Project management software

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Project management software are computer programs that help plan, organize, and manage resources.

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Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control, budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, decision-making, quality management, time management and documentation or administration systems.

Numerous PC and browser-based project management software and contract management software products and services are available.

History

Predecessors

The first historically relevant year for the development of project management software was 1896, marked by the introduction of the Harmonogram. Polish economist Karol Adamiecki attempted to display task development in a floating chart and laid the foundation for project management software as it is today. [1] In 1912, Henry Gantt replaced the Harmonogram with the more advanced Gantt chart, a scheduling diagram that broke ship design tasks down for the purposes of Hoover Dam in early 1931.[ citation needed ] Today's Gantt charts are almost the same as their original counterparts and are a part of many project management systems.

Emergence of the term "project management" and modernized techniques

The term project management was not used prior to 1954 when US Air Force General Bernard Adolph Schriever introduced it for military purposes. In the years to follow, project management gained relevance in the business world — a trend that had a lot to do with the formation of the American Association of Engineers AACE (1956), and Rang and DuPont's Critical Path Method, which has been used to calculate project duration ever since 1957. [2]

The trend is also related to the appearance of the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) in 1958. PERT advanced project monitoring, enabling users to simultaneously monitor tasks, evaluate their quality, and estimate the time needed to accomplish each of them. Like Gantt charts and CPM, PERT was invented for military purposes, this time for the US Navy Polaris missile submarine program. [3]

In 1965, there was a new improvement in project management technology. The US Department of Defense presented the work breakdown structure (WBS) to dissolve projects into even smaller visual units, organizing them in a hierarchical tree structure. WBS was an inspiration for Winston Royce’s Waterfall Method (1970) where management phases are organized in a way that doesn’t allow a new task to begin before the previous ones are completed. [4]

The first project management products and associations

In the period between 1965 and 1969, two of the leading project management associations were formed: the International Project Management Association (IPMA) in Europe, and the Project Management Institute (PMI) which trains project management professionals and issues certificates. With businesses shifting towards technology-based and paperless methods, the first project management systems started to emerge. [5] Oracle and Artemis launched their project managers in 1977, while Scitor Corporation did the same in 1979. [6] [7] Many improvements followed in the upcoming decades. In 1986, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute introduced capability maturity software, a five-level project management method for rapidly maturing processes, while in 1988, users were introduced to earned value management which added processes’ scope and cost to the schedule. [8] The trend continued with PRINCE2 (1996) which increased the number of processes to seven, because of which developers considered designing products for managing complex projects. In 2001, they adopted the Agile project management concept and focused on adaptive planning and flexible response to changes. In 2006, users were already able to trigger total cost management, a framework that helps control and reduce costs in project management. [9]

Tasks and activities

Scheduling

One of the most common project management software tool types is scheduling tools. Scheduling tools are used to sequence project activities and assign dates and resources to them. The detail and sophistication of a schedule produced by a scheduling tool can vary considerably with the project management methodology used, the features provided and the scheduling methods supported. Scheduling tools may include support for: [10]

Providing information

Project planning software can be expected to provide information to various people or stakeholders, and can be used to measure and justify the level of effort required to complete the project(s). Typical requirements might include:

Types

Collaborative

A collaborative system is designed to support multiple users modifying different sections of the plan at once; for example, updating the areas they personally are responsible for such that those estimates get integrated into the overall plan. Web-based tools, including extranets, generally fall into this category, but have the limitation that they can only be used when the user has live Internet access. To address this limitation, some software tools using client–server architecture provide a rich client that runs on users' desktop computer and replicates project and task information to other project team members through a central server when users connect periodically to the network. Some tools allow team members to check out their schedules (and others' as read only) to work on them while not on the network. When reconnecting to the database, all changes are synchronized with the other schedules.

Visual

A common problem in project management is a difficulty with both viewing and understanding large amounts of fluctuating project data. [11] To tackle this, some project management software utilize information visualization, so that users can more easily find, analyze and make changes to their data. To avoid information overload, [12] the visualization mantra of “overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand” is often followed. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

Project management is the process of supervising the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Work breakdown structure</span> A deliverable-orientated breakdown of a project into smaller components.

A work-breakdown structure (WBS) in project management and systems engineering is a deliverable-oriented breakdown of a project into smaller components. A work breakdown structure is a key project management element that organizes the team's work into manageable sections. The Project Management Body of Knowledge defines the work-breakdown structure as a "hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables."

Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing projects that emphasizes the resources required to execute project tasks. It was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It differs from more traditional methods that derive from critical path and PERT algorithms, which emphasize task order and rigid scheduling. A critical chain project network strives to keep resources levelled, and requires that they be flexible in start times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Program evaluation and review technique</span> Statistical tool used in project management

The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) is a statistical tool used in project management, which was designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gantt chart</span> Type of chart to show a project schedule

A Gantt chart is a bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. It was designed and popularized by Henry Gantt around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities and the current schedule status.

