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Advantages of Web-enabled Project Management Software

March 21, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Computer Based Information Systems, Project Collaboration

Advantages of Web-enabled Project Management Software
By Dr.Russell Archibald

There are currently a large number of powerful, commercially available, Web-enabled project management software systems that offer advantages to the project planning and control arena. These systems:

  • Enable improved collaboration and communication for project teams no matter where the members are located geographically, with everyone working from the same currently updated information.
  • Provide risk and issue tracking and escalation processes.
  • Empower staff and project team members through access to central information repositories, with suitable controls on who can change the information.
  • Automate much if not most of the project management process and related documentation and record keeping.
  • Enable key resource assignment within and between projects, programs, and project portfolios, and facilitate corporate resource planning and acquisition.
  • Enable tracking and evaluation of changes in project scope, schedule, cost and risk.
  • Allow integration of project management processes with all other business systems.
  • Capture the “lessons learned” on every project for incorporation into the project management process and related data repositories.

A Web-enabled project management system must be selected and implemented—as a project—at the most effective (project portfolio or total enterprise) level. As such, the selection and implementation of such systems is in itself a complex management project.

Dr. Russell D. Archibald, PhD (Hon), MSc, Fellow PMI and APM/IPMA, PMP, is one of the six founding members of the Project Management Institute. Now semi-retired, he has many years of management experience in engineering and operations with a variety of major US corporations in Europe and South America as well as the US. He has made major contributions to the understanding of project management, is author of the best selling 2003 book “Managing High-Technology Programs and Projects” (published also in Russian, Chinese, and Italian), has trained more than a thousand program and project managers and project specialists around the world, and has consulted in project management to clients in 14 countries on 4 continents. E-mail: russell_archibald@yahoo.com. Website: www.russarchibald.com.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 and is filed under Computer Based Information Systems, Project Collaboration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 people have left comments

Russell, you just made my point. Thank you! Eventhough the features are broadly listed and described, I could see HOW everyone of them would fit into a PM software solution, or of course even in a non-web-based application.

Primoz Frelih, PMP (Slovenia, EU) wrote on March 28, 2009 - 2:59 am | Visit Link

Yes, it is nice to see that time has come when MS Project is not always the default solution for project management. I spent years struggling with MS Project because as a web/interactive project manager working in a small agency with lots of shared resources, I needed something that streamlined task management and gave me only the features I really needed, and easily allowed me to see how my resources were loaded or overloaded across all projects. Our company did not have the budget to setup MS project server, so a web based solution was the answer for us to get a global view of our projects.

I did a good amount of research and made the case for LiquidPlanner at my company. I agree with the comment above that there are lots of features in that list and some PM applications have some and some have others. It’s amazing how many tools are out there now, so people really need to find out what works best for them (and so yes, it is definitely a project). What works best for me is LiquidPlanner because it helps me manage resources across all projects and re-prioritize tasks as needed, estimate my tasks in ranges (because we all know that things aren’t always what they seem), and easily collaborate with my team. I could go on…

Dina Garfinkel, PMP wrote on June 10, 2009 - 12:53 pm | Visit Link

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