Project Management Software: Performance Evaluation and Analysis

This presentation evaluates the performance of five project management software options: Microsoft Project, GanttPRO, Smartsheet, TeamGantt, and Celoxis. The evaluation assesses each software's capabilities across the project initiation, planning, and execution stages. The analysis includes ...Read More

1

Originally, Microsoft purchased the product from another corporation, and launched
it as its own version in the year 1985. Microsoft Project 2016 is the latest version of
the Program. Microsoft Project enables the project manager for entering the project
tasks also known as the WBS or work breakdown structure and for assigning to those
tasks, and cost information as well. Microsoft Project also offers features which
enable users for creating the reports which communicate the project's progress and
status (Gonçalves and von Wangenheim 2017). This platform helps one-user to easily
create detailed reports for measuring the progress and communicate effectively
about the project information with the team and stakeholders. It offers a versatile
online approach for the control of project portfolios and the daily work. It is offered
by Office 365, Project Online helps companies to get going, prioritize resources in
project strategies and achieve the expected business value from almost anywhere on
practically every device. Microsoft Project was built for providing the project
managers with the right combination of comprehensive project management tools
and techniques available to execute projects efficiently and effectively. The program
does not guarantee adequate project management which is only intended
for increasing the project manager's effectiveness and efficiency.
2

The program includes a wide range of the project management methods. The
Microsoft Project is versatile and has effective tools which government institutions,
architects, and companies can use to handle their programs. The MS Project includes
wizard software that project managers need when preparing, organizing and
allocating the resources to various tasks. It also assists project managers with
calculating expenditures so that continuity is put aside for the proper amount of
money to finance the project development. The software frequently helps with
tracking progress at various stages of project development and reviewing all the
criteria required to develop product components (Bondarenko et al. 2018). The
modules of MS Project contain the modules such as plans, finance, project teams and
project work that allow project managers for setting the practical objectives
for being achieved by the development team and the users through the allocation of
resources and the preparation of work schedules. The MS Project allows the resource
management also for accomplishing the specific work and the stipulated time period.
Although the Microsoft Project was intended for allowing multiple users
for simultaneously creating similar project work and project files in partnership, it has
certain limitations connected with this. Training a number of users with
the various learning pace takes longer for knowing how to use the system than it
would take for training the single person.
3

GanttPRO is an integrated project management tool which utilizes the Gantt Chart
method for helping the users become more productive and efficient in handling their
tasks, from the conceptual model mode right through to execution and production.
The program is built on the accumulated years of professional experience and skills in
project management which culminates in such a seamless experience which
incorporates the important project management resources as well as full user-
friendliness. GanttPro is built to optimize workflows, improve teamwork and
connectivity, and execute tasks under accurate estimates. This makes monitoring the
project progress the breeze, which helps the project manager and team members to
easily share the Gantt charts with the team members and clients during
the meetings, analyses or any business plans (Ponsard et al. 2019). The simplest
Gantt Charts-based PM device out there is GanttPRO, which has a stunning and
elegant interface which is so easy for everyone to understand. When it applies to the
software functionalities and features, GanttPRO performs decently. This tool is
the complete and ready system offering a variety of functionality, from preparation
and simulation to project management, Kanban boards, as well as resource
management and many more. GanttPRO offers multiple numbers of free models to
use and get started fast.
4

GanttPRO provides project team with a robust and highly effective tool that allows
project management simpler than ever before, spurring the team to execute projects
on schedule, under the deadlines and to meet the expectations of the customers
effectively. This provides a very simple, user-friendly interface which allows the users
to get to know the software very well without going into the steep learning curves.
Visualisation is one of the key strengths in GanttPRO. In a matter of minutes, the
user can generate visualizations of the project plans, give the user a big picture of
the project and help the project team to plan the process on how to get things
accomplished (Morrison and Bryan 2019). The visualization function streamlines the
process, as the tasks are automatically scheduled. GanttPRO improves the existence
by eliminating the confusion and uncertainty from the table, which providing the user
or the project manager with an online tool to help the user organize and handle the
tasks whenever and wherever. The user can perform the functions like assigning
tasks, creating and dividing into groups, coordinating schedules, and so on as the
software is online based. Working with different teams also represents a breeze. The
tool GanttPRO allows the user to create various workspaces for various projects and
teams and for setting permissions for every member of the team. Automatically
generated scheduling with the simplicity of drag and drop accelerates things so the
user will not have to burden him with the recurring tasks.
5

Smartsheet is one of the online project management systems, which promises to be
the digital alternative to the traditional Microsoft Project management software.
Smartsheet emphasizes more on the project management teamwork elements while
traditional tools tend to concentrate more on plans and assignments (Tajedin and
Nevo 2014). Smartsheet utilizes the spreadsheets, or the project sheets as the
foundation, but the distinction between smartsheet and spreadsheet applications
such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel is that Smartsheet offers all types of shared
features. SmartSheet allows people the users or the teams to collaborate together on
initiatives, plan goals and vital directions, monitor activities, create warnings and use
gantt charts to easily show how different team leaders are delegated and converge.
6

