Project management systems include a variety of software products intended to facilitate management of tasks and document artifacts that constitute an entire project or group of projects. A project management program should include productivity enhancing functionality that justifies the cost of purchasing the solution. Vendors of licensed project management software face growing competition from numerous free and open source products whose functionality is often close to that of licensed products, making it difficult for managers to select the best fit. So, it is useful to consider what distinguishes licensed software from open source software in the project management industry..
A robust project management solution would definitely feature estimation and planning capabilities in addition to providing collaboration functionally, that allows customers to schedule and collaborate on tasks and allocate resources. Ability to calculate costs and manage multiple budgets should also be considered an integral part of a high-quality project management system.
A fair number of developers still bet on extended planning functionality while their products lack plan-adjustment features. Managers and team members need to not only track project plan progress against a baseline but also to apply flexible approach toward project re-planning, which is usually a very dynamic process and includes resource re-allocation. Therefore, project management systems must provide more than usual core planning functionality to be regarded as a full-scale business solution.
A module triggering early warnings when the project"s progress is jeopardized by external or internal factors has its place within a fully functional project management system. Managers are used to dealing with late projects and various risks surrounding a project, but an essential function of project management solutions is to provide tools such as workflow for triggering early warnings, allowing managers and staff members to head-off problems.
Assessment of available resources to be allocated to a project is crucial to draw a working and manageable work plan. Therefore, project management systems are required to feature forecasting and estimation functionality, to optimize and take utmost advantage of available resources within an enterprise. Proper resource utilization can prove critical for successful project completion in multi-project settings and the majority of freeware products lack the means to provide such functionality to businesses.
Availability of a collaboration module is another core functionality a corporate executive would expect to find useful in project management software. Plenty of web-based solutions naturally rely on Internet-based communication to enable customers to exchange files, make changes to records in the system, and collaborate on projects. However, a reliable project management system would also be designed to provide customers with functionality to work on projects when offline and synchronise their records at a later stage.
A really fully functional
project management program has many features, which are derived from the concept of customer relationship management; thus, valuable project management systems and CRM systems have much in common.
