How to choose an IT Project Management software?
IT project management, like every other discipline in modern business, is heavily dependent on technology and data to be effective. Unlike other disciplines, however, technology has not had a significant impact on how project-management processes are performed. The same activities that were once done manually are now supported by software to improve efficiency.
What is an IT project management software?
IT project management software is a tool IT teams use to keep assignments on track, meet deadlines and remain on budget. These platforms allow company leaders to assign roles, set deadlines, and mark major milestones. With IT project management software, your IT team can access a central portal to obtain all the information they need and check the status of each project. It works as a virtual workspace that helps keep the team members focused on larger goals while effectively putting off everyday fires in your IT estate.
What are the key IT project management software features?
Some of the most common project-management activities, that software support, include: requirements management, scheduling, tracking status, managing risks, processing change requests, tracking testing activities, and monitoring conformance. A quick scan of this list reveals technology and automation can support both data management and workflow-related activities. Further zooming in on the list reveals that the nature of many of these activities is like those encountered in the IT Service Management (ITSM) space (continuous operations). This similarity has led many companies to leverage the same capabilities to support both IT project management and IT operations.
Here are the top features to look for in your IT project management software:
- Collaboration: IT project management software has tools to enable strong collaboration and communication among employees. This avoids a lot of back and forth conversations and provides complete context.
- Scheduling and deadline management: At a glance, a project manager can use the dashboard to assess the work assigned to a team member and properly incorporate new tasks into their daily schedule without overloading them or distracting them from other tasks.
- Dashboard: Each employee’s dashboard provides a complete view of all assigned tasks, their due dates, ongoing projects, and their progress/completion status.
- Role/Ownership assignment: You can add a team member to each task so that everyone knows who is responsible for each portion of the project. In addition, you can also add project owners.
Here are a few key aspects worth paying attention to, while choosing your IT project management software.
Scaled to project needs
There is a wide range of sophistication in IT project management software, from simple spreadsheets to complex project and portfolio management systems. IT project management software should be scaled appropriately to the needs of the project.
Beware of unnecessary overhead
Project management software should provide the needed capabilities in the most efficient way possible. The best way to avoid overhead is to focus on how the data you capture is being consumed – if you can’t show how data will be used, then you may not need to collect it. The same applies to workflow activities.
Easy-to-use software promotes adoption
People will naturally try and do their jobs in the easiest way possible. Since most project-management activities can be done manually, software must be simple and effective and achieve the specific results the user is seeking.
One key area where IT project management software adds significant value to the overall company is in brokering the interactions between project teams and operations functions. These aren’t often recognized because they are interfaces between project management and operations and neither one owns them. There are 2 key interfaces on which project management best practices suggest teams focus:
The transition from project to operations
A project, by definition, is a temporary endeavor. When the project ends, all the project-related artifacts, deliverables, knowledge, and final products must be transitioned to the functions in the organization that will support and operate them. While it is common to transfer release notes, source code, and open issues lists, these “hand-off artifacts” often lack an explanation of why certain project decisions were made. Project planning, risk management, change control, and testing documentation can be valuable resources to help support systems and make future changes in a safe and effective manner.
Feedback/input from operations functions
Project teams delivering multiple releases need an effective method to capture feedback from operations functions, including user feedback, performance statistics, operational defects, and stability issues. Most of this information is stored in the company’s ITSM system. Problem-management workflows should be integrated with project-management processes, such as defect management and change management – providing project teams with a view of the insights gained through operations.
Integrating project management and ITSM
Project teams are tasked with delivering changes to the products, services, and processes of an organization with the goal of creating some sort of value. That value is often not realized (at least not fully) until after the project has concluded and the outcomes of the project have been embedded in continuous operations. Think of this as an up-front investment for benefits realized during an extended period. This is important because project teams must be keenly aware of the long-term impacts of short-term decisions.
As project teams make decisions about scope, quality, timelines, and project costs, they must consider the impacts of those decisions on the active operations of the company. The outputs of every project have an expected, useful lifespan. During that time, costs will be incurred (operations, cost of goods sold, maintenance costs, etc.) and value will be realized (staff productivity, business insights, revenue opportunities, etc.). As project teams forecast the ROI of their projects, they must consider the lifetime impacts.
Final thoughts
Best practices suggest IT project management be viewed as an IT Service Management discipline, directly contributing to the active operations of the company. ITSM methodologies (such as ITIL) depict service management as a continuous cycle of change impacting operations. Project teams are important for enabling both the creation of new services and continuous service improvement.
Project deliverables should be designed and optimized to maximize operational value and minimize operational costs. When defining the minimum viable product (MVP), project teams should consider the end-user experience and operational impacts, not just the stated objectives of the project charter. The project team can fulfill every project requirement, but if the product is not usable, the organization will not realize the intended value.
Project teams should be wary of defects found during testing, accepted by the project team, and left unresolved at the time of project closure. These accepted defects don’t disappear when the project is delivered – they become support issues that impact operational costs and organizational value. Project delivery (go-live) isn’t the finish line, it is the starting line of a new and enhanced set of capabilities delivered to the organization.
