Aug 30, 2006
Print this post
3 Differences in Project Management Software
You can tell a lot about the target market for a project management software based on what they call planning.
a) If the tool doesn’t having planning, it’s a tool for helping keep things in order.
The target is probably smaller organizations, teams or individuals who may or may not interact with other people as part of the project. The main goal of this type of project management software is to help individuals be more organized or to give some structure to the way people interact.
b) If it has planning and the planning is a dry run of a schedule, the software is built for improving the way you get things done. The target market is departments or companies whose business is a series of projects involving teams. The projects are often in areas like marketing, IT, web development, software projects or education.
Keep in mind, project management software will vary as to how you can see the impact of dry runs under different scenarios and how the dry runs compare to a baseline. But overall, if the software has a set of tools called planning and they are mostly about white boarding project schedules or potential resource allocations, the software is for improving ongoing operations involving teams.
c) If its has planning and the planning tools are about business goals and/or if the software has an abundance of what-if type tools and functions, then you are looking at a larger scale, cap. ex. type project management tool or project management software.
Planning of this type might include functionality which autogenerates schedule variations based on different constraints or variables.
This type of project management software is suited for large-scale portfolio management and decision management tools or projects involving design and/or building something new and very big (tens of millions of dollars and up) with large numbers of teams, departments or companies working together.
[...] For some people, the right format is some form of project management software or MS Project like tool. For others, it could be an MS Excel like spreadsheet they use for project management or tracking tasks. Or, it could even be a long list in an MS Word doc. or a physical folder with sticky tabs all over it (not the most elegant or efficient way -but hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere). [...]
Great article - there is definitely a distinct difference between organizational project management tools and planning tools. While project management software is designed with certain business types in mind, it is also interesting to note that most tools can be adapted to fit company or even personal life organization. I think almost anyone can benefit from a tool to help them get organized.