The Importance of Project Management Software

Have you ever wondered how important software is for managing projects? How much time does it save? How much it can help you in delivering a successful project? What parts of it are lifesavers and what parts can you live without?

Having these questions ourselves, our company has conducted a research with a subject “Project management on an enterprise level”, during the past month, supported by Seavus Project Planner and Seavus DropMind™. The main purpose of the research was to identify the needs and requirements of people who are faced with project challenges everyday.

The research has shown some very interesting results that we would like your input on.

Part I

First, let’s share the statistics about the respondents. The first part of the survey was dedicated to analyzing industry the companies operate in, company’ size, location and job title of the respondent.

From the responses provided, most respondents work in companies within Manufacturing (13.40%) and Consulting (11.34%) industries, directly followed by Business / Professional Services (8.25%), Construction / Home Improvement (8.25%) and Government / Military (7.22%). Other industries presented have less than 7 % of respondents.

Regarding the companies size, most respondents work in SME (24.74%) directly followed by companies with 1000-10000 employees (18.56%). However most of these companies have between 1 and 3 offices (51.55%).

The job title of the respondents is summarized in the graphic below:

We believe this reach provides an accurate sample of the PM market, and that the conclusions can be trusted.

Part II

Next part of the survey was connected to the actual usage of the project management software that is chosen within the responders’ company.

We wanted to explore the usage of the Microsoft® EPM within these companies and more or less we were surprised by the answers. It is interesting to see that large number of companies that have been using MS Project Standard are not using Microsoft® EPM and do not even consider implementing this solution within their companies.

However, it was also interesting to see the importance of different parts constituting the project management solutions for the people using Microsoft® EPM (or for those that are considering using it in the future) and for the people who haven’t been using it or are not considering using it in the future. We have divided the most important features in 4 categories: Project Management, Resource Management, Time Management and Collaboration. Follow up the appropriate responses in the tables below:

(The green colored cells are related to respondents who are or will be using Microsoft® EPM and the orange colored cells are related to people who are not or will not be using Microsoft® EPM).

As you can notice all of the features above are important and very important for the biggest number of the respondents, except for the wikis which both groups has indicated as not important feature. Moreover, almost 79% of respondents stated that it is very important or critical for them to track project progress. Assigning privileges/roles is valued with 3, (on a scale from 1 as useless and 5 as critically important), from almost 50% of the respondents and for all respondents is important to know that their project is on budget and on schedule.

Other interesting answers were given on questions such as where the respondents store important documents (.mpp files; general documents and project related documents). The answers were diverse, since this was an open question. However, some of the most frequent answers were: on the Server, SharePoint, Network, and File Server and it is more than obvious that people want to have their pm solution installed on the server in the company (89%) than to have it hosted (10.81%). Moreover, they prefer to install the solution from their own IT department (75.68%) than to have the installation from the solution provider (24.32%), but almost 57% of the respondents are ready to pay for installation and support from third party.

The answers on the question “How the teams update task progress?” were expected. 37.55% of the respondents stated that e-mail is used for updating task progress. Surprising 18.18% of respondents verbally update tasks and 15.58% use MS® Excel. Software programs were mentioned by a small number of people.

Same answers were given on the question “How do you share info about late tasks, risks, or general project related knowledge?” with 75.32% for e-mail, 48.05% verbally and 28.57% MS® Excel.

This survey provided many valuable answers, but as you can notice, there are some conflict areas. We encourage you to share your opinion on the results and moreover your experience in the field. Let’s create together the big picture of this survey.

How to Make Project Management Work in Your Company

I ran across the list below – which is actually a subset of the original list – while reviewing the book “The Fundamentals of Project Management” by James P. Lewis. This book was published in 1995 so thoughts and processes have changed a little. I’ve selected what I believe are the most relevant items from Mr. Lewis’ original list for inclusion in this article. I’ve made some changes and additions as well. Read on…

It is one thing to know how to manage projects effectively. It is another to get people actually to manage them that way. Running by the seat of the pants seems a lot easier than doing all that planning, scheduling, and monitoring. Even when people invest three or four days in project management seminars, you find that they soon forget what they have been taught and go back to the old ways.

I have struggled with this problem for over fifteen years, and I finally have some answers. Here are suggestions on how to make the principles of project management work in your company.

