Project Management Software Discussions : resource management

Project Management Software: Defining its Role

Janelle Abaoag — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:03:00 GMT

Just like with any new software or process put in place within an organization, the enthusiasm for project management software can easily diminish within the first year of implementation. So how do you to minimize that risk from the get go? Well, before you begin a search for project software to bring into your organization, it’s important to clearly define the role that it will play. A loss of interest often stems from a lack of understanding when it comes to the importance or value that the project software will be providing to your team. To get your definition of what kind of role project management software will play for your organization; here are some ways to begin:

Be honest and realistic in your expectations. Many organizations make a laundry list of ‘must haves’ versus ‘nice to haves’. And while a feature rich solution is exactly what your team is looking for, be wary of biting off more than you can chew. Even the process of rolling out ‘must have’ features can be an adjustment. Be honest in regards to the list of features with will provide a true benefit in the long run and acknowledge that ‘nice to haves’ may take a little longer to roll out.

Acknowledge that your team will have to do things differently. You started looking for a project solution for a reason. And it’s because changes need to be made. Maybe your processes are all manual and you need more automation. Or perhaps your team needs an easier way to collaborate and centralize all of your project documents online. Regardless, a change needs to be made and your business processes may adjust slightly. While people tend to lean away from change, remember that it is a change that will provide bottom line benefits - may it be in regards to time saved, improved communication or easy to create reports.

Remember that the project management software role will vary per person. Keep in mind the various responsibilities or departments within your organization when explaining the role of the project software. For example, a sales team will use the software in a different way than resource managers would, or the way an executive would. At the end of the day, each team member is wondering ‘what’s in it for me’ or ‘how will this make MY job easier’? So when explaining the role of the project management software, slightly tailoring the explanation of the role it will play for various departments or positions will be helpful.

Any tips or ideas you’d like to add?

Janelle Abaoag, Project Insight

Importance of Usability: Part V – Cloning Users

Janelle Abaoag — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:09:00 GMT

The ability to clone a user is a new feature that just got pushed out with version 9.0. And this exact feature directly addresses my topic of usability!

Several organizations have a good number of team members with the same skill sets, roles and/or billing rates. And let's be honest, who wants to spend an hour or so entering up to 20 users who all are all the same or very similar? Luckily, Project Insight's latest version, 9.0, has the capability of ‘cloning' a user. A system administrator can simply go to the list of users, right click on a name and ‘clone a user'. From there, it's as simple as filling out a name and email address.

Not only is this feature more efficient and less time consuming, but it lessens the chances of making a mistake by missing a field, checking a wrong box, etc. Do it perfect once and ‘clone' the rest! Easy as pie- or chocolate cake.

Janelle Abaoag, Project Insight

The 'Perfect' Fit

Janelle Abaoag — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:46:00 GMT

Many people try on far too many pairs of jeans to mention before they find the ‘perfect' fit. But let's be honest- this ‘perfect' fit we all seek out and sometimes even tell ourselves we've found isn't really all that ‘perfect.' What really happens is this: you find a pair of jeans that you think looks best, and then there's always that extra step that requires some tailoring. This can vary from taking it in an inch somewhere, or hemming it up. With that being said, I acknowledge that no project ever goes perfectly and finding that the perfect project management software for your team or organization can be quite a feat.

So my advice: search for the perfect project management solution the way people search for that ‘perfect' pair of jeans! Instead of focusing on how well the jeans fit your waist (eek!) or if the color and wash fits your daily style, keep an eye out for features that are compliant with your current business processes and usability for everyone who will log into the project management system. Other characteristics that may be important to you and your team may include having visibility over all of your projects from one view for executives, or being able to juggle the many resources who are assigned to several projects from a single view.

Finding project management software that meets every single requirement and fits perfectly into your business processes out of the box is nearly impossible. Acknowledge that most project solutions may fall short at a couple points the same way the jeans can be so close to being perfect except for the length may be far too long (or short). It is also important to find one that is customizable and can be ‘tailored' to reach that point of perfection- just like hemming jeans. You may want to ask yourself what other databases or systems will you need to be integrated with your project management solution? Or is it even possible?

Ok, maybe not EVERYBODY struggles the way I do with finding the perfect fit when in search for jeans, but in case the point wasn't explicit enough here it is: finding project management software that is a PERFECT fit for your organization and all processes involved right out of the box is unlikely- you will have to accept imperfections and look for something that can easily be customized and integrated into what already works for you!

Janelle Abaoag, Project Insight

What are the Differences Between a Web Based Project Management Solution and MS Project Desktop?

Janelle Abaoag — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:25:00 GMT

I am often asked what makes Project Insight or a web based project management software solution different from Microsoft Project desktop. There are many, many differences. At the foundation, a web based project system is a centralized portfolio and project solution that is much better suited to the inherently collaborative nature of managing projects. Why manage a team effort in a single user, desktop application? Here are just some of the high level differences:

Collaboration
MS Project desktop is great for project scheduling, but what do you do if you want to share project information with others? Some project managers email the file to the other team members. Others may post the file on the network. The problem with emailing a file around is that team members are often left wondering which MSP file is the latest and greatest. Team members lose valuable time trying to figure out which version of the file they need to be reviewing.

In the new, web-based paradigm, team members are empowered to view project status via a web browser. They can access project information from any Internet connected computer. With Project Insight, team members can have a login and view project progress in real-time, anytime, anywhere.

