Project Management

Project management software is a term covering many types of software, including estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, quality management and documentation or administration systems, which are used to deal with the complexity of large projects.

Tasks of Project Management Software

Scheduling. One of the most common purposes is to schedule a series of events or tasks and the complexity of the schedule can vary considerably depending on how the tool is used. Some common challenges include:

• Events which depend on one another in different ways or dependencies.
• Scheduling people to work on, and resources required by, the various tasks, commonly termed resource scheduling.
• Dealing with uncertainties in the estimates of the duration of each task.

Providing information. Project planning software can be expected to provide information to various people or stakeholders, and can be used to measure and justify the level of effort required to complete the project(s). Typical requirements might include:

• Overview information on how long tasks will take to complete.
• Early warning of any risks to the project.
• Information on workload, for planning holidays.
• Evidence.
• Historical information on how projects have progressed, and in particular, how actual and planned performance are related.
• Optimum utilization of available resource.
• Cost Maintenance.