Software Tools

Office Suites:

In today's business world it is pretty much impractical, if not impossible, to perform a proper project management job without the use of specialized computer software. The days of handwriting reams of paper charts and taping them to the wall to track project progress are thankfully long gone. So, with that in mind, I'm going to make a couple of basic assumptions here:

1. The reader has the requisite experience and proficiency in using PC software applications.
2. There is an underlying IT infrastructure in place which provides LAN, WAN, central server storage, printing, email, and Internet access capability to the project team.

At a minimum, the project team is regularly going to need to prepare word documents, deal with spreadsheets, and, hopefully, make memorable presentations to management.

These tasks are usually accomplished by using an office software productivity suite. There are several on the market to choose from, with Microsoft Office being the undisputed world-wide leader in installed base. That doesn't necessarily make it the best, only the most widely used. If you are familiar with Microsoft Office (as most office workers are these days) and it is available on your project, then you are good to go. If not, then you have to make some choices. One option could be to purchase enough licences of Microsoft Office for the entire  project team. However, that can get very expensive.

Fortunately, there is an alternative product which is highly compatible with Microsoft Office, and that product is OpenOffice3. Fortunate in that it mimics Microsoft Office so closely that there is virtually no learning curve for those used to the Microsoft product, and most fortunate in that it is completely free.

I have used both products extensively. During my working stint with Sun Microsystems we were compelled to use OpenOffice, since it was developed by Sun. The concern we had was that virtually all of our customers used Microsoft Office and we needed to exchange project documents with the clients in Microsoft Office formats. That turned out to be not an issue at all - we rarely ran into a compatibility problem. In fact, in some instances, we found OpenOffice to be more capable in handling our requirements (like being able to save documents in PDF file format).

So, I can save you considerable time, research and money by highly recommending the OpenOffice3 product for your project team's office productivity suite.

From the OpenOffice.org web site .... (click on the picture below to be taken there).

"OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages.
It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose."

 Project Scheduling:

This is where the rubber meets the road in project management. At the very core of what you need to do as a project manager is documenting what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and who will do it. If you don't do those things, your project is well on the road to failure. Fortunately, there are good software applications available to help you with documenting the project plan.

Of course, this assumes that you as a person knows what needs to be done in the first place in order to be able to document it - and that brings up a good point. While the project manager is responsible for the project plan and its overall integrity, in most projects of any reasonable size, there are too many areas that require specific detailed knowledge for any one person to know everything. A good project manager focuses on the "management" part of the title and relies on his team leaders to supply the necessary individual expertise, right down to the point of having them actually prepare their portion of the project plan. The project manager needs to have enough overall knowledge to understand that the completed, assembled plan makes good sense and that the deliverables from the various teams line up properly to support the overall schedule. Strangely enough, some project managers, even experienced ones, don't have a firm enough grasp of this concept and feel that only they should prepare the project plan. As previously mentioned, it's not likely that one person has enough specific detailed knowledge to properly capture all of the critical activities, so that's one reason that this approach is not a sound one. More importantly, the individual team members will not have enough skin in the game, and may well offer the opinion that "it's not my plan" when things go awry - which they will. The best way to get the team to fully buy into the project is to make the individual teams fully responsible for the development of their portion of the project plan. Then they own it, love it, and are willingly obligated to deliver it. The project manager retains the overall responsibility as mentioned, but now he/she can properly manage the project deliverables with full team support. It works ... but, I digress - back to software tools.

Microsoft has the de facto standard PC project planning application called Microsoft Project. It is a mature product with tons of functionality and is used by the majority of project planners. If you have Microsoft Project experience and your project team has access to the software, then you are good to go. However, if you have to buy Microsoft Project, you will find that it is very expensive, and may want to look at other options. One thing to keep in mind is that it's likely true that over 80% of Microsoft Project users use only 20% or less of its capabilities.

At the end of the day, what you really need to have to properly manage the project deliverables is a good Gantt chart. The Gantt charts will lay out what needs to be done, by when, and who is doing it. This is the one fundamental planning tool you must have - you can do without all the rest of the bells and whistles that come with mature software application functionality - but you can't do without the Gantt chart.

There are many different software tools available to use to create Gantt charts. They range from spreadsheets to full blown applications like Microsoft Project and some are free and some you pay for. A quick Internet search will show that the choices are numerous and you should pick the one you are comfortable with using. If you are cost conscious, and who isn't these days, a good product is the GanttProject product mentioned below. It is very easy to learn to use, produces the Gantt charts with the features that you need, and is free (now, that's cost conscious). See their brief product description below.

To see an example of the two charts produced by the GanttProject software click on the following links.

1. Sample project activities chart
2. Sample people resource load chart

From the GanttProject.biz web site ... (click on the picture below to be taken there).

"GanttProject is a free and easy to use Gantt chart based project scheduling and management tool. With GanttProject you can break down your project into a tree of tasks and assign human resources that have to work on each task. You can also establish dependencies between tasks, like "this task can't start until this one is finished". GanttProject renders your project using two charts: Gantt chart for tasks and resource load chart for resources. You may print your charts, generate PDF and HTML reports, exchange data with Microsoft(R) Project(TM) and spreadsheet applications."

And, just in case you're wondering, I do not receive any compensation from the above companies for mentioning their products.