• Get top management involved in the process and the projects. They should be asking questions about how projects are doing. In other words, show an interest in the subject.
• Build into performance appraisals items that evaluate a project manager’s use of the tools of effective project management. Reward people for practicing the methods. But be careful. Be sure upper management is not keeping managers from practicing good methodology.
• It helps to have the entire team trained in project management basics.
• Senior management need to understand the company’s PM process and methodology to effectively set their expectations. One of the ten most common causes of project failures is unrealistic expectations on the part of senior managers.
• Practice a lot of MBWA (management by walking around – or at least very frequent communication) as the project progresses, but do it to be helpful, not in the blame-and-punishment mode. Give people strokes for letting you know about problems early, rather than after they have turned into disasters. Don’t be too quick to help, though. Give people time to solve the problems themselves. Just ask them to keep you informed, and tell them to let you know if they need help. Be a resource, not a policeman.
• Do audits to learn, and try to improve whenever possible. Verify that processes are being followed, status reports are being produced, customers are getting the info they are supposed to get, and project plans are being updated regularly. Make sure the processes that are in place are being followed.
• If you find you have a problem individual on your team, deal with that person as soon as possible. Don’t ignore the problem, as it can wreck your entire team.
• Be very pro-active, not reactive. Take the lead. Break roadblocks for your team members. Go to bat for them.
• Have team members make presentations to senior management on their part of the job or periodic presentations on their key projects. Give them credit for their contributions. Build ownership.
• If you are running a project to which people are temporarily assigned while still reporting to their own bosses (matrix organization), keep their managers informed about what they are doing. Try to build good relations with those managers. You may need their support to get the job done.
• You may find that you have to co-locate the people doing activities on the project’s critical path so that you don’t have them constantly pulled off to do other jobs. This method is being used more and more by major corporations for highly critical projects.
• It is also possible to appoint a project administrator to either do the project support or delegate it and to sit in on project review meetings and hold the team’s hands to walk members through planning, audits, and so forth. Naturally, you need to be running quite a few projects (at least ten to twenty) to justify creating this position, so this depends on the size of your organization.
• Benchmark other companies to find out what they do with project management.
• Have individuals take responsibility for championing various parts of the project management process. One person, for example, the earned-value champion, might go around the company trying to get everyone to use the method. Another might take responsibility for dealing with WBS notation, and so on.
• Read PM Tips and follow everything on here! (ok, just kidding, I added this one….)
• Look at managing projects as a challenge – keep it exciting. Stick to a process, but change things as needed to accommodate the project and the customer.

Detailing the Project Management Audit Process

Diving a little deeper PM audit process as described in the book “Information Technology Control and Audit”, we will look at the audit planning, the actual PM process review, the act of working with the PM and team to identify risk, and the communications necessary to ensure that the audit process is as successful as possible.

Audit Plan

The audit plan will detail the objectives and the steps to fulfill the audit objectives. As in any audit, a project management audit will begin with a preliminary analysis of the control environment by reviewing existing standards and procedures. During the audit, these standards and procedures should be assessed for completeness and operational efficiency. The preliminary survey should identify the organization’s strategy and the responsibilities for managing and controlling development.

Project Management Process Review

A project management process review would assess the adequacy of the control environment for managing projects. The review points listed represent checkpoints in the project management process. Auditors can use these checkpoints to determine both the status of the project’s internal control system and the status of the development project itself. These reviews eliminate the necessity of devoting large amounts of audit resources to the development effort. As long as the development process is well controlled, the need for audit involvement is minimized.

Project Management

Auditors may assist the project manager in identifying project risks and evaluating plans to mitigate and manage risks (e.g., training, devoted resources, management support, and end-user commitment). Auditing can provide management with an independent review of project deliverables (e.g., project charter, task list, schedule, budget). Auditing may also review the project task list and budget to verify that all project tasks are defined and all milestones have a deliverable.

During the planning phase the auditor can facilitate communication between functions and raise issues that may impact the quality or timeliness of the project. In a development project, resources from various departments need to come together to implement an automated process that may affect multiple user functions. Because of various audit projects, auditors develop an overall knowledge of the organization and establish relationships in multiple departments. These relationships are helpful in a development project for making sure information is flowing between the development team and other functionaries. Consider the following groups:

• Primary users
• Secondary users
• Vendors and consultants
• Programmers and analysts
• Database administrators
• Testing teams
• Computer operations
• Interfacing systems
• Implementation team
• Production support (i.e., maintenance programmers)

Verify that adequate resources are assigned responsibility for tasks and have the time to complete assignments. This includes development, computer operations, user, and support functions (e.g., help desk).

Communication

The first area to communicate is the auditor’s role in the systems development project. It is very important to make sure that the management and development teams’ expectations of the auditor’s role are understood and communicated to all participants. In order to influence the systems development effort, the auditor must develop an open line of communication with both management and users. If a good relationship between these groups does not exist, information might be withheld from the auditor. This type of situation could prevent the auditor from doing the best job possible. In addition, the auditor must develop a good working relationship with the manager, the analysts, and the programmers. Although the auditor should cultivate good working relationships with all groups that have design responsibilities, he or she must remain independent.

Recommendations

Throughout the development project, the auditor will be making control recommendations. Depending on the organization’s culture, these recommendations may need to be handled informally by reviewing designs with the project team or formally by presenting recommendations to the steering committee. In either case, the auditor must always consider the value of the control recommendation versus the cost of implementing the control. Also, recommendations should be speci?c, identifying the problem and not the symptom. This allows the proper controls to be implemented and tested.

