted in time.
• Create the schedule – Once the dependencies are established and the resources are assigned the project manager must enter the work effort or the duration for each task. With this information in place a project scheduling software should be able to automatically arrange the tasks and calculate a final date for the project.

Project scheduling solutions

Over the years managers used spreadsheets for scheduling and resource management, with columns to track planned and actual start and finish dates. Initially these were the only solutions. After that it was still used because of the low price for such systems. Although this approach is not used or recommended by the pros, it is sometimes the practical and affordable solution for small projects in small organizations. However this has the limitation that it can not do all the things that a dedicated project management software can do, especially in terms of graphics displays and data flexibility.

Work schedules are used to manage resources and the work required to complete the project. It presents the distribution of work in time. Once established during the initial phase it is difficult to be managed in case changes occur. However using a project management tool things get simpler and you can see how the changes on the working time are reflected in the schedule. Managers will have the possibility to detect the overallocation or overtime periods for resources and perform work leveling operations.

A project scheduling software will never do the job for you and people will still be the ones to execute the tasks. However what it can do to help you is to make all the necessary computations to lay down the schedule.

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Nowadays almost any manager uses some kind of project management planning and control software and the reason for this is simple: software can help and ease a lot the work of any person.

Many experienced project managers have created over time a knowledge base of tips and tricks that they can use; strategies to ensure  business requirements are accurately defined, risks can be managed effectively and changes controlled in recognition of the importance of project scope. However novices are not that lucky. They need to gain all these in time. In this article we shall try to present some of the most encountered ones.

Keep your project as dynamic as possible

Projects tend to move and change in time and for this reason there must be an easy way to update it. If it is created using hard constraints a simple shift in time might actually be a very hard to do operation. Here are some things that you should take into consideration:

Use of constraints. Constraints on tasks impose certain restrictions in the scheduling algorithm because it relates to certain dates. Fixed dates should be avoided as much as possible since this links the project to a certain time period. Instead of using dates to specify the sequence of tasks you should rather think at adding dependencies between them.

Creating dependencies. If certain gaps must be created in the sequence of tasks within a project then these should always be represented using dependencies with “leads” or “lags”. This is very useful in case of shifting the project in time. Do not simulate them using false tasks or hard constraints. Using false tasks will result in an increased total work and constraints will make the project to be connected to certain dates. Furthermore dependencies should be avoided to be used to resolve resource overallocations.

Task start or finish dates. Manually setting start or end dates for tasks will actually impose constraints on the tasks, therefore limiting the dynamic nature of your project schedule. The distribution in time should be done naturally using dependencies. In a well done project plan, almost every task is driving another task. If a task is not influenced by other events then it should only depend on the start date or the end date of the project (in case of start to finish scheduling and finish to start respectively).

Things to be avoided

Task naming. Avoid using duplicate task names since this will increase the ambiguity of the project. In case certain tasks are repeated in multiple phases then appropriate names should be used. Even more a naming convention should be used if possible.

Formatting. A consistency regarding formatting data is preferable. This way everyone will better understand the projects. Using different formats and rules for presenting data might get to misunderstanding and confusion.

Assigning resources. When assigning resources to a task it results an amount of work that must be completed by those resources. Milestones and phases are a special type of tasks. Milestones are used to represent deliverables and have no duration while phases are a collections of related activities. For this reason neither should have resources assigned to them.

Linking phases. A phase is a collection of tasks.  When you say an activity depends on an entire phase that activity depends on all the tasks from that phase. However when a phase depends on another phase things become more complicated since any tasks from the second phase depend on all the tasks from the first phase. This increases the risk of creating circular dependencies. A solution to this problem would be to insert a milestone at the end of the phase and use that for linking.

More tips on project management software can be read on RationalPlan’s project management blog.

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A good plan is just the first step to the success of a project. The real work starts only after the project plan is ready. As a project manager you have to track the project’s evolution and make sure it follows the initial plan as much as possible. And the easiest way to accomplish this is through the use of project tracking software.

