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Project Software: Selecting

 

the Right Package

By Dick Billows, PMP,
Picking the correct project software is a key to consistently finish projects on time and within budget.  Project management software lets you do the critical steps project managers must do more efficiently than silly options like scheduling on a yellow pad or in Excel. 

Those waste too much of  your time to complete these critical steps:

  1. Spotting problems early, not after it’s too late to fix them
  2. Optimizing the use of resources so you finish as early as possible
  3. Updating the plan in a few minutes each week so you know where you are
  4. Updating everyone’s schedule in seconds when things change

There are certainly a whole lot more benefits that project management software can provide but those four items are the minimum tools that every project manager should have.  You will see that a yellow pad or managing a schedule in Excel give you none of those items. Let’s explore what a project manager needs in a software tool, depending on the scale of the projects the PM manages.

Project Management Software Capabilities

Small Project Plans
Done within your organization for the manager or your boss

Medium Project Plans
Affects multiple departments within your organization or done for customers/clients

Strategic Project Plans
Organization-wide projects with long term effects
Course

Draw visual charts like Gantt and PERT charts of your projects

These visual charts are useful for communicating with the team and sponsor

As the scale of the project increases project managers also want visuals that compare actual to baseline schedule and cost performance. They also want to display slack and delay for schedule and resource optimization.  Earned value reporting is also valuable for this level of reporting.

At this scale, the project manager requires sophisticated reporting by task, major deliverable, resource and the department they came from. Earned value, cost and time variances are additional required reports.

Calculate duration based on resource availability and work required (resource driven scheduling) 

Basing the schedule on work and availability, not just start/finish dates, is a best practice. Skip it if finishing on time is not critical.

As we move up a tier, resource-driven schedules are a must and so is automatic resource leveling to ensure that no resource is assigned more work than they can do.

At the strategic level, we need resource-driven schedules and software that can allocate people's time based on the priority of the task or project to which they are assigned.

Schedule dynamically using predecessor relationships not start and finish dates

On very small projects with 2-3 people this is not needed.

When matched with resource-driven scheduling, this combination saves project managers substantial time. It also gives PMs the tools to quickly quantify the impact of changes the project sponsor wants to make, which can be a life saver when stupid ideas are being discuss.

Schedule people for a portfolio of projects based on project priority

Not needed

Helps the organization get a lot of projects done by ensuring that people work on the right things.

Project Software Concepts

Ideally project management software would provide project managers with time-saving scheduling and analysis tools as well as archive data for use on future projects.  Unfortunately, most project management training does not include practical skills in using project management software nor does it educate beginning project managers about the incredible value that comes from archiving data on every project. 

Scheduling skills include analysis of the critical path using slack and delay data to optimize the use of resources to finish as early as possible.  Project software should also be used to identify problems early and model alternative solutions quickly. All of those tasks are best done with project management software since even a small project can waste a considerable amount of a PM’s time if those tasks are done manually.

The value of an archive is that it makes future estimates much easier and much more accurate. With the appropriate project management software,  tracking actual performance in terms of hours of work and completion dates builds a database for estimating on the next project

Project Scheduling in Practice

In practice, far too many project managers don't have the tools or the training to track actual performance versus plan, optimize their schedule or make efficient use of their resources. They are regularly surprised by problems that a bit of data would help them anticipate.  They are unable to provide decision-making data to executives on ways to finish the project early or the cost of changes the executives want to make.  As a result the project is guided by guesses.  The consequences are high project failure rates and very inefficient use of the company's financial and human resources.

Project Planning "Best Practices" In the Real World

Project managers routinely deal with sponsors who are several organizational levels above them or who sign the project manager's paycheck.  In this situation, a project manager can’t really argue with the sponsor about the best way to do the project.  What a project manager needs is data to quantify the impact of changes and model alternative ways of solving problems.  Having that data gives the project manager much more credibility.  It also gives executives solid date on which to make their project decisions rather than having due dates and budgets plucked out of the air.

