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Ten Things to Look for when Buying Project Management Software
Shopping for a project management solution can be overwhelming. You've searched on the web and found a multitude of options. Metafuse would like to assist you with your search. There are some key questions you should ask yourself and the vendors in the marketplace.
1. What kind of product do you require and what type of product does the vendor offer?
There are 3 tiers of project management solutions: the low-end products, the midrange solutions and the high-end tools.
Low-end products are often good for small groups with basic needs as those products usually have limited functionality. These tools can be a good fit if your requirements are minimal and your budget is limited. Low-end products are usually available in a hosted only environment and can be priced as low as $10/user/month.
Mid-range solutions offer more robust features at a palatable price range from $2,500 to $25,000. These products are usually offered in both hosted and installed options. Project Insight is a leader in the mid-range.
High-end systems are designed for very large organizations with PMOs (project management offices) that need to link thousands of team members worldwide. These solutions are heavy in pre-project planning features such as risk analysis and opportunity analysis. Many times, high-end solutions satisfy the executive management but not the actual project team. The high-end products' starting prices are $50,000 and up.
So, first ask yourself which tier of product you are looking for, then ask the vendor where they fit in the marketplace.
Project Insight is a mid-range solution that is branded for each customer, and can be customized to fit each client's exact requirements. Project Insight boasts a robust feature set that will satisfy demanding project managers, yet it is easy enough for basic team members to adopt.
Project Insight offers a Workgroup Edition as well, which is rich in feature set, yet affordable. If you are considering a low end product, but need robust features, check out the Project Insight Workgroup Edition.
2. How does the product perform scheduling? Most low end and mid-range solutions have project scheduling, but tasks are scheduled with hard coded dates. It is better to have a solution that can schedule projects based on the information that project managers supply. For instance, a project manager gives a project a start date, and sets up tasks with the approximate amount of work, the span of time that tasks are to be worked on, and so forth. If a project manager chooses to use task relationships (predecessors and successors), then the schedule can be automatically calculated. We call it intelligent scheduling.
The beauty of this is that if your project start date changes, or a task duration changes, all you have to do is change that value and your entire project shifts! Many products in the low-end and mid-range require project managers to enter in the start and end date for each task. Imagine the administrative nightmare you would have if your project start date changed and your project had 100 tasks. That would mean at least 200 manual changes to your project!
Project Insight has intelligent scheduling which automatically calculates schedules, eliminating the administrative headaches associated with schedule changes.
3. Does the product support all 4 task relationships?
Project tasks are best managed as a network of interdependent tasks requiring accurate duration estimates as the basis for project planning. Dates should be calculated based on the relationships of the tasks and the duration of the tasks that must be completed for the successful completion of the project as a whole. Project Insight allows project managers to set up tasks as any of the four task relationships.
Before purchasing any software solution, always test the software to make certain that it can calculate interdependencies on the following commonly encountered task relationships:
1. Finish-to-Start
2. Start-to-Start
3. Finish-to-Finish
4. Start-to-Finish
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