Project+Management+Software

Introduction
Project Management Software is used to support project managers to balance the 3 aspects of the project triangle ie:
 * Money** - stay within budget
 * Time** - meet prject deadlines
 * Scope** - meet the objectives of the project

Project Management Software is used to create individual **tasks**. Tasks can then be grouped together to create significant project **milestones**. The software is used to allocate the time, money and scope to different tasks

Key features
The key features of Project Management Software are as follows:

This is the process of allocating time and dates to tasks and milestones
 * Timelining**

Resources are allocated to tasks. Resources can be people (human resources), machinery or equipment. Costs are also allocated to each resource e.g. daily rates for employees, cost of purchasing or hiring equipment
 * Resource allocation**

Once the timelining and resource allocation has been completed, the software can be used to display the project visually using charts. The most common of these is a Gantt chart which shows how all of the different tasks fit together to form the project.
 * Gantt (and other) charts**



Gantt charts show the order in which tasks fit into the project timeline. For example, two tasks cannot be run at the same time if they require the use of the same resources (a person or machine cannot be in two places at once). Similarly, certain tasks may require other tasks to be completed before they can start.

Projects can be optimised to improve the time they take, the budget or the scope. For example, if a particular project is not going to meet its deadline, the timelines can be adjusted to resolve this problem. Similarly, adjustments can be made to reduce overall costs or project scope. Clearly any optimisation of one aspect will have implications on the other two aspects. For example, we can speed up the delivery of a project timeline by hiring more staff, but this will affect the project budget.
 * Optimisation and critical path analysis**

A critical path is a series of key tasks which begin at the start of the project and finish at the end of the project. Changes to the critical path will impact on the overall time that the project takes to complete



Task
1. Sign up for an account with [|Zoho Projects].

2. Think of an imaginary project that you want to project manage (e.g. build an F1 racing car, build a house, design and implement a piece of software).

3. Use Zoho Projects to:
 * produce task lists with tasks and deadlines
 * create milestones
 * add other users and create tasks for them
 * update progress for some tasks to show them partly completed
 * produce a Gantt chart