It is a well know fact that the initial plan does not always fit your expectations. The unpredictable happens. To increase the chances for project success, once your project is started the project manager needs to constantly monitor its progress keeping up with what everyone is doing. There are several factors that need to be kept under control: activities, resources and work, budgets and costs, progress.

Activities

Activities in a project can be categorized based on certain characteristics as projects, phases, milestones and tasks (the term task is generally used for all these terms). A milestone is a key event marking the end of a major stage of a project. And for this reason managing milestones is the most important factor. Essentially these are the deliverables which your project sponsors will remember and keep asking you about. You need to immediately recall these dates to instill a sense of confidence in your ability to be on top of things. The key here is to have a clean layout over the milestone plan and to make sure you check them as completed at the already planned dates. You can do it sooner but not later.

The next important activities are the low level ones. Since phases are just a summary of all these tasks it is obvious that once the tasks are efficiently tracked all the above levels up to the root project are also on schedule. In this case the key is to easily determine the critical path of the project and to constantly track those tasks. Project management tools like Gantt charts can make this job as easy as possible.

Resources

When it comes to resources there are two important factors that must be kept in sight. Overallocation and resource availability. Assuming that the initial project plan was a well done one and there were no overallocation once the project is started many things can change. Tasks may delay or overlap resulting an overallocation or respectively a lack of resources. Project managers need to track and fix all these. This is done through resource leveling either manually or automatically. A resource management software can ease this process a lot.

Budget and costs

A successful project is the one that completes within budget constraints. Costs must be kept as low as possible. As seen above a bad resource tracking might lead to having resources working overtime and hence increased costs.

Track projects using baselines

The key to progress tracking is the baseline plan. To track a project, you must have something to compare against. The baseline plan contains the original or planned estimates against which you can track the project’s actual progress.

When to create a baseline

Usually a baseline is created immediately after the project plan is finished. Enter tasks, establish dependencies, and assign resources and costs. Once the schedule gets adjusted as best it can be, and before starting tracking, save the baseline plan. In certain cases when the project planning stage is long, or the project has begun but approved changes occur, the project manager can save multiple baselines to record the changing baseline values over time. This is useful for future experience to avoid what was bad planned.

How can a baseline help

A baseline is essential for tracking progress. The original estimate values are reference points against which you can compare the updated project (tasks, resources, assignments, costs). Once a baseline is saved, you can track the progress by viewing the variances between baseline estimates and actual scheduled data. Baseline information that consistently differs from current data indicates that the original plan was inaccurate and should be a signal for the future.

Project tracking software can help project managers to keep projects within time and budget according to the initial established plan. This is an essential feature that a project management software must have.

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No one was born an expert. We all start from low and through study, hard work and exercise will eventually get there. But in time and with patience… This process should start in childhood with the help of parents and continuously evolve in time. Being an organized person will always help in any working domain. Personal life is the right place to practice on. And the best part is that it can be done for free, without constraints and with minimum failure risks.

Know what to do and when

In order to reach the final outcome for any type of work it is important to know what needs to be done and when. Once it is established a to do list it is a good practice to prioritize it. A logical pattern should be followed to reach a goal. One must decide what is going to have the biggest impact either in good or in bad on the final deliverable.

Prepare for battle

Knowing what to do is not enough to be efficient. Nowadays people tend to have so much things to accomplish that they just get distracted from one objective to another. Meditation and exercise are some of the tools that should be used to refocus, that will help anyone to move from one day to another and to stay on track.

A well done plan is the key to efficiency. One solution to achieve it is to do part of the work in the evening – organizational stuff – that will set you up in no time for the next morning. Dead simple: prepare it and then just jump in to get it done.

To mix or not to mix – that is the question

OK, suppose one has what it needs to manage both his life and his job. But is it a good thing to mix them? For simple tasks this may not be a problem but if things get more complicated at work it is a good idea to separate them. Failure in personal life has a smaller impact and will influence only the close people. However not meeting a deadline within a project can be a major risk with a large impact over many people and with high costs…

When things get serious it is recommended to get focused as much as possible and remove any distractions. A good idea would be to limit the access to social media and other distracting factors.

