Sep 23, 2009
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Explaining Project Management and Project Management Software
I’ve been talking to a number of people lately who don’t know what project management is all about and how it can help them. They tend to think of project management as something reserved for large engineering projects or specifically IT projects. Project management can be used on projects of all sizes and in almost any field. It is a way of organizing, tracking and managing resources.
At its most basic, project management and by extension, project management software, can help them:
- Assign people to tasks
- Keep all those task assignments in one place
- Let people know when to start at task
- Let people know when a task is due
- Give managers visibility on where everyone is on their tasks
- Keep all that information in one centralized place
It differs from creating simple tasks lists in that tasks here, are done in the context of completing a project.
That is, the tasks are a coordinated effort by individuals working over a period of time to achieve a specific goal.
Often, that goal has a defined due date and thus knowing how people are doing on their tasks gives you good information for knowing how likely you are to hit the due date or what may need to be done to get to that due date.
Project management software provides a framework for those tasks and the projects they roll up into. It makes it easy to what’s going on. The project owner or manager can track progress and make course corrections as necessary.
Project management software, like Vertabase, can also do micromanaging with automatic email reminders to managers or team members and notifications of when things change.
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I agree that many people equate successful project management to the construction, defence, engineering or IT industries.
This is a real shame. The principles of project management have relevance to all industries from TV through to pharmaceuticals, that is if you forget about the buzzwords and look at what is actually involved.
Regards
Susan de Sousa