Question: What are some key features to look for in a project management tool to help Executives made strategic decisions?
Answer: Data integrity is the building block for strategic decision making. If data on a project or portfolio is not accurate or up to date, the value of the decision will suffer. Executives will be more likely to make the wrong call since the information they’re relying on is wrong. When looking at project management software, its therefore critical to make sure that it gathers and generates accurate and up to date information on projects or portfolios.
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Vertabase recently made a software donation to the Michigan Council of Women and Technology to support the good work that they do.
The MCWT is actively supports the diversification of the Michigan economy and invests in the future of women in Michigan -Vertabase’s home.
The MCWT provides leadership, mentoring, community outreach, professional development and networking to professional women within the Michigan technology community. MCWT provides a robust web of technology resources and an industry voice for its constituents while fostering the support of an advancement of women and best practices in technology.
The project management software will be used to facilitate the administration and management of the numerous critical projects and events for the MCWT.
Along with corporate sponsors including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems, Vertabase will be recognized for its contribution to the MCWT at the Partnership and Scholarship Event, to be held at the Birmingham Country Club, in Michigan, on May 3rd.
The event will include a robotics demonstration by some past scholarship awardees and the presentation of laptop’s to current scholarship awardees.
Project management software can significantly simplify time management in an enterprise.
To get this benefit, make sure to look for a project management tool that centralizes timesheet data by project along with percent complete status of individual projects. This can provide a seemless picture of effort and labor costs on a project compared against where the project actually is.
This same feature set facilitates financial forecasting by giving managers up-to-date information to best estimate how many more resource hours will be needed to be complete a deliverable -and therefore, often time, send an invoice to a client.
Message Makers, a multimedia communications firm in Lansing, Michigan recently experienced these benefits with Vertabase Pro.
“Prior to implementing Vertabase Pro, it was difficult for us to effectively manage resource allocation,” said Chiung Cheng, PhD, Controller and Research Director. “We selected Vertabase Pro because it addressed our most essential need - the merging of project status reporting and timesheet management into a single function. Now, with Vertabase Pro, we are able to evaluate overall status instantly.”
To read more about their experiences, heres a case study on improving resource allocation with project management software.
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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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.
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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