The essential elements of project management softwares should be considered before purchasing the software. There are some elements discussed below
1. What You Require and What Is Offered: There are different kind and ranges of softwares from low-end, mid-range and high-end according to the project. As by the names low-end project management softwares are good for smaller groups with limited needs as the product has limited functionality. The mid-range project management softwares offer more robust features at a normal price range. The high-end project management softwares are designed for large group or rather large organizations which have a worldwide collaboration. These solutions are heavy in pre-project planning features such as strategy planning, initiative alignment, risk analysis and opportunity analysis.
So the first task is to know what is the range of your project and then to look for the rightful range of project management software.
2. Scheduling by Project Management Software: one of the essential features that should be present in the project management software should be the scheduling, and this is present in mostly low-end and mid-range. Not all of the software comes with this feature. It is very important as it properly schedules all the data, the other related projects and calculates all the information provided to it by the managers. It works like this that if it is provided with a starting date, the time span and the amount of work the software will itself calculate and schedule the work and finish it within time- this is intelligent scheduling.
3. Microsoft project Import & Export: to look for the software that contains all the features of the Microsoft Project especially the import and export, is it with the project or a separate installation for it. This has to be considered before purchasing the software that whether the software imports all Microsoft Project task types, constraints, and dependencies? Many project management solutions cannot recognize nor import these relationships, again taking away any administrative advantages.
4. Separate One Group of People from Other: The software should have the feature of separating one group of people from another like if you plan of using your project management software with outside vendors, contractors, clients, or individuals from different departments, you will most likely require multi-role and multi-level permissions set up. Multi-role means assignation of various roles like team member, project manager, project report viewer, timesheet approver, expense report approver, invoice manager, and systems administrator. It helps in viewing specific projects and separate projects accordingly.
5. Support All Four Relationships: the basic task of the project management software is to complete the project within time span and here comes its four basic relationships; Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start, Finish-to-Finish and Start-to-Finish. Before purchasing any project management software solution, always test the software to make certain that it can calculate interdependencies on the following commonly encountered task relationships.