Project management software selection

If you would like to improve your project management attitudes with computer-based instruments facilitating project planning, tracking and reporting, then you need to qualify your requirements and make the research to know which solution can answer your needs properly. This article is about how to choose PM shareware, explaining this in a step-by-step manner:

1)      Initial step – Composing the list:

In order to find what you are seeking for, you need to build up a list including names of all programs matching your requirements. For this purpose you need to outline the main capabilities that you want to have in your software (and prioritize them), for example you extremely need special instrument allowing you to analyze and manage project risks, so you need to enlarge your list with about 5-10 of the most popular software products featuring this capability. This is a first stage of software selection – choosing the products that fit your primal requirements, taking them out from the whole multitude of solutions available on the Web. On this stage you may start setting out shareware ratings (giving pluses to software according to its benefits) in order to define the most suitable solutions (rated with the biggest number of pluses).

2)      Studying pros and cons – Learning project management software features:

On this step you should have all-round learning of products recorded in your list. You shouldn’t delve into too detailed studying and comparison of all possible features, but you need to focus on benefits that are really important for your case. For example you would like to have easy-to-use product (you haven’t much time to master complex products), and you want a program enabling you to share project items with your teammates (employees, stakeholders), so in other words you need a tool with collaboration capability etc. Your next step is going through your list studying if these products can offer what you need, and if yes, which ones do it better than others. This can be defined through studying screen-shots, demo-tours, downloading and installing trial versions. On this stage it would be good for you to contact support/sales services of different shareware providers to request if they can cover your requirements (at the same time you’re checking their responsiveness and helpfulness).

3)      Final step – Ultimate comparison:

At the final step you need to concentrate your attention at the top products from your list. On this stage you should determine your IT budget and finalize the whole process to define which solution is the best for you. On this step you may delve down into details to study more features and find out which functionality looks highly useable for your secondary needs. 

For example, different PM software uses different technologies to drive their functionality – it may be different types of UI (web-based or installable) or different database systems (Firebird, MySQL, Interbase etc). Actually, the final stage is mainly a competition of prices. Also you can study reputation of different products through Internet references, for example you can read Wiki articles to define market share of the most popular products, and also you can study their testimonials and case studies. The winner is a program which obtains the most of your pluses so it can satisfy you with its usability, functions, quality and price.

At the end of this article we would like to represent you an example of project management software that is recognized as number one by many small and medium companies. It is called VIP Task Manager and it allows you to interconnect multiple project participants in terms of planning, tracking and reporting tasks in real-time regime. You can study its features, watch video demonstration, study screen-shots and download trial version through visiting specific sections of this web-site.