Executive Project Management Tools

[mattbowen]

I am interested in your professional opinion and if others agree with the feedback our company has collected from business users who seek project management tools. We found that:

1. Most business users that are in non-engineering or non-technical positions find traditional project management tools complex and too technical - MS Project being one they usually find too difficult to work with.

2. Collaboration, with high level visibility into project status and an easy way to share data within a team are the core benefits they care about.

3. Gantt charts and schedules are nice to haves, though not core features, which they find are core in most tools.

4. Ease of use with intuitiveness is what they care about mostly.

5. Users like to have control over the tool, i.e. they want it to adapt to their needs and processes, not the other way around. Many of the off-the-shelf solutions only provide such capability if you know how to code, and they don't, nor do they want to learn.

Have you found out the same in your experience? Are there any other points you hear from non-technical business users that I didn't list above?

We coin tools that provide these capabilities for business users "Executive Project Management". Are you familiar with any "Executive Project Management" tools?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

[pmkb]

business users = project managers?

[mattbowen]

When the project manager is a business user, the business user is a project manager; in all cases, the tool used should allow the operator empowerment toward success.

success = empowered persons

[pmkb]

I started a thread on [url=http://www.pmkb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89]types of project management software[/url] which I think addresses my thoughts on collaboration tools versus traditional critical path scheduling tools.

[manjeetsingh]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for a very interesting post. I would add the following comments:

- In my experience, user like collaboration tools that allow you to share project-related documents -- this is a big selling point for any vendor.

- Gantt & schedules are nice to have features. However, I believe that it is difficult to sell a tool without such features especially if there is a project manager who is involved in the purchasing process

- Not only should a tool be intuitive, but also easy to deploy throughout a company (short training sessions, no installation hassles, etc).

There are currently over 200 tools that run the gamut from simple calendar planners to full blown solutions that cover all aspects of project management and some more. It sure is difficult to select the tool that you need.

Here are a number of links that might be of interest to you:

List of Open and Free Project Management Tools:
[url]http://proj.chbs.dk[/url]

List of over 214 project management software products with reviews:
[url]http://www.infogoal.com/category.php?n=118&page=1&sort=&direction=[/url]

List of 287 project management software products:
[url]http://www.project-management-software.org/project/[/url]

Side-by-side comparison of 10 project management software products:
[url]http://project-management-software-review.toptenreviews.com/[/url]

Thirteen reviews of project management, bug tracking & customer software products:
[url]http://www.project-management-software.org/reviews.asp[/url]

Regards,
Manjeet Singh
[url]www.projectminds.com[/url]
Free project management book & other project-related resources

[pmkb]

Hi Manjeet, welcome to the forums!

We have our own directory of software that allows PMKB members to peer review any products in the database (see Reviews in the menu at the top of the screen). One of the reasons we created this site was to allow end users a voice in the "debate". Most PM software review sites that I have seen are either the opinion of one person (usually anonymous) or likely written by the vendor themself.

As more PMKB members start writing reviews here, our review engine will offer a better picture of what each product has to offer from many perspectives (ie. from beginners to advanced users).

P.S. Manjeet, you can create a signature file from your User CP (Control Panel) that will automatically be appended to each post.

[Gary France]

Manjeet,

There is also a list of planning / scheduling software on the PEO website, plus there is a survey of which software is the most used, the results of which can be sorted by industry or country, or both.

Visit [url]www.planningengineers.org[/url] and select "Software" in the menu system.

Gary France

[mulikrahul]

Mr. Matt
I am just a new entrant to the Industry & the Business.
But what i saw in this short tenure is that, the only thing, non-technical (All other than planners) people expect from the PM softwares is, that it should generate USER_FRIENDLY REPORTS.

Which Project Manager can explain to Site managers & further Site managers can explain to Supervisors.

Thats all.

Mr. Manjeet thanks for the links you put.
Thanks to Mr. Administrator too, for his links.

[mattbowen]

and regards to Manjeet Singh.
Thank you for your post, and your comments were most appreciated.

Best of success.

[Annet]

This classification is, of course, too simple, but anyway it's right. But I think all types of PM tools (software) may exist and may to be needed Even Risk analysis tools... We only must say "for whom how". If you have a small or middle business, you don't need a complete (almost ERP) system in your work. You need easy-usage with simple structure (I mean usability) and functional enough system. But if you run a big agency, etc. you will need more complete tools.

I try to say that we can't say to somebody " Build a house" because he will ask " How fast, how expensive, how many flates, which kind of house, etc.?" We must say about detailes for each case!

Cheers,
Annet