Educational institutions, e-learning companies and providers of educational curriculum face specialized challenges in project management.  A coherent project management strategy can increase the efficiency of developing educational product and educational programs. Project management software can be the foundation for this strategy.

Product development groups in these companies can work on upwards of 120 new projects at any given time.  These projects are generally the development of new educational programs that will be offered to hundreds of thousands of students overtime –programs that are crucial in those students’ academic or professional development.   The programs can range from vocational or technical programs to graduate and undergraduate courses.

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Read a recent post on some of the limits people are reaching with Basecamp. They seem to apply to the general “software should do less” approach many people associate with Web 2.0.

The philosophy of software that “does less” can actually create more work and aggravation once users, teams or projects scale up to a certain level of complexity. The approach starts to lose its usefulness.

At a certain level of scope or scale, people can benefit from project management software (and software designers) that “do more” in terms of details and thought out interface and functional architecture/workflow.

This applies to functionality contained in the project management software (like scheduling and project planning) as well as functionality which reaches outside to users or clients (like automatic email notifications and identity management or access level management). It also speaks to the value of more involved customer support and training, where the project management software company takes time to understand the work their customer does.

Web 2.0 is about useful tools. “Do less” type software can certainly be useful and has its place (just look at the growth of Basecamp’s project collaboration tool). But these types of software are not one size fits all solutions. There are project management software solutions that offer similar benefits as Basecamp and other first generation Web 2.0 tools, but which are built to handle projects of a larger scale.

Companies can bill faster and more efficiently by using project management software that integrates or interoperates with Quickbooks accounting software. They can also bill more and increase revenue by using project management software to set-up of their projects and track time against specific tasks within those projects.

The interoperability or integration with Quickbooks means that book-keeping or accounting people don’t have to spend time entering in timesheet data from one system to the next. The timesheet information can be exported to Quickbooks accounting software, allowing for an invoice to be generated in a few simple steps.

Setting up specific tasks and projects in a project management software that integrates with accounting software means that its much easier for an account manager or accountant to see every single step that was taken to get a project done. Steps and time that were previously overlooked can be seen and billed.

Companies have experienced 90% gains in efficiency in billing by using project management software that works with Quickbooks, cutting down the amount of time it takes to bill a customer from 16 hours a month to less than two.

Companies have also experienced near 100% increases in revenue and billing by using project management software that integrates or interoperates with accounting software, catching time that was previously overlooked on projects.

Collaboration is a word that is thrown around a lot when it comes to web-based project management. Understanding the types of collaboration out there and knowing what you are looking for, can help you make a better selection when it comes to buying project management software.

Since projects are about people working together to get things done, its natural that web-based project management software facilitates people working together- collaborating. This is one of the most significant innovations of web-based project management software. It is also one of the most casually used buzzwords. Here is a quick guide to help de-code what people are talking about when they say collaboration in project management software.

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