Go Pro

Being successful in organizing the personal life is not a hard thing to achieve. But to become a successful project manager takes time, patience, experience and a lot of hard work. As a project manager the study never stops. And this is not all. To be recognized and to obtain a higher reputation it is recommended to follow project management related courses, exams and to add the obtained degrees to the CV.

The most important thing for anyone in no matter what domain is to do what he really likes, what offers satisfaction. A pleasant job is a successful and rewarding one.

Use less tools or software and think more

Technology is present everywhere in our lives both at home and at work. It gives us a helping hand in everything we do. However a project manager must first decide what needs he has that a tool might help with. Whenever something must be done the priority should be to first plan and then to execute. Domain knowledge might also be a plus in certain cases. Once things are clear then it is perfect feasible to start working with a project management tool to develop and manage the projects.

The post From To Do Lists to Managing Projects – The Path From Personal to Professional Management appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

Planning a project is not an easy job. It requires some knowledge and an amount of experience. The steps are simple… Create the list of activities that need to be performed, structure them accordingly in phases and sub-phases and establish durations (or amount of work depending on the types of tasks). Next create the project flow by adding dependencies between tasks. This way it is established the order in which tasks are executed.

Up to this point there is nothing related to time and this is the biggest hint to keep in mind: avoid hard constraints. As long as tasks are scheduled to start as soon as possible then every task will depend only on its predecessors and on the project estimated start. This is the perfect project template that can be easily shifted in time by just changing the project estimated start.

It is unlikely that a novice project manager will be able to produce such a scalable project plan… There are situations when it is just impossible to keep a project flexible even for a senior project managers. But this is due to the nature, the requirements and the constrains of the project.

How To Adjust The Schedule

So the schedule is done and the project is ready to go. But it may take no more than one week for the project plan to stop corresponding to the reality: some tasks take longer than estimated, others are executed faster or even worse the project is put on hold for various reasons (lack of funds or personnel, a financial crisis period, bad weather conditions and the list can continue). What now? Synchronizing the old plan with the reality takes some effort and attention.

It is obvious that the already completed or started tasks will remain at their location. The only discussion is about moving the uncompleted ones and/or splitting the tasks that are partially completed. This adjusting process is similar to planning the project but done on a smaller scale. If the initial plan was not time flexible then each particular conflict needs to be manually solved.

As mentioned above the best case is the one when the plan was created with as few as possible hard constraints. This allows an increased flexibility when it comes to shifting the activities in time.

Highly Dynamic Schedules

Small and simple projects can be managed using simple tools like a paper and pencil or spreadsheets but this is not valid anymore with larger and more complex projects. The bigger the project is and the more frequent changes are made to the original schedule the harder it is to adjust it. More time is spent and the probability or error appearance is higher. Imagine doing all these week by week… a titanic effort.

In such situations it is highly recommended to use a project management software that has the capability to re-schedule the project starting from a given reference date. Such a software will automatically adjust the plan where possible and leave the hard constraints in the hand of the project manager by marking them as conflicts.

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It is a well-known fact that computers became a necessity in our lives by simplifying our work. Increased computational speed, huge memory and lack of fatigue are the main reasons why computers have so much success. Let’s admit it: in certain aspects robots are better that humans. So why not use them for such purposes? It is obtained an increased execution speed and accuracy. But all these come with one expense: time. Someone has to lose some time to teach computers how to do the job right.

So a project manager and its team can ease their work using specialized project management software. But is it worth it? Well it depends if they are using the right tool… It should be easy to use and configure and to not require to invest too much effort in using it. Time is precious and should be used to manage the projects and not the software. If one is using considerably more time to handle the software rather that working on its projects then that software is useless. In this case a replacement should be the right thing to do.

The sad truth is that for the most part, teams have absolutely no idea how to use their project management tools even months after they’ve supposedly integrated the system into their workflow. And it’s the same with other software… Some vendors just make complicated software that have far too many steps and users end up working more on their project management software to enter tasks and communicate than they do on getting the project done.

