The Importance of Choosing the Right PM Software

We read very limited news about a structure failure. However, we hear a lot about project time and budget overrun. Which I consider it a project planning and control design failure. Small number of cases are justified and the remaining are a cause of poor project management and in particular project control management.

It is not surprising to know that research is showing that business leaders identify capturing time/costs against projects” as their biggest project management challenge. Moreover, research is showing that an astounding 97% of organizations believe project management is critical to business performance and organizational success and that 50% of all Project Management Offices (PMOs) close within just three years (Gartner Project Manager 2014).

Therefore, what’s is the problem here?

I always believe that the problem is on data management. There is a limited effort to apply the practice of project delivery process mapping through adopting a project data driven decision making approach.

Data entry, verifying and visualizing as part of any business Intelligence is crucial to make right decisions on the right time on the different project delivery cycle. Projects managers (44%)use no PM software, even though they know that the use of commercially available PM software increases performance and satisfaction. However, with poor business support on investing such software, it creates difficulties on dealing with the flood of project delivery data. Using PM software will simplify the way project team use data by making it a natural part of how they make decisions before projects day to day issues turn to be critical problems.

In a research done in University of Ottawa they found that 33% of projects fail because of a lack of involvement from senior management. While this involvement is very difficult when there is no Communicating and Measuring methods through live visual data stream from project delivery team. The PM software are giving this live Communicating and Measuring easily.

There are many software which could be adopted. However, for the best business intelligence the required software will be the one which meet client requirements and can be tailored easily around current organization operation process to build it with limited culture changes by building a PMO methodology using current organization governance, procedures and processes.

This is another challenge considering the organization maturity which should have, Portfolio Tracking, Portfolio Governance and Oversight, Portfolio Planning including Resource Allocation, Portfolio Selection and Prioritization and Portfolio Process Management.

Finally, as we notice from above, having a PM software to manage and monitor your project delivery is a must. Most companies will have it to manage projects individually. However, limited are using it for portfolio management for business improvement decision making. A PMO system will be a good solution. However, the organization needs to be ready with its system. Implementing PMO also has its challenges and the organization management should be persistence on implementing it and delivering it no matter what the challenge are. (for more information about PMO challenges please refer to my post:

https://zalbasireppm.com/pmo/pmo-implementation-requirements-challenges/

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