Recommendations are often rejected because of a time and cost factor. Managers may sometimes feel that implementing an auditor’s recommendations will put them behind schedule. The auditor must convince management that if the recommendations are not implemented, more time and money will be spent in the long run. Informing management of the cost of implementing a control now rather than shutting down the system later to repair it or leaving possible exposures open will help convince management of the need to spend time and money now.

Project Management from a Distance – Part 1

In this six-part series, I plan to cover the following topics of remote project management:

Part 1 – Why remote?

Part 2 – Will it work for you?

Part 3 – What type of job enables remote PM?

Part 4 – What setup do you need?

Part 5 – Negotiating when it’s not an obvious move

Part 6 – Staying the course

In this first part of what I plan to be a six-part series, we ask the question why remote? Why would you want to cut yourself off from your co-workers and hermit-up (is that a word?) in your house to work? Why would you want to hang around your family and have them interfere with your productivity? Can you separate work from home?

These are all good questions and must be asked – and answered – before you decide to go remote or even try to go remote. First let’s look at why someone would want to go remote. Some of those other questions above will be discussed in future installments in this series.

My Situation

For me, when I first started managing projects remotely it seemed like a no-brainer. I was managing large projects with teams of resources who were already dispersed around the country. It didn’t make much sense for me to drive to an office that was nearly an hour’s drive away and spend nearly $250/month in gasoline alone just for the privilege of sitting at a desk surrounded by people making noise and distracting me. It didn’t add up. By going remote, I gained back about 90 minutes of my life – and potential work time – just by not driving to the office. Over the course of a full month of workdays, that’s about 30 hours.

Not every situation is going to be that cut and dried, but mine was. I would go to the main office on occasion, but 95% of the time I was able to do everything I needed to do from my home office – not including, of course, the onsite customer kickoff sessions, etc.

Other Scenarios

In my situation, it was common sense. Each person needs to look at their own situation and their own reasons. Let’s say, for example, that you want to manage projects remotely because you have small kids and want to help out around the house. That’s nice and depending on your projects and call schedules, you can probably pull that off and remain fully productive. However, using that as a reason isn’t likely to fly with your executive management team. And it also doesn’t mean you’ll be a productive leader of your project resources. It doesn’t mean you won’t, but if that is your PRIMARY reason for wanting this working situation, then that’s not good.

Another reason may be health-related. There are definitely good reasons related to health issues that either just came up or have already existed for a long time to make you want to or need to work remotely and ones that your employer should probably understand and work to accommodate. That, of course, is between you and your employer…and possibly your lawyer – your call.

Summary

The bottom line is – you need to figure out why you want to do it and see if it’s a good enough reason to do it. And will your situation let you be productive in a remote working or telecommuting situation? Those are the things you need to ask yourself. Oh, and don’t forget to ask you family….you may think they want you around only to find out that they’re more productive with you gone. I’ve faced that reality a time or two!

Identifying the Real Project

It’s not always easy to truly identify what is the real project.  On the surface, it seems obvious.  The customer comes to you with ‘x’ need and you work with the customer on business processes and requirements and move forward with work on a solution for that customer.  You have a project involves working to solve the customer’s identified need.

However, it’s not always that easy…and as the project manager, you must assume that the customer doesn’t always know what it is they want or even what their true need is. Identify that true need, and you’ll be building a solution that keeps the customer happy.

Fully Understand the Problem or Opportunity

Problems and opportunities can arise almost anywhere inside or outside the organization. Problems are typically driven from within and frequently relate to improving organizational performance. For example:

• A department that’s overwhelmed with paperwork may need to simplify its procedures.
• An organization that constantly faces the prospect of worker strikes may very much need to improve management/employee relations.
• An insurance company that has branch locations spread across a wide geographic region may need to communicate effectively among branches.

Problems are generally regarded as negative. Opportunities may be viewed as their positive alter ego. Opportunities are often driven by external forces. One of the more common examples of opportunities can be found in the areas of product development or product enhancement. These opportunities are often the response to a perceived need in the marketplace.

Identifying the True Need

The term “true need” refers to the most basic problem to be solved. Identifying your project’s true need can, at times, be tricky. But it’s absolutely vital that you as the project manager understand what the true need is.

Why? Because many will judge you as a project manager by your ability to solve the original problem. Solving the original problem equates to satisfying the true need and you and your project team often have to dig to find out what that true need actually is. You cannot be certain that you’ll satisfy the true need unless you know what it is. The problem is that when you’re assigned to manage a project you may not be presented with the true need explicitly. Terminology can become confused: what’s described as a need may actually be the solution to a need.

Most books on project management deal only with the “mechanics” of managing projects and helping you manage the project you’ve been assigned. However, properly identifying and quantifying the true need is actually more important than planning and executing the project. It’s often been said that it doesn’t matter how well you manage your project if you aren’t working on the right thing.

One of the most reliable methods for uncovering the true need is to ask the right people one simple question: “Why?” However, as you seek to uncover the true need, you can expect to encounter some resistance.

If you ask questions rather than digging in and getting the project going, some within your organization may assume that you’re not moving forward. However, asking the right questions of the right people can often lead to some startling discoveries.