A well designed project planning system should allow users to easily create entities like projects, tasks, resources, clients and to add details – data input is a time-consuming process. Another point to keep in mind is that computed data should be always at hand and easy to follow. Navigation between any two views should not require more than a few mouse clicks. An intuitive interface is a big must: the users need to find fast what they are looking for.

Know who the boss is! You control the product and not the other way around. Use software that helps you focus your time on the actual project, software that delivers immediate visibility and control and that does not require all of your time and commitment. Otherwise what is the point in using a tool?

Handling projects and coordinating teams requires a great deal of work and responsibility and for this reason a project management software should ease the work of a project manager and not add more complexity. So choose wise the right project planning tool!

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Many say that agile is not a project management methodology but rather a product development methodology. But in many cases the companies prefer to treat the development as a project and hence the notion of agile project management. Now the agile and traditional approaches are totally different so the first thought would be that the software used to manage each type of projects to be different. The idea is that agile PM is not a method per se, but rather an umbrella term for different processes. In turn, agile processes are very different among them.

In Scrum there are small teams, usually collocated, no project manager, and very often there is no need for a software for the managing the project. The team is self organizing, team members are doing daily meetings, and the project is split in iterations that take maximum one month. At the end of each iteration it is decided the next one and so on… No one wants to loose time by updating a plan that keeps changing or to monitor the daily progress of the team with a project scheduling tool.

In other agile processes the iterations take longer but the main idea is that the project plan, the requirements and the product specifications are subject to change. So a traditional project management software does not solve these needs. Indeed it is necessary to have .a monitoring process for the project and the team, a system for client communication etc. but due to the dynamic nature of the processes there is no needs to have fancy or complicated features. An agile product should be light in functionality, easy to use, easy to access and highly portable.

In some environments like constructions and engineering the project plan must be well defined from the beginning and changes rarely occur. This is the case where the traditional PM methods are a good fit. Due to the complexity of the projects the tools need to be more powerful and to offer more features to support all kind of analysis and constraints, to offer strong resource management capabilities and why not users rights management modules. Since basically the plan is managed by a project manager or by a small subset of decision capable members there is no need for a high collaboration.

So why wouldn’t a traditional PM software be suitable for an agile process? Well… it can be used but it lacks efficiency by over complicating things with features that are not needed. On the other side a traditional PM tool lacks the flexibility in communication that is much needed by agile teams.

PM 1.0 and PM 2.0

Some named traditional project management as being PM 1.0 while the new and improved way of managing projects is PM 2.0. In latter case the accent is put on collaboration by the use of web-based tools in the detriment of more powerful features. By looking at the name PM 2.0 certainly seems better than PM 1.0 but the truth is that there is no clear answer regarding which one is better. It all depends on what type of projects someone is managing. More than probably PM 1.0 will still remain the preferred solution for traditional project management while PM 2.0 will be more suited for agile project management.

In the end it does not matter what type of project management software is used to manage projects as long as the objectives are met. Tools may differ a lot for agile and traditional project management but it is the managers responsibility to choose the right one.

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Cloud services are raging from simple storage and up to complex computing processes. Depending on the needs there are products that run completely into the cloud while others are just storing the data into the cloud. In the last few years there is a battle that is given between desktop based applications and cloud based ones.

Web-based Project Management Software

The notion of web-based products refers to software that runs within a browser on the client side. Generally the central computing part is kept entirely (computing and storage) within the cloud on the software provider side. However for certain offerings like RationalPlan it is also possible to have the central computing unit as a server module on the customer side. This might be a security measure for some customers.

Desktop Software

Cloud-based Solutions

Pros and Cons

As always nothing is perfect so there are obvious pros and cons for each possible solution.

The Pros

• Collaboration – since many companies are spread across the globe and have employees in multiple locations, cloud-based software can ease communication and increase teamwork productivity.
• Data Backup –  data loss is a real problem even for the biggest players on the market and even the best hardware servers can fall victim to power failures, system crashes and hackers or viruses attacks. However with cloud storage services users don’t have to ever worry about losing files since automatically files backups are done in multiple locations.
• Reduced Costs – having its own hardware for data storage requires companies to have employees to do the administrative work and a space for it and all these means additional costs. Using a cloud service it is cheaper since the maintenance and office space costs are shared to multiple companies that are using that service.

