From the course: Project Management Foundations

Project management software options

From the course: Project Management Foundations

Project management software options

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- [Instructor] Software tools can make your job as a project manager a little easier. Let's talk about types of software and how you can put it to use managing projects. Scheduling software comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. For most projects, you'll want scheduling software to help you build and manage your project schedule. There are lots of tools out there, such as Microsoft Project, Oracle Primavera, LiquidPlanner, Jira, Smartsheet, Wrike, Asana, and more. Some scheduling tools work better for Waterfall or Agile. Microsoft Project and Oracle Primavera support Agile, but it isn't their strength. Jira is primarily for Agile, but can be used for Waterfall. With online tools, make sure that they support the project management approaches that your organization uses. Most scheduling tools these days work in the cloud to make collaboration easier. When you think about all the project management documents you produce, it's no wonder that a word processing program is essential. Because project documents are laid out similarly from project to project, you can build document templates. That way, you don't have to start from scratch every time. A spreadsheet program is another must have for calculations and analysis. Besides being handy for budgets and other financial calculations, a spreadsheet can help analyze project risks and prioritize which ones you should keep an eye on. A presentation program like PowerPoint or Prezi is useful for communicating project information at a high level, or when you want to include information from other types of documents. Because a team of people work on a project, you need some kind of tool for collaborating with others. Basecamp, Asana, and Microsoft SharePoint are a few cloud-based collaboration tools you can use to share files with others, keep track of issues, or even manage a workflow. If you work in an organization that runs many large projects at the same time, you should consider enterprise project management software. Enterprise-level software provides tools that allow you to find resources with the skills you need and see which resources are available when you need them. It helps you track risks, issues, and other information, and even build document libraries so team members can easily find information they need. We've briefly touched on some of the software options available. If you're researching software to use, consider the following in your decisions: Your organization's culture and work environment, software budget, the organization's project management methodologies, the number of projects you manage, and their complexity.

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