Many project teams are geographically dispersed. Projects are inherently collaborative efforts. The very nature of projects is such that there teams are usually comprised of multiple members. Often, project teams incorporate multiple organisations. Team members can include not only the employees, but also clients, vendors, sub-contractors, and other third parties.
Sometimes the entire project team belongs to the same company or organisation; yet, the members often work from different offices either within a country or globally. Even if the project team is in the same office, in fast paced business scenarios information must be passed as rapidly as possible, making centralised project management software essential.
the ever increasing trend of outsourcing work and offshore development continues; project managers need to synchronise across multiple time zones. So, when the west-based team goes to sleep, and the team in the east goes to work, they may login to the web-based project management solution to view the progress on their assignment. Companies that manage this process well are all excelling as compared to their competitors.
Also, clients are demanding more visibility and transparency about the progress of their projects. Client-facing project teams that possess a collaborative software system to interact with their customers are selling this as a competitive advantage and winning business over their competition.
Many companies manage projects using desktop software applications like Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. The challenge with using desktop software to manage projects is that these applications are not designed for collaboration among several parties. At worst, the file is shared by email with all parties on the team. At best, the file may be posted on a network or on an extranet and shared from there.
Another issue with using desktop applications is that the minute information is emailed to the project team, the data becomes out-dated. That is, the information is not available in real-time. Projects are inherently dynamic, efforts that change by the hour and sometimes minute.
A project management solution that is hundred percent web-based, solves these issues by allowing project managers and their team members to access information from any browser in the world, at any time. The project information is collaborated in one central database and posted in real-time, ensuring that all the team members and executive management can view the most recently available information about the task.
A web-based project management software solution has the advantage of storing all projects, resources and their assignments in one centralised place. Unfortunately, not all web-based software is equal. Many low-end solutions and even mid-market project software’s cannot perform resource allocation properly. So, when you are evaluating systems, be certain to check and see if the solution can perform these functions:
- Display a cross project resource allocation report or grid with all the resources, projects and tasks in the system.
- Drill down from the report to view the projects and tasks that are causing the over allocation.
- Show all the work and effort of a project team, member or resource assigned to it.
- Account for non-working time at the global level, such as weekends and company holidays.
- Account for resource non-working time, such as vacation time.
- Account for part-time employees or sub-contractors schedules.