The Cons

• Security – using the cloud means storing all of a company’s data – which may include sensitive data, and company sensitive information – on others hardware. And those servers could be vulnerable to hackers, viruses, natural disasters or even physical theft. However the only real problem that appears only on cloud systems is related to security.
• Downtime – if the cloud provider runs into technical problems the clients will not be able to access their data until the provider solves the problem, situation which might take even a few hours… However the statistics say that the uptime of most cloud providers range between 99.6 percent and 99.9 percent which is not that bad for small businesses. For critical systems the most crucial data should be backed up in-house.
• Lower Speed – working over the Internet means bigger delays and response times as compared to local or Intranet solutions
• Less Features – cloud-based solutions are mostly web-based solutions that run within the clients browser and for this reason the list of features that can be offered is reduced as compared to a native application.

Cloud project management software is a great solution for small businesses to increased productivity and collaboration with lower costs and with data backup support. But there are also reasons to be cautious: the security, reliability and the speed. For such situations a dedicated server based project management system might be an alternative solution.

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Customer delaying the project is a major risk that should not be overlooked in any project. Minimizing this risk is not easy to be accomplished and its probability differs from client to client. But in case it happens mitigation actions must be performed.

Write clear specifications

In order to keep things clear and avoid misunderstandings it is important to create a solid project plan with clear specifications regarding possible project delays and the measures and penalties that apply. When it happens communicate clear factual evidence of the cost and timescale impact of delays caused by the customer. This is very important to keep things clear and to avoid the situation when the customers may argue that it is his fault and the contractor is suspected for hiding other delays behind those caused directly by them. Issues need to be resolved in a timely fashion to minimize risk and loss on both sides.

When dealing with external clients and when creating a contract it is advisable to add a clause that states that the client is responsible for prompt responses to ensure the project is not delayed. If the client provides delayed responses, actions etc. that lead to project delays then it nullifies timeline clauses in the contract. If the contract doesn’t have this kind of specifications then it is preferred to get a lawyer, or a better one in case a lawyer already exists.

In return when dealing with internal team the project manager has to take the same actions. Although there are no contractual terms that can generate a direct financial penalty, it will get noted at review time and possibly no raise…

Know the customer management

Avoiding the project delay problem is not a healthy thing to do. Escalation might reveal there are issues on the customer side where their project manager is not communicating clearly enough internally. This is why when contracting a new project it is good to know the customer and almost a must to know his management team. Knowing what to expect from them can decide whether to accept the new contract or to reject it. And even if the project is accepted contractual terms can be added to compensate the lack of professionalism on the customer management side.

The hard way

The ideal would be for all project delays to be solved with minor losses. However there are cases when it isn’t like that and there are two scenarios that can be used: accept the loss and keep the client or don’t accept it take measures. For the latter case communicate to the customer the consequences of their action, and internally agree when to set the project aside to move on to other things. Document well and communicate honestly and often and have an exit strategy established from the beginning. It is the same principle as the stop-loss used on financial trading markets. It is hard and costly but it is healthy.

Mitigation measures

Mostly its not the customer interest to delay the project, but when it happens, the main questions is WHY. And possible answers are: there was no foresight of the business case, or the value of the project has reduced and it is no more on high priority, or the business users are not aware of the reason of delay. In all the above cases it is needed a steering committee meeting to explain the delay and setup a new realistic deadline. It is important to know the reason for delay from customer side and then look at all possible mitigation plan to avert the negative impact of delay.

Sometimes there may be strategic reasons why a customer may delay a project and they do not necessarily have to share the reasons with the contractor. However to protect the project, the contractor just has to document the obvious delay and its impact on the project, then present it to the client’s responsible lead. Letting the client know that the delay may jeopardize the project and the project team may lose valuable human assets or client work resulting in even more loss of time and costs may get their attention.

It is important to know what to do when the customer is delaying the project but it is even more important to know how to minimize the risk of delaying the project by a customer. It is better and easier to avoid reaching into problems rather than solving them.

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