Smartsheet offers a very comprehensive tool for collaboration between project
manager and teams from the companies. This tool has the ability
for showing timelines, remarks, dates and attachments all in one place makes it very
easy for projects for staying on track. Also this resource offers a great application and
smart device platform for working from anywhere anytime (Woodland et al. 2017).
The users can use the premium that is paid version to include all the things we need
and are no longer available in the trial version, including the option to communicate
directly from the pad, submit alerts, and use the notification function. Emailing
straight from the project report is the great feature since it helps the user to send in
easy to read email all the messages, attachments and data from the section. The
users or the project team can also cc on the document and the users realize it's been
submitted. One aspect that could be modified in the tool Smartsheet is the
opportunity to transfer data from one report to create a new report. One of the
biggest drawbacks of this program is that the quality of the infrastructure is
continuously facing errors and faults. Moreover, if it is compared with other tools
which offer the same characteristics, this tool costs a bit high.
7

TeamGantt is one of the free online project preparation software, which lets
the users conveniently and clearly controls their tasks. The Gantt chart of
the software based on the Cloud with drag-and-drop functionality that even the non-
project managers will want to use. TeamGantt has multiple plans to offer. This
tool has the best free program for small projects, ever. This requires up to 3
individuals, as well as 1 project. Paid plans include unlimited resources and unlimited
projects. The users will cooperate on initiatives by recruiting colleagues, teammates
and project manager, and have all assignments, reports, conversations and team
availability all in single place (Brouwer et al. 2018). It has resource management that
is built-in; therefore the project manager can see what each member of the team is
working on. Days are over where modified project files need to be submitted
constantly via email. TeamGantt is ideal for any community, business or organization
that uses a Gantt chart for scheduling any project and tracking its success. It is
particularly suited for organizations working around the project plan, which is
continually being changed and most of the time having to be recognizable and
available.
8

TeamGantt helps the project manager to plan the project utilizing the Gantt system.
This tool is great of doing tasks and subtasks at any organization and this is ideal for
the team leader who tends to use the Gantt chart. There are multiple techniques to
build the gantt charts that have been integrated with TeamGantt (Tan et al. 2018).
This tool helps the team to organize the activities by grouping the tasks and the
subtasks. The tool is very easy to use and the user can see the overview of the
multiple activities and the progress of them. With this tool, the user can break down
the activities with the set deadline and the user will be able to create the better
forecast of the timeframe, which is required for the completion of the project. The
project manager will be able to monitor who is working on which task. There are
multiple great features such as the user can share the gantt charts without logging in
the software and the chat system of the software helps the project team to
communicate with the other team members. There are multiple sophisticated
collaborations and integrations, which are available for meeting the individual
preferences.
9

Celoxis is one of the online tools to manage the project, resources, finances, project
portfolios and other process of business. This is the collaborative, integrated and
comprehensive tool with sophisticated features, which enables the users for
managing the projects of the functions and the organization (Oliveira, Tereso and
Machado 2014). The recent version of the tool comes with the approvals of multi-
level timesheet, reporting manager and so many advance features. This has the
option of flexible deployment, which helps the users in the portfolio management
and project management. This is an online software of project management that has
multiple features and helps the users for managing the stages or the phases in the
project lifecycle. This has the interactive Gantt chart that is capable to manage
various projects by connecting them with inter-project dependencies (Tyson et al.
2015). This tool has the customizable and integrated issue and bug monitoring system
with the user-defined client fields. This tool works with the third-party applications
and collaboration ready and has advance security settings. The user of this tool can
create the custom application for monitoring and managing the element of the task.
This integrates with the Google Drive, Salesforce.com, MS Project, email, Quick Books
Online and more. This tool supports many languages and this tool has help guides like
web-based training and online documentation and guides of self-service.
10

Celoxis benefits the organization in multiple ways. In the software, all contacts of the
team members can be listed in the single place in order to make it easy for the team
members to reach to the other team members for any help about the project (Silva et
al. 2018). The users will be able to schedule all the tasks according to given deadline.
After completing any project, the users can get detail report on the task and then
they will be able to share the report with their client. By the online access to the
software, the users can delegate the tasks to any team members of the project and
can direct the team members into the tasks. The other vital benefit of this tool is that
the users can determine the team member’s performance in every project and the
tool can estimate this. The users can redirect or modify any previous project, as this
tool is very flexible. This is possible in preparing the budget of the project so that
project resource can be utilized properly. There are also issues with the UI/UX of this
tool that UI/OX has little learning curve and requires proper process for using the
areas effectively. There are some legacy features in the tool, which makes the
functionality of the tool redundant.
11

12

13