There’s a differences between project management software and task management software. Understanding the difference can help you search and select the right software for you or your team.
Project management software is centered around a work breakdown structure. That means that each project has a specific set of tasks that need to be completed for the project to be completed. There are also a variety of other components to a project which the software helps manage. These include issues, budgets, documents, notes and resource availability.
The overall goal of the project manager is to plan, manage, track and complete projects as a whole (along with the other components of the project). Project management software helps the project manager do this job. This can be on a single project or, if the software has portfolio views or project portfolio dashboards, for numerous projects across the enterprise.
Task management software is built around to-do lists. The main goal of task management software is help the user keep track of everything they have to do. Or, in the case of a manager, to help them keep track of everything everyone else has to do.
When searching for project management software, understanding this difference, can help you define the terms you’re searching for and make a better selection of what it is you need.
There are three key features most users look for in enterprise project management software:
1) Porftolio Views;
2) Executive Dashboards and;
3) Automatic notification.
Portfolio views allow managers, clients or executives to view projects grouped together into different portfolios, or categories, that are meangingful to that person. For example, a marketing department may have numerous initiatives active for a particular brand. The project status details of each iniatitive may be important for the resources working on them or to their manager. But an executive often wants to see the status of all projects for that brand, grouped specifically by brand, compared against other brands for which that executive may be responsible.
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Health care costs can be radically reduced by using project management software.
The central mission of a health care organization is to deliver medical or health related services to a patient population. Non-medical projects and administrative processes compete with health care delivery for scare resources in a hospital’s budget. Many of these projects and processes are necessary. Medical records need to be kept. Supplies must be tracked and operating rooms stocked. Medical devices and software must be monitored and maintained.
On the personnel side, medical staff must be managed, meetings scheduled, problems resolved. And the list could continue.
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Came across this post bemoaning the state of collaboration features available in enterprise content management solutions.
Our approach in Vertabase Pro is to offer collaboration and content management within the framework of doing projects (and using project management tools to accomplish and manage the projects).
What do you think of this approach?
After taking a look at the software, what recommendations or suggestions would you have for the content management component of the software?
Note: you can check out the software by clicking here. The content management features are in the Document section of Projects.
Here’s a review of MS Project 2007 project management software from one of our Vertabase Pro users. The review focuses on the interface of the software.
To attempt to contain complexity, MS Project 2007 introduced Ribbons — a pane that contains controls (such as buttons and icons) that are organized into a set of tabs, each one containing a grouping of relevant commands. This type of interface replaces traditional menus and toolbars.
The Ribbon is “all about making the software do what you want to do,” as they state in their literature. This Ribbon will also be incorporated into Microsoft Office 2007 as a main new feature “Replacing the menus and toolbars that have been the cornerstone of Office since its inception.”
While Ribbons consolidate related functionality in one place and can improve usability, they do not solve the problem of complexity. Microsoft Project will still be very complex and time consuming to learn.
It comes down to design. They are not working from a clean apriori design. It is not targeted to a manager using a system with a team requiring a robust solution that is scalable to multiple projects and tasks but without the complexity and nuance that a professional project manager would require (and feel comfortable with).
No matter what, how the controls of a jumbo jet get automated or are easy to access it is not the right vehicle to travel from the suburbs to downtown. You will still need advanced project management expertise to create, manage and communicate projects plans in Microsoft project – even with Ribbons.
Project management built for an enterprise is generally more robust than mass market project management software. Almost by definition, enterprise project management software includes two aspects that separate it from general project management software.
- The first is the robustness of feature set.
- The second is the number of users that touch the system.
Features that you’ll generally find in enterprise project management software include resource allocation, project portfolio view, cross project gantt charts, budgeting and potentially a host of advance project management performance metrics.
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Happy 2007 from Vertabase Pro, project management software. Thank you for a great 2006! Looking forward to a wonderful 2007.
Here’s Alan Mulally, the new CEO of Ford Motor Company, highlighting the value of visibility and consistent data in managing an enterprise, the quotes are excerpted from The Wall Street Journal of December 22, 2006.
To set the scene: Mr. Mulally recently took over as CEO of Ford and began implementing weekly Thursday meetings for senior management to get everyone focused on the same goals, track progress, reward success and to keep people accountable.
Visibility Brings Consistency
His first Thursday gathering at Ford went badly, underscoring the challenges he would face. After Mr. Mulally asked each business head to present his results and forecasts, he complained that the numbers didn’t make sense. “Why don’t all the pieces add up for the total corporate financials?” he recalls asking.
“We don’t share everything,” he says one manager replied, explaining that Ford executives ran their units without meshing with other divisions, occasionally holding back some information. Mr. Mulally was floored. The next week, executives came back with complete figures.
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The current space shuttle mission STS-116 is a great window on project management in action. On NASA TV you can hear the live management of an ongoing process –managing in real-time, on the fly, a complex operation that’s rife with opportunities to deviate from a sophisticated project plan.
While the scale might be different, it parallels, in a lot of ways, the activities that go on in any creative, engineering or scientific project. It provides a view on the types of information, visibility and project communication that make any project a success.
Here are some of the random clips we heard on NASA TV:
“Thanks for the great big picture words.”
“1:51 Central Time power down expected.”
“Good insight into the system.”
“I have the steps here.”
“Trouble shooting task procedures.”
“Blocks of activity.”
“Ready to proceed to step three – it is good to talk to you.”
“OK I’ll stand by, appreciate the help.”
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The Corporate edition of Copper 2006 (version 3.0) seems to be geared towards improving visibility of to-do lists. It is light on features that can help task management, manage schedules or give deeper visibility of projects.
A good example is the process of adding or editing tasks on a project. This is a fundamental activity not only in task management but also in planning projects, setting up schedules and managing on-going project activity.
Tasks can be added in two ways. One is through a single web page form which means that adding many tasks means going through many individual forms. The second is via an Adobe Flash based Gantt chart.
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