By GetApp
Knowing about your objectives, your resources and your risks is part of good project management – unlike crossing your fingers and just hoping you won’t get any surprises. It’s much better to map out possible scenarios and impacts, and go in with your eyes open. Otherwise you may embark on your project, happily oblivious of holes in your plan until you and your deadline disappear into one of them.
Grab Your PMBOK Checklist Here
Sounds like time for a good checklist. The Project Management Institute offers one in the form of its PMBOK – “Project Management Body of Knowledge.” In its simplest form, this lays out 5 different phases or processes, and 10 different areas of knowledge. The 5 phases are:
Project initiation – define a new project and authorize its start
Planning – detail the objectives, the scope and the action plan
Execution – do it! (according to the plan and specifications)
Monitoring – track, review, regulate and possibly modify if required
Closing – make final delivery of the project, finish the activities above, debrief.
An output from one phase (like a design or a plan) is often the input for the next phase. The 10 knowledge areas are more detailed. They deal with the project management of each of the following:
Integration – unify all the activities for a meaningful, consistent whole
Scope – ensure everything necessary is done, without getting sidetracked
Time – deliver within the timeframe specified
Cost – deliver with the budget specified
Quality – ultimately customer satisfaction and objectives met
Human Resources – organizing and managing the project team
Communications – getting the right info to the right people at the right time
Risk – identifying project risks, their potential impact and how to eliminate or mitigate them
Procurement – bringing in/buying resources from the outside as needed for the project
Stakeholders – meet and manage expectations, and keep stakeholders engaged
And just to add some extra spice, each knowledge area overlaps with some or all of the five processes in its own individual way. Given that human beings typically at best remember 5 to 7 things at any one time, it’s a fair bet that project managers could use some extra help when the possible pairs of items rise to somewhere between 10 and 50.
Advantages of the Project Management App
Project management software can help in a number of ways. Besides addressing the different phases and knowledge areas above and depending on the app in question, it can:
Display project management information and alerts in intuitive, graphical form
Allow multiple users to monitor or manage specific projects or parts of projects
Suggest solutions for managing project priorities or resource conflicts
Integrate with other software you use, including word-processing and spreadsheet apps
Offer standard project management tools like Gantt charts with easy or automatic updating
Enable mobile access for project management within your enterprise or on the go outside.
Top Project Management Apps
Mavenlink
Mavenlink‘s aim for project management is to help you make it growth management as well. Destined for small to medium sized businesses with plans to expand, Mavenlink puts the emphasis on easy project scheduling and sound financial management of projects. It has facilities for managing projects in different languages and currencies and adjustment of user permissions for each user to see only the project information that concerns him or her. Mavenlink offers Gantt chart timelines to track projects and dependencies, as well as a Chrome browser plug-in for turning emails into specific project tasks.
Wrike
Collaborate, communicate and come out on top, thanks to task-oriented project management. That’s one way to describe Wrike, the project management app that brings project management to the people, rather than the traditional approach of loading it all onto one person or project manager. Project management by email is a central feature of Wrike. Tasks can be assigned via email to build accurate project schedules with an integrated, interactive Gantt chart. The associated ‘work graph’ approach lets people easily collaborate and update project data, with related tasks, schedules, ideas, files and discussion always at user’s fingertips.
Clarizen
Social collaboration, 3-D project conversations and project portfolio management are just three of the defining features for Clarizen’s project management. News feeds show users the discussion posts concerning their projects, with visibility into connected issues or opportunities. Project team members can also post documents, messages, expense sheets or any other object for a ‘3-D’ view of what’s going on. Risk management and enterprise portfolio visibility lets you manage your projects as a whole to optimize overall strategic advantage and profitability to your company.
JIRA
Coming from a software project management background, Atlassian’s JIRA leverages that experience and knowledge for the benefit of projects in general. JIRA brings an agile approach to let project teams easily manage, update and keep pace with user and market requirements. Detailed backlog information about tasks to be done, intuitive dashboards and custom workflows make JIRA a flexible, powerful way to manage tasks, projects and processes. Visibility is possible for the whole team, with project updates available via email, chat or RSS feeds. Tasks and actions can be captured for project scheduling, and ideas and requirements can also be recorded and integrated into the overall project management.
Comindware Project
Comindware facilitates cross-company collaboration within and without the traditional project boundaries. Project planning is simplified and accelerated thanks to Comindware’s Go to the full article.
Article Curated From…: Business2Community