Delegation
The old project management paradigm asks the project manager to update the project schedule. This puts the project manager in a glorified administrative role. Time is wasted on gathering information on task progress, as opposed to truly managing projects.

With a web solution, the responsibility of updating tasks is delegated to the team members themselves. Now, team members are empowered to update percentage complete, and enter in the time spent on tasks. This leaves the project manager with more free time to manage projects better, instead of spending valuable time administering projects.

Project Insight makes updating tasks simple and straight forward. Team members are presented with a list of tasks on their portal pages and can make updates directly from that page.

Visibility
In order to give executives visibility, project managers either post the MS Project file on the network or spend valuable time gathering information and assembling into status reports. With a web-based system, information on all portfolios, programs, projects and tasks is available in real-time. What's more, executives may run their own reports. Project information can be shared with team members with appropriate permissions settings. This gives the entire team visibility of project progress. Visibility exposes the problem areas and helps get them resolved faster.

In Project Insight, executives can view all projects across the organization in one simple Project Dashboard view. This frees project managers up from the time consuming process of gathering and distributing this same information. It's already there in real-time!

Document Sharing
In the old paradigm, documents were stored on a network somewhere. The most frequent complaint from folks using shared networks is that it is difficult to find documents, however well organized.

With Project Insight, project documents can be linked directly with the task and/or project they belong to. Even task and project communication can be posted. All project assets are accessible and easy to find. This allows new team members or replaced resources to get up to speed on a project in a day, instead of weeks.

Resource Management
How do you manage resources' time with multiple schedules in separated files? Well, if you are an experienced project manager, you may have figured out how to tie individual MSP files together with a combined resource pool. However, that requires a more advanced knowledge of MSP and its mysterious underpinnings. A centralized project management solution does away with the need for esoteric MSP knowledge. As all resources and projects are centralized, then a view of all team members' workloads becomes a straightforward exercise.

In Project Insight, cross project resource allocation reports display all resources' workloads, and the exact projects and tasks they are assigned to. Graphical displays show the resource manager and/or project manager who is under booked, or over booked on a given day, week or month. Unique to Project Insight is the ability to balance the work from the same report.

Client, Vendor, Subcontractor Access
In the old paradigm, clients, vendors, subcontractors and other third parties are not permitted access to the internal network. This leaves many project participants out of the loop on tasks and project progress. A web-based solution permits access to third parties without giving them access to your internal network.

Another common compliant about working with third parties is that they often call to get updates on project progress. Again, this is very time consuming for many project managers. Now, you can enable them by giving them a login to their project information, or even assign them tasks!

Project Insight permits you to give team members that are not employees access to projects. Now they can view, update and change project status. You can assign them the right level of permissions and they can now collaborate too.

Cynthia West
Vice President, Project Insight

Microsoft Project Resource Pools and Why They are Obsolete

Janelle Abaoag — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:22:00 GMT

This is a follow up to the prior blog post on master projects and why they are obsolete. Another convoluted 'work around' for viewing each project resources' workload across multiple desktop files of Microsoft Project is the resource pool. If you fiddled around with it enough and figured it out, you could tie multiple projects together to a joint resource pool. As a project management desktop application, this was certainly better than nothing! However, if you were not a Microsoft Project whiz, it was not the easiest endeavor.

Now with enterprise portfolio and project management software, there is no need for all of the pain associated with resource pools. Why? Once the projects are in a centralized database, you automatically see all of your resources in your organization, including, if you opt to, vendors, customers, third party sub contractors, and partners. Because projects are centralized, the software displays resources' allocation across all projects and tasks in real time. No fuss, no muss!

Cynthia West
Vice President, Project Insight

Why Intelligent Scheduling is Important for Resource Forecasting and Allocation

Janelle Abaoag — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:58:00 GMT

In order to determine whether or not a day is a work day, and how much work a team member can perform, the task duration or timeframe must be known. If you enter a start and an end date for the task, you could assume that the duration of the task constitutes the number of days between those dates. However, if the team member does not work one of those days, or if one of the days is a half day, then the duration would be less than the number of days between those dates.

If the start date of the task changes, then the duration of the task would need to be compared against the following new dates after the start date. For example, if a 5 day task starts on Monday, in a full work week schedule, it would end on Friday at the end of the day and last team member is 50% allocated he would work 20 hours.

If you wanted the task to have fixed work of 40 hours and you recalculated the resource assigned to that task to be 50% allocated, or they worked half days that week, then the task would take until the following Friday, but the duration is still 5 days, since a day is 8 hours. Now if the same 40 hour, 5 day task at 100% allocation started on Tuesday it would end on the following Monday at the end of the day. The task would then elapse 7 days instead of 5 calendar days when it started on Monday. The bottom line is that if the schedule is not being calculated with intelligent scheduling, you can get a resource allocation report, but you would have to manually update all the dates of all the tasks for any kind of shift in the schedule.

With intelligent scheduling, Project Insight calculates all the dates for you based on the 'Work' and 'Duration' of the task, rather than on the dates you think it should be done by. Tasks are normally driven by work, not by dates. Dates are a result of the calculation of the duration and work. You can adjust how much work a person works over a duration of time by using resource allocation, or you can calculate the resource allocation based on the work and duration in Project Insight. The scheduled dates are a by-product of those constraints, as well as external task constraints such as predecessors and fixed date constraints. All of these are important factors in a schedule and provide great benefit to the planner and executer of a project schedule.

When you are shopping for project management software solutions, make sure that your choice has intelligent scheduling.

Cynthia West
Vice President, Project Insight