Good Tool, Bad Fit

  Decision Making   Leadership   Stakeholder Management   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

Adapting basic project management software for a professional services environment requires two significant additions: versatility to accommodate a host of new metrics, and unity to ensure those metrics are synchronized with the old, accessible to all, and transparent.

Modern project management software is designed to meet your every need — unless you work in professional services. For these poor, cursed few, the software doesn't quite fit. The world's a bowl of soup, and you've only got a fork. So you do what any of us do when given the wrong tools for the job. You improvise. You substitute. You build around the problem. And soon, the whole system becomes so sprawling and convoluted, you spend most of the day just trying to hold the disparate pieces together and connect the dots.

What did professional services firms ever do to deserve this fate, and is there any chance for salvation?

What's the Difference, Really?

First, we need to understand what makes professional services projects so very different from the engineering, IT, and construction projects that most Project Management software systems (and traditional tools like Gantt charts, for that matter) are designed to accommodate.

The short answer is that a professional services organization’s primary revenue driver is billable time – a variable commodity that’s …

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