Project Management
Software Tools for Project Planning
The following is a (by no means exhaustive) overview of some commonly used software tools. It is intended purely as an indication of the range and type of products available. JISC infoNet does not endorse any particular supplier or product.
Microsoft Project
Microsoft's Project software is one of the most commonly used tools in the education sector. The latest versions offer a range of techniques to track large projects, and programmes of projects. In particular it deals with task scheduling and resource allocation.
To use Microsoft Project successfully you must be fairly sure of your estimates of tasks, sub-tasks, timescales, resource availability and costs.
To start using Microsoft Project you will first have to break down the project activities into discrete tasks and sub-tasks. Each task is then given projected start and finish dates and resources are allocated to the tasks, usually in the form of the people who will complete the tasks, and the overall costs involved. You may also link tasks to each other to indicate where one task depends on another.
When is Microsoft Project a useful tool? Task scheduling is at the heart of Project. It is therefore a useful tool for projects with discrete and predictable tasks that have to be performed in a particular order using well-defined resources. Using this approach it is possible to highlight major target dates and other milestones in the project and to pick out a critical path of tasks and their dependencies.
Different views in Microsoft Project allow you to see details of resource allocation, highlighting any resource clashes and showing periods of the project where resources might be thinly stretched. This is particularly useful for planning the allocation of staff time and for tracking project costs.
Once you are used to using the basic techniques in Microsoft Project, which are based on spreadsheet tools, it can be an excellent tool to create 'what if' scenarios, predicting the effects of increased or fewer resources, or changes to time schedules.
Different versions of Microsoft Project include:
- A standard product suitable for small individual projects;
- A team version for sharing information among staff in different locations;
- An enterprise version for managing planning at the organisational level.
You may however find that Microsoft Project is too complex and restrictive for your purposes, and that it makes too many assumptions, especially if you have a project with ill-defined or complex tasks. In which case you might wish to look at alternative software tools.
Open Source Software
'Open source' software is available on the Internet for no cost. This software is, of course, used at your own risk and comes without guarantees but there is a rapidly increasing range of useful tools available. Educational institutions, as well as commercial companies and government organisations, are increasingly using open source software for major applications; for example, the tools used for creating Managed Learning Environments.
A JISC Advisory Service for Open Source Software commenced on 1 July 2003 hosted by the University of Oxford. More details can be found on their website at:
Project Smart offers a template based on an Excel spreadsheet that offers an overview to see the progress of small projects at:http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/templates.html
A useful list of software tools for project management can be found on a site at the University of Glamorgan, at: http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/dwfarthi/projman.htm#sw
Some products on this list are open source, some are available at low prices.
Alternatively try Google's own list of open source project management software.
CHEST Software for Educational Institutions
CHEST negotiates with software suppliers for special rates for education and research institutions in the UK. Some project management software tools are included in its products. If you want CHEST to negotiate special rates for particular software, they will do this on your behalf if a number of institutions require the same software.
For more information on what is currently available through CHEST, and to contact them, see the website at http://www.chest.ac.uk
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