Project Management Tools
1. Gantt Chart?
A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart since each activity is represented by using a bar.
It is mostly used in the project management, most useful and popular means of showing activities and task of left hand side displayed against time. Each and every task is represented by using bar, based on length of the bar the start date, end date and duration can be calculated.
Benefits of Gantt Chart:
• Gantt Chart can help to show the big picture of project in small individual tasks.
• Using the Gantt Chart we can save time management as it helps in discovering the overall impact on delays and helps collaboration.
• Using Gantt Chart we can have better communication among the teams, simply using the task position rather than large daily meetings.
• Efficiency can be improved among the individuals as Gantt Chart helps team members to meet deadlines and increase productivity.
• Clarity of the tasks can be achieved as Gantt Chart focus on prioritized goals replacing unwanted tasks.
Impacts of Gantt Chart:
• Size of the bar simply denoted the amount of duration but not the actual amount of work and also cost implications are never shown.
• Overly complex while dealing with large projects, since maintaining and looking at Gantt Chart is hard in large projects.
• Updating of tasks is difficult, since Gantt Chart is prepared during early planning of the project. Some tasks differ after reviewing, hence with good chance that tasks need to be updated.
• Delay in the project can’t be visible since only the individual tasks are focused, hard to decode the whole project is on schedule or not.
• Gantt Chart doesn’t help individual to define the timeline for each activity which sometimes makes the project less productive.
2. Why every task will have at least one person assigned?
A project management is termed as managing resource constraints like time, money, people and equipment in order to achieve a successful project. As tasks are pre scheduled, people resource will be need to work on them and drive for completion of each individual task. In order to complete a single task, that particular activity need to be owned by a resource and start working on it. Hence to have progress over a specified task/activity, at least one person will be assigned to each and every task in Gantt Chart. As a part of scheduling, we will be assigning a person’s part time to a task.
3. Predecessors column?
The Predecessors are also known as task fields, it helps to list the task ID numbers on which the current task is dependent before starting or finished. Each predecessor will be linked by using special task dependency mechanism. The Predecessors are generally used to review tasks in a project to analyze and refine the schedule. The dependency types for the predecessors of finish-to-finish, finish-to-start, start–to-finish and start-to-start. By default the system consider finish-to-start as dependency type.
4. Locate the green bar along the bottom of the screen. (The first one is Gantt chart.)
• Task Usage: This is used to review and edit the data entered in assignment tasks. In task usage view every task is allocated to a resource and timesheet portion information such as costs and timescale will be listed accordingly. It helps to make the appearance of details more effective.
• Team Planner: It is a feature made available for managers who struggle to check the status of project schedule in a detailed format. On the left hand side of team planner view resource names will be displayed with corresponding assigned tasks on the right side of same row. The team planner will notify about the completed tasks, multiple tasks, unassigned tasks and unscheduled tasks.
• Resource Sheet: This is one of the format of viewing resources of a project in spreadsheet format. It provides the clear and consolidated data on a single page, allowing user to review and modify the resource information in sheet format.
• Report: This icon is used to represent the graphical view of the project data. It provides the project schedule and work breakdown structure including the overview of big picture. This report reflects the latest information and provides the insight about completed and pending work including slippages and task status.
5. Various Reports
• Dashboards Report: This tab consists of all the dashboard reports with each individual sub report having specific operation. Using the dashboard we can calculate the report for Burndown – amount of work done, tasks progress and amount of activities left. Cost overview and Project overview reports are used to calculate the cost status and budget at various levels and project completion, milestones and pending tasks respectively.
• Resource Report: It consists of all the reports related to resources. In this Resource Overview report is used to review the work status for all the resources working under a project to find the amount of pending tasks and completed activities. And Overallocated Resources task is used to fetch the overallocated work status with amount of actual work and remaining work.
• Table Report: This is a sub task under New Report icon. This report is used to summarize the whole project as a table viewing the Name, Start Date, Finish Date and completion status. We can customize the table report using the Table Tools and Field List to pick different fields to be shown in the table.
6. Defining PERT
A static tool in project management which was designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project is known as Program Evaluation and Reviewing Techniques (PERT).
Benefits of PERT chart:
• PERT provided the probability of completion before the given time.
• PERT provided the weighted estimated completion time scheduling considering all the factors.
• PERT identifies the slack of activities including early and late start of tasks.
• For large project planning PERT is preferable as it helps to understand dependencies and order of work.
• PERT integrates data from multiple departments which will improve planning and decision-making.
Negatives of PERT chart:
• PERT chart need people to have basic knowledge on design and also it underestimates the actual risks involved in a project.
• PERT chart break project into individual tasks, to establish consistent relationship, deadlines it required data quality.
• PERT mainly focus on critical path emphasis, it pulls into problems if we ignore activities on other paths.
• PERT will be confusing and complex with thousands of tasks and dependencies.
• If complex project involving many activities and external suppliers it mark difficult for the PERT prediction.
7. Gantt chart template
It is easy to access the Gantt Project Planner template from the Excel menu. Since project managers extensively use the Gantt Chart to schedule tasks, activities in relationship with one another. It is now significantly mush easier to access predefined Gantt Project Planner template from excel and work on it.
8. Name 10 other project management tools
• Smartsheet: A project management tool that works directly on web with google and salesforce.com. The tools helps to organize, record with unlimited collaborations data.
• Evernote: A powerful project management tool which helps to record activities and tasks in the form of notes.
• Jira: A project management tool that captures, organizes and assign tasks and follow up activities in a team.
• Project Insight: A leading project management tool that manages the whole project right from planning phase to execution stage.
• WorkZone: A project management software tool with real world user functionality and usability that is defined for 10+ users related to marketing, operations and IT.
• Quire: A project management tool that collaborates data, organizes tasks and sub-tasks in a tree like structure.
• Kanbanchi: A project management dashboard tool which is a Kanban board build by google and is available within our google drive.
• OrangeScrum: An online project management tool that gathers everyone on the same page and provides an effective way to manage team and tasks at one place.
• Acentrix: A modern tool for project management with unique way of handling projects, time management and real time messaging
• Freelance Suite: A comprehensive project management tools that provides the services like customer management, billing of tasks and collaboration tools.