How to use project management software

How and why use project management software? – This question is usually asked by old-school managers who feel suspicious about using PM shareware and other modern IT achievements. If company management has decided to improve organization’s productivity through implementation it is a great opportunity to achieve the new level of efficiency, however, elder experienced managers may adamantly oppose to this idea because of some mistaken opinions which they may share. For example people think that functionality is so new and specific that it will force them to abandon proven methods and tools used for years before. This is not true because that shareware is just a new instrument supporting everything you did before but with better level of facilitation, so it is not about forcing you to break your usual approaches and master something completely new.

As any new instrument, PM software should be fully learned and mastered by its users, but accustoming people to new software is probably the hardest stage of software implementation and the most responsible task for IT department, requiring a lot of patience and communicational skills. Even if formal evaluation is completed and product was approved as suitable for the company (it has all necessary functions and good quality) – it should be practically accepted by team members who may give a hostile reception to new methods. However, the easier this stage is passed, the faster is return to normal work. It necessary for IT department to make a good investment of time and efforts while assisting and training staff, so their productivity can gradually increase, and frequency of defections can gradually decrease. There are several tools helping IT guys to teach co-workers from other departments:

• Tutorial – usually developers support their products with tutoring materials explaining people how to perform typical operations. Such materials provide pictures or video along with instructions on the main use cases (for instance – creating and assigning tasks, setting due dates for tasks, marking tasks as complete, etc) If PM shareware isn’t supported with good tutorials or organization’s employees need a more individual approach, it is necessary for IT dep. to create their own tutorials.
• Guide – it is similar to a tutorial but it provides more complex instructions expounded in a form of step-by-step action plans guiding you from one point to another. Such a guiding material can be created to explain matters which are more complicated than just basic procedures. For instance it may explain “How to launch a new project”. If software product isn’t properly supported by official guiding materials, then local IT specialists can prepare their own guides to support users in terms of their organization’s specificity and the most frequently used matters.

• Project demo – this is live session where IT specialist personally explains and shows video materials to teach people how to use the software. This term also refers to video tutorials which can be previously recorded and demonstrated to users in order of teaching them.
• trial – temporal version which is strongly recommended to be installed on computers of users before the software is officially implemented, so they can play with it in order to get familiar with its UI, basic way of working etc.
• templates – sometimes developers provide users with special templates which facilitate their work enabling users to rely on these data frameworks in setting up their own parameters. 

Review project management software that is represented below:

VIP Task Manager is client-server software which is easy-to-use by combining simplicity, intuitive interface and quite rich functionality. Users from small and medium business can benefit from its moderate price and maximal easiness in installation. This software interconnects multiple project team members through the server which is free and can work internally in your LAN or can be exposed to Internet. This tool is fully supported by tutorials, guides, video materials and online support services. You can download the trial version (30 days) right now from this web-site.