Project management / resource management tools

Project management software allows corporate users to plan, organize and manage resources to effectively complete specific project goals and objectives. Project management is a widely used business activity for risk monitoring, investment planning, event scheduling, resource planning (ERP), etc.

Projects can be presented as a classic tree (work breakdown structure), showing steps or activities required to achieve an objective:

Any tree branch can be expanded or collapsed for better view of a project:

The picture shows a typical project that is broken down into 3 basic stages: initial stage, in-between stage and final stage. Each of them in its turn can be further decomposed into smaller substages providing more detailed characteristic of the primary goal.

Projects can be also presented as time charts with events distributed in a specific sequence order:

Here, a horizontal axis (timeline) plots a calendar featuring year, month, day and hour marks. Zooming in or out a user may easily change the scale of view from hours to decades. Such a scaling is very important for a strategic planning activities.

Below a timeline project elements or stages are placed. Vertical marks, milestones and menu options will help to set a right start and end dates for each element as well as to compare the durations of various stages.

This representation is known as a Gantt diagram (chart) and is often found in many popular project management tools including MindDecider.

The following elements can be included into project management software functionality (examples and screenshots are taken from MindDecider projects):

Scheduling / Planning (Gantt diagram)

Scheduling allows to:

- visually break down a project in time and place phases (activities) on a timeline:

- set durations and view project time statistics (durations, time share of the given substage in the whole stage duration):

- move, shorten, elongate, collapse/uncollapse, color fill or zoom in/out an unlimited amount of project elements:

- set precedence and dependencies of phases or elements (tie them together so that one element starts after or ends before another):

- set criteria or resources to evaluate project performance:

- estimate each element or project stage by the defined criteria (resource):

- set specific time distribution according to the expected behaviour of an element in time with the help of time curves. Here a horizontal axis features time while vertical one shows accumulated value of criterion/resource:

- track the performance (readiness or any other criterion) of a project stage in the given moment of time:

Time optimization

Time optimization function finds the most effective time distribution of elements (phases) so they showed the best performance of a chosen parameter under the specific constraints.

Time optimization is often used for risk management and reduction: the events are distributed in such a way that a risk factor is minimal all the time. This allows a project manager to effectively choose the right strategy for aversion or minimization of risks related to project realization.

This function is very similar to CPM (critical path method) showing which tasks need to be completed before other tasks could be started. The significance of the critical path is that the elements that lie on a timeline cannot be delayed without delaying the project. Because of its impact on the entire project, critical path method is an important aspect of project planning.

You may find extra information on project management essentials and details on our links and reading page.