Fundamental Requirements for Project Management Software

[annoscia]

Hi All,

As part of my final year project for university I'm developing a project management system.

What would be the fundamental requirements that are needed in a project management system and how would these affect the overall end product?

Many thanks in advance

[dhaughey]

Hi Annoscia,

Some of the fundamentals are:

• Ability to plan, schedule, track and manage tasks.
• Understand dependancies between tasks.
• Ability to set and track budgets.
• Ability to cost projects at a granular level.
• Record and track benefits.
• Track and report progress against the plan (perhaps using Earned Value).
• Breakdown projects into manageable work packages.
• Assign resources against tasks and track their progress.
• Ability to track resource time (timesheet management).
• Ability to understand interdependencies between projects in the portfolio.
• Track and report on issues and risks.

These days you'd probably look for something in the 'Cloud' to make collaborating across geographically dispersed teams easier.

Use on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices should be a consideration.

Hope this helps for a start.

Duncan

[Mohamed.Benmerikhi]

Hi There,

The fundamental requirements of a project management system can be traced back to the hierarchical decomposition of the project objectives -the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This set the scene for the rest of the project phases and presents a set of fundamental requirements in: Scheduling, Quality and Costs management. Each of which necessitates a set of tools. In this respect, here's some of the fundamentals:

1. Project objectives
2. Establishing the WBS based on a set of assumptions
3. Producing action descriptions
4. Distributing the work packages, actions or tasks to the relevant project actors
5. Identifying the project management tools necessary for the management of cost, quality and time in order to track down any potential deviations.

Overall this is what would be required, but i believe it all depends on your project. You seem to be dealing with product development. If this is the case, then you another fundamental requirement would be to ensure that the Project Management model adopted for that purpose is the right one for its purpose.

regards
Mohamed Benmerikhi

[Mohamed.Benmerikhi]

Hi there,

Just to add to my last comment. There must be a correlation between the project requirements and the software requirements to avoid a trade off. The flexibility and options available in the project management software should offer a wide range of functions that exceed those of the project management system. If this is ensured, then one can at least reduce the effect of contingencies as they arise during the project lifecycle.

Best of luck
Mohamed Benmerikhi

[annoscia]

Many thanks for you detailed answers.

Very much appreciated.

Thank you