Generic Project Management Software Tools

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annoscia
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Posts: 5
Joined: Fri 26 Oct 2012 10:56 am

Hi All,

Hoping some people can help, I'm in my final year at university and I'm developing a project management system.

I need to research generic tools that are used in current project management systems, but I'm confused!

For example I know that Notepad++ is a generic code editor and its task is to help write code.

But what tools could be included in a project management system that are generic?

Could anybody help?

Many thanks
Mohamed.Benmerikhi
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Posts: 57
Joined: Thu 20 Sep 2012 10:19 am
Location: France

Hi there,

Generic project management tools are the type of tools that a project management system requires irrespective of the type of project. This means whether it is a construction project, an IT project, a product development project, a project in the creative industry or an R&D project, it necessarily requires some of these tools.

Think of the triple constraints of quality, time and cost; each of these elements - irrespective of the type of project - requires a tool for its management; time refers to scheduling and requires the use of a timeline or a Gantt chart, cost requires cost estimation techniques (CET), quality requires cost benefit analysis (CBA).

So all of these tools can be regarded as generic prject management tools and you will tend to find them in almost every project that adopts the task perspective, which is the dominant paradigm in project management.

I hope this helps
Best of luck
Mohamed Benmerikhi
annoscia
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Joined: Fri 26 Oct 2012 10:56 am

Many thanks for your detailed response Mohamed.

This has helped quite a lot!!
John Arbuckle
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Joined: Mon 29 Oct 2012 5:39 pm

I think you need a tool which allows you to create a Work Breakdown Structure, create resources, assign resources to the tasks in the WBS and allow resources to book time against these tasks. It should allow a record of spend over time to be kept for the project, as well as holding a forecast for remaining activity. It should also allow you to specify tasks as milestones and be able to hold one or more baselines.

I think your tool also needs to allow for document management (with different access levels for different stakeholders).

From a reporting point of view, your tool should allow you to produce a regular (weekly?) report against the project, with a RAG status if necessary.

Finally, reporting risks and issues against the overall project or against specific tasks should be possible.

Tools like Planview have their detractors, but are worth a look for large corporates. I guess it depends how many users this is to have. For smaller, more interactive projects, online collaboration tools like basecamphq are good - there are loads out there. Hope this helps.

John
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