Project Management Software and Project Mgmt
Project management software is a term covering many types of software, including scheduling, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication and documentation systems, which are used to deal with the complexity of large projects. Project management is the discipline of organising and managing resources in such a way that these resources deliver all the work required to complete a project within defined scope, time, and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. This property of being a temporary and a one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over-and-over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management.
The first challenge of project management is ensuring that a project is delivered within the defined constraints. The second challenge is the optimised allocation and integration of the inputs needed to meet those pre-defined objectives. The project, therefore, is a carefully selected set of activities chosen to use resources (time, money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives, the use of project management software can often help with these tasks.
Project Management is composed of several different types of activities such as:
- Planning the work or objectives
- Analysis and Design of objectives
- Assessing and mitigating risk (or Risk Management)
- Estimating resources
- Allocation of resources
- Organising the work
- Acquiring human and material resources
- Assigning tasks
- Directing activities
- Controlling project execution
- Tracking and Reporting progress
- Analysing the results based on the facts achieved
- Defining the products of the project
- Forecasting future trends in the project
- Quality Management
- Issues Management