In project management, a schedule is a listing of a project's milestones, activities, and deliverables. Usually dependencies and resources are defined for each task, then start and finish dates are estimated from the resource allocation, budget, task duration, and scheduled events. A schedule is commonly used in the project planning and project portfolio management parts of project management. Elements on a schedule may be closely related to the work breakdown structure (WBS) terminal elements, the Statement of work, or a Contract Data Requirements List.

This article covers the historical timeline of project management. There is a general understanding that the history of modern project management started around 1950. Until 1900, projects were generally managed by creative architects and engineers themselves, among those, for example, Christopher Wren, Thomas Telford and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Project</span> Project management software

Microsoft Project is project management software product, developed and sold by Microsoft. It is designed to assist a project manager in developing a schedule, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MacProject</span> Management application

MacProject was a project management and scheduling business application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacProject was one of the first major business tools for the Macintosh which enabled users to calculate the "critical path" to completion and estimate costs in terms of money and time. If a project deadline was missed or if available resources changed, MacProject recalculated everything automatically.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Task management</span> Process of managing a task through its life cycle

Task management is the process of overseeing a task through its lifecycle. It involves planning, testing, tracking, and reporting. Task management can help individuals achieve goals or enable groups of individuals to collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals. Tasks are also differentiated by complexity, from low to high.

Project workforce management is the practice of combining the coordination of all logistic elements of a project through a single software application. This includes planning and tracking of schedules and mileposts, cost and revenue, resource allocation, as well as overall management of these project elements. Efficiency is improved by eliminating manual processes, like spreadsheet tracking to monitor project progress. It also allows for at-a-glance status updates and ideally integrates with existing legacy applications in order to unify ongoing projects, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and broader organizational goals. There are a lot of logistic elements in a project. Different team members are responsible for managing each element and often, the organisation may have a mechanism to manage some logistic areas as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FastTrack Schedule</span>

FastTrack Schedule is a Project Management Software app (PMS) for Mac and Windows. It helps teams plan, track, analyze, organize, manage resources, develop resource estimates, and report their projects. It can manage planning, scheduling, cost control, budget management, resource allocation, and Project Portfolio Management (PPM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twproject</span> Web-based project and groupware management tool

Twproject is a web-based project and groupware management tool created by Open Lab, an Italian software house founded in 2001. It won the 17th Jolt Productivity Award in 2007 in the project management category. In March 2019 it becomes property of Twproject company. It has widespread use in universities as a teaching tool in project management courses. It is used by Oracle Corporation, Prada, Calzedonia, General Electric and many other companies from corporations to small start-ups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenProj</span> Open-source project management software

OpenProj was an open-source project management software application.

LisaProject is the first GUI-based project management software, conceived and programmed by Debra Willrett of SoloSoft for Apple's Lisa workstation.

A glossary of terms relating to project management and consulting.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to project management:

UNICOM Focal Point is a portfolio management and decision analysis tool used by the product organizations of corporations and government agencies to collect information and feedback from internal and external stakeholders on the value of applications, products, systems, technologies, capabilities, ideas, and other organizational artifacts—prioritize on which ones will provide the most value to the business, and manage the roadmap of how artifacts will be fielded, improved, or removed from the market or organization. UNICOM Focal Point is also used to manage a portfolio of projects, to understand resources used on those projects, and timelines for completion. The product is also used for pure product management—where product managers use it to gather and analyze enhancement requests from customers to decide on what features to put in a product, and develop roadmaps for future product versions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ProjectLibre</span> Free and open-source project management software

ProjectLibre is a project management software company with both a free open-source desktop and an upcoming Cloud version. ProjectLibre Cloud is in beta testing.

References

  1. ↑ "The Harmonogram", projectmanagementhistory.com,
  2. ↑ "About UsAACE International: The Authority for Total Cost Management", aacei.org,
  3. ↑ "PROGRAM EVALUATION AND REVIEW TECHNIQUE (PERT)", referenceforbusiness.com,
  4. ↑ "“Breaking Down” The Work Breakdown Structure" Archived 2016-12-21 at the Wayback Machine , dau.mil,
  5. ↑ Sandro Azzopardi, "THE EVOLUTION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT", projectsmart.co.uk,
  6. ↑ Sandro Azzopardi, "Oracle's History: Innovation, Leadership, Results", oracle.com,
  7. ↑ "Metier Artemis", computinghistory.org.uk,
  8. ↑ "Technical Report", sei.cmu.edu,
  9. ↑ "TOTAL COST MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK" Archived 2016-05-30 at the Wayback Machine , aacei.org,
  10. ↑ Nevogt, Dave (17 September 2013). "31 Project Management Solutions". Hubstaff . Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  11. ↑ "| Marketing Technology". Marketing Technology. Retrieved 2016-01-08.
  12. ↑ Wurman, From the book "Information Anxiety" by Richard Saul Wurman Copyright 1989 by Richard Saul (1989-01-22). "INFORMATION OVERLOAD : What to Do When Anxiety Cripples You". Los Angeles Times. ISSN   0458-3035 . Retrieved 2016-01-08.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ Shneiderman, Ben (1996). "The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations". University of Maryland, Human Computer Interaction Laboratory.

Further reading

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