PM Software Overview

Project management software comes in many different levels of sophistication with prices ranging from $50 to $20,000 or more. Software itself does not make project managers more effective; it just makes them more efficient. PM software does not teach you how to define scope, communicate to the project sponsor or make clear assignments to your team members.  It just lets you accomplish these and many other PM tasks more efficiently. So before we look at the different kinds of PM software, let's talk about the kinds of projects you manage and the levels of PM skills.  This will enable you to pick a PM software tool appropriate for you and the organizational setting in which you operate. Decide which of the following three categories of project manager fits you best.

Managing Smaller Projects

(View PM courses that teach you how to use project software at this level)

PMs in this category often plan and schedule with only durations rather than work estimates and resource capacity.  Many times these PMs have no need to develop or track a project budget because status reports are limited to completion date tracking. At this level, the organization usually does not consolidate or "roll-up" all of the projects in the portfolio nor does it manage the overall utilization of the people who work on projects.    

In this situation, your range of choices is very broad and many packages will meet these limited needs with Gantt and PERT charts. If this is all you want, there is not much sense in spending more than $25 nor investing in  a long learning curve that covers a lot of features you will never use.  On the other hand, if you or your organization intend to move toward the greater precision of work estimate-based project plans and portfolio management then learning the basic packages will prove to be a dead end and you are better off buying and learning a more sophisticated tool into which you and the organization can grow.

At this level, project managers who want to automate the process of laying out plans, preparing occasional status reports and producing some simple Gantt and PERT charts, the low end PM software tools are just fine. Without investing the time to master the more sophisticated tools, there are plenty of packages that will automate the basics for you. There are also a host of web-based products that operate at this capability level.  For under $125 there are products like: TurboProject, Milestone Simplicity, Quick Gantt. Most computer and business supply stores carry these less expensive products.  If you think you'll be managing larger projects in the future, then Microsoft Project 2003 or Primavera's SureTrak may be a better choice as a starting point.

Managing Larger Cross-functional Projects for Executives or Clients

(View PM courses that teach you how to use project software at this level)

As the scale of projects grows and their impact reaches beyond one functional unit, the demands on the PM's techniques grow as does the required capability of the PM software tool they need.  Rather than working with PM software that is a static representation of start and finish dates, we move up to software tools that simulate the project and that reschedule and optimize it every time we make a change. Budget is now an important issue in planning and tracking.  Accordingly, we build project plans based on the estimated hours of work and predecessor relationships, not just start and finish dates that are "plucked from the sky."  We require software that gives us the capability to budget and schedule not only internal employees but also external consultants and vendors as well as equipment and travel expenses.  Because PMs working at this level of complexity are building more precise work-based plans, the software should provide more sophisticated earned value reporting, slack and delay reports for fine tuning as well as the usual critical path and resource level capability.

The software cost takes quite a jump in price to the $300-$500 level and the learning curve for these software tools are much steeper than the first level. The big market shares belong to Microsoft Project 2002-2003 and Primavera products.

Managing in a Multi-project Environment

(View PM courses that teach you how to use project software at this level)

At the high-end are PMs managing multiple projects or operating in a mature project organization where resource utilization is managed across all projects, as opposed to the typical resource "free for all," and there are executives with accountability for portfolios of projects.  Here we need project management protocols to bring consistency to project planning and tracking (see our 4PM section).  While software never ensures a consistent PM process, despite all the people who think it can, this environment adds to the requirements of the previous levels.  We now have the need to consolidate (roll-up) multiple projects and provide consistent information so decision-makers can prioritize projects, allocate resources and schedule and track a pool of people working on multiple projects. This process is a lot more complicated than it sounds. It requires organization processes for portfolio management and software that can identify conflicting demands for the same resources as well as allow the executives to set priorities among projects that require the same resource. This category of user also generally wants to create detailed project budgets and have the software come pretty close to mimicking the company's cost accounting system. But they want actual cost data a lot sooner than the accounting department provides it. In this category, users often want sophisticated risk assessment tools, learning curve and resource loading features as well as detailed performance tracking.

If you want a lot, you've gotta spend a lot. Software for these multi-project users runs from $400-$20,000 with network versions to run on your LAN and team communication capabilities galore. There are dozens of products in this range and some of the packages from the second level also provide the needed capabilities.  they include: Microsoft Project 2007, Primavera Project Planner and other products, Enterprise PM, Micro Planner X-Pert. At these prices, I'm sure you'll get a call back from the vendor very quickly!