Project management software comes in a great variety. You should check out at least a few of them and weigh their pros and cons before deciding which one is best suitable for you. Once you have decided you need a project management application, you should then define your needs. Whether you need to track your time, your documentation, or your tasks better, you can be sure that there is, at least, one application for each need, and there ones that offer the full package.
There is no clear definition for project management software because it varies. However there is an ideal when it comes to project management software. This ideal contains, what are considered to be the six most important aspects of any capable project management software.
The first important aspect is the planning of a project. Many professional don't even look at applications that don't offer the possibility to visually display all the project's tasks and their interconnection. This aspect is critical for any project, because it offers the possibility of to assess and allocate staff and financial resources.
Another important aspect of a successful project management software application is task management. It gives a PM the possibility to define tasks, create deadlines, and better assign the staff. It allows the user to estimate the hours needed to complete a task, whilst observing the impact of his decisions and keep an eye on individual team members.
Every project entails a large volume of documentation, and the option to store all the documents in one place, where everyone involved in the project can access it, especially if the team is divided and geographically remote. If you have high expectations from a project management software, then you probably want the possibility to share your documents through it, in order to ensure a better collaboration, and to avoid difficult situations with sharing.
Managing issues that occur in every project is a lot easier to do if your project management software gives you the possibility to track your conversations, rate your difficulties and better manage any updates, or even explain a problem by taking a screenshot of the problem.
Tracking time is equally important because you always need to know exactly how much time a team member need to complete a task, and how much time is actually being spent on that task. Many professionals use a separate time management software to keep track of the time spent on different tasks. One of the most beneficial of using a time management software is that works to increase both individual and overall productivity.
So what do you think is the best project management software for you? Are your team members located in different cities or countries? Do you really just need a good time management software, or do you also need a tool that lets you share documents and opinions effortlessly. These are the questions that you need to ask yourself in order to decide with tool suits you best.
-3 years/36 months and 4,500 hours with a bachelor's degree
-5 years/60 months and 7,500 hours with a bachelor's degree
The challenge is digging up all of the information on that past experience and getting it into the right format for the PMI.
PMI Instructions
As per the Project Management Professional (PMP®) Credential Handbook, applicants need to document the number of hours that they led or directed project tasks. Applicants need to consider all of the projects that they have worked on, and identify how many hours they led or directed project tasks. For this section of the application all hours spent leading and directing project tasks on multiple concurrent projects count toward the total. This exercise is, in itself, an educational experience, as it makes applicants to think about their experience in terms of the PMI framework, the Project Management Body of Knowledge, or PMBOK.
There is an experience verification section on the online application to document and report the experience leading and directing project tasks. Projects need to be documented individually regardless of the number of projects. Within the total hours of project management experience, experience in all five process groups is required. However, experience in all five project management process groups is not required on each and every single project.
8 Pointers for Documenting Project Management Experience
Project Managers and applicants for the PMP need to remember that delivering on projects is all about getting tasks done. It is all about task management. Many people assume that because they were not the overall project manager, their experience does not count. However, PMP hopefuls need to think outside the box and review their projects and tasks through the lens of a project manager, using the PMBOK framework - specifically the Project Management Processes: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing - and begin to understand where their tasks and efforts fit into the overall process of managing a project.
Here are some great steps for doing this task:
1. Capture all work experience of the past so many years, including dates, regardless of what it was. A spreadsheet is an ideal organizational tool for this.
2. Applicants should learn to think in terms of the Project Management Processes: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing. For each of their experiences, they need to record which of these processes they were working.
3. At this point, applicants should discard the experiences where they were clearly not working on any of the 5 Project Management Processes.
4. The next step is to peruse through all the experiences to make sure each and every one of the 5 Project Management Processes, is represented at least once in all the identified experience. This is required.
5. Now all of the experience data should be ready for computing a preliminary number of months of project management experience, to be compared against the requirement. Hopefully there is enough experience to meet and actually exceed the requirement, should anything be questioned.
6. The next task is to do a short description of each of the experiences, illustrating especially how "leading and directing project tasks" was taking place within the specified project management processes.
7. This deserves repeating. Extra experiences totaling more than the required time should be kept as a buffer.
8. Optionally as a final step, the experience can be broken down further into detailed descriptions for each of the appropriate processes.
Finalizing the Process
It is acknowledged that often times there are gray lines between work on one project or another, or even one process or another. Applicants need to ensure that any claims they make are credible and that they can readily explain them and feel confident with the information they are providing. In their descriptions, a good technique is to try to paint a picture of the project by providing a succinct description with information of level of responsibility, including the role played, deliverables produced, size of project, and bit about the stakeholders, and the impact. Each experience must be described uniquely, which means avoiding copies or repeat descriptions of assignments, as all projects are different!
To finalize an experience worksheet, applicants, of course, need to remember to check grammar, and run a spell check! The following should go without saying, but 2 overlapping experiences cannot be considered to each be full time! Applicants also need to determine the appropriate level of detail for their particular situation. They should simply feel comfortable that the reader will find their organization of the information and descriptions of the project work experience understandable and credible. All of these things show a high degree of professionalism and speak as much as the content about the person.
Both Grojan Fabiola & John Reiling are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
John Reiling has sinced written about articles on various topics from Management, Facts about Barack Obama and Education. John Reiling, PMP is an experienced Project Manager and is a certified Project Management Professional. John's web site, provides. John Reiling's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.