Project Performance Evaluation: Software Analysis for MBA642 Module

This presentation evaluates project management software options for project performance, focusing on the initiation, planning, and execution stages. It analyzes five software solutions: Basecamp, Teamwork Projects, Plutio, Zoho Projects, and Jira, highlighting their functionalities, benefits, and shortcomings. The presentation explores how each software addresses project requirements, including task management, scheduling, communication, document sharing, and reporting. It also discusses the importance of software selection for team collaboration, budget management, and customer satisfaction. The document provides insights into the features of each software, such as Gantt charts, time tracking, and reporting capabilities, to help project managers choose the most suitable tools for their needs. The evaluation considers factors like user-friendliness, language support, and integration with other tools, providing a comprehensive overview of project management software in the market.

1

The project management software that are available in the market cover a wide
range of platforms and each of these platforms have distinct functionality. Selecting
an appropriate software that suits the project requirements is a necessity. The project
manager should be capable enough to choose from the range of varieties of the
software. The software chosen by the project manager should help the project in
three stages that are planning, tracking and collaboration. Planning requires finding
proper team members and deciding on the resources. Once these are planned,
project management software can be made use of for scheduling tasks, forecasting a
completion date and allocating resources. The five primary functionality aspects of
project management software are:
1. Assigning and updating task list
2. Scheduling the tasks
3. Sharing documents
4. Enabling and enhancing communication
5. Reporting the project status in a timely manner
2

1. Collaborate on projects- Project management software helps the employees to
bring in collaboration. These aid them in discussing various documents, the
timelines and other such vital factors in a project.
2. Internal and external communication- Project management software bridges the
communication gap within the organization as well as outside the same. It
supports better communication in between clients and other such stakeholders of
a project.
3. Management of budget- The project managers can take the help of project
management software to determine the work budget.
4. Monitoring- The project management software help keep a track on the ongoing
project thus monitoring the various stages in a project.
5. Document sharing- Sharing of documents enabled transparency and enhances
communication.
6. Communication in between clients and suppliers- The organizations making use of
project management software must offer log in facilities to the clients to certain
relevant project data so that communication can be enhanced.
7. Optimization in decision making- Having all relevant details of the project in one
place helps in making accurate decisions.
8. Customer satisfaction- Project completed within time and budget helps an
organization to satisfy its clients thus contributing in the growth of business.
3

Basecamp helps teams to get more productive and organized. It helps in the planning
stage by breaking up work into smaller segments and each of these smaller segments
comprises of everything that is related to the work in hand like the team members
involved in the work, discussion, document, files, important dates and many more.
The tools such as message board, to-dos, schedule and docs and files help in
scheduling and executing the tasks properly. Important dates can be set on a shared
schedule and subscribed to various events in Google Calendar, Outlook and many
more. It centralizes the notifications in a project hence minimizes interruptions.
These help in keeping the projects on track with some tools such as Hill Charts. The
Hill Charts work parallel to the to dos and show the project managers the current
proceedings of the project.
4

Teamwork projects has all the necessary tools that are required to keep a track on the
development of a specific project. In the project initiation phase teamwork projects
helps with its features of task management. In the project panning phase it helps
with its features such as messaging, time tracking tools and file storage. Gantt chart,
set-up reporting and marked calendar like features help in scheduling the tasks in a
project and thus ensure that the project is being executed in a proper way and the
decided manner.
5

Plutio is a package providing robust applications that aid the its users to manage their
businesses. It helps the users to work closely with the customers. The project
management software enhances collaboration between teams and is easy to work
with. It is a highly customized application that provides the users with projects, tasks,
proposals as well as invoicing tools. It supports different languages such as Hebrew,
French, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese and English. It helps in time tracking providing real-
time status that include total time logged, billable and nonbillable time as well as
paid and unpaid time. Time sheets help visualize employee’s entries in each task that
is essential during project execution. Helps in better project planning through its
reliable module of CRM. This module helps in building better relationships and helps
in inviting and adding people to collaborate on different projects. Streamlined
communication offers different features like live chat, email sync and many more that
can be of great help in the initiation phase of project.
6

7

Zoho projects suits different types of businesses mainly the small and medium scale
companies. Its bug tracking feature makes its suitable for software development
industries. It supports 16 languages. User friendly as it provides features such as
native mobile access, project organization, calendar, scheduling meetings, document
editor, importing users and email integration. The project planning feature of Zoho
helps in breaking down the tasks into smaller manageable tasks thus a deadline is
never missed. Centralized access to all projects helps viewing all of these in a
comprehensive manner. Another feature of project planning is Kanban that allows to
view the workflow as cards and the project managers can sort the tasks by their
percentage of completion and priority. Gantt chart help in visualizing the tasks in a
better way. The feature called Feeds can help the project manager to coordinate in a
better way with the projects. Feeds acts as a social network. Keeping track of time by
the help of Timesheets help in timely execution of all tasks.
8

Jira is one of the popular project management software and gives the provision to its
users to create customizable scrum boards, use agile reporting in real time and
kanban boards. The bugs can be tracked and any outstanding issue can be viewed.
This also helps the project manager to monitor time spent on each task. The robust
set of APIs enable the user to connect with many third party software. Users can
generate reports of different types for each of the active or the closed sprints during
the project. Provides the users with variety of charts and graphs which help in
understanding the tasks in a better way.
9

10

11