Jim KissaneDirector| Optimising Portfolio ValueNoosa Heads, Australia
There are over a hundred available but I think that all will cost you many times what you initially think and will cause a lot of pain to your organisation unless you have done the basics first. I’ve developed P3M software several times in-house, tested and/or used commercial software and seen disasters for several e.g. years in option review and installing software that was much more cost than expected and eventually turned off.
The issues are generally from inconsistent definition of variables, lack of credible data, ownership of the data, timing of delivery of the data to hit EOM (End OF Month) target dates, different graphs/tables for various target audiences, extraction of data from other engines (P6, SAP, Prism), dynamic project list (the list keeps changing due to new entries, Gates, changing priorities and closure). The list goes on!
The software is generally not the problem. It is not a silver. Bullet. Unless all these are stable and credible, you can waste a lot of time, money and your credibility by purchasing a software package. Generally you are stuck with it for life. Note also that a cheap entry can often cost a fortune over time.
My tip is to develop everything in excel first. If you can’t do it in excel, you don’t know what you want. Whatever software you end up buying, your current data will need to be transferred, so you need it all together anyway.
Make your “one stop shop” with all your project data transparent and together. Develop (if necessary) a giant spreadsheet with a row per project and column for every variable (some calculated). Create all your graphs/tables from this spreadsheet.
When the excel gets too big (I have got up to 35Gb), then look for another toolkit. Access will work for most purposes, but falls over when there are multiple people entering the data.
Good luck! Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The software that best fit for your current project management defined process. Saving Changes...
Anish AbrahamPrivacy Program Manager| University of WashingtonAuburn, Wa, United States
I started with MS Project, and it really helped me to learn the basics. Now I'm using JIRA which is also a powerful tool for managing projects. Saving Changes...
