Tiberiu Ghioca, Author at RationalPlan

About Tiberiu Ghioca

Tiberiu Ghioca, is a Product Manager at RationalPlan. He is responsible with the effective communication between customers, development team and marketing team.

How To Best Manage Resources In Project Management

The general features of a project management software include scheduling, costing, budgeting, controlling, management and communication. However an important function of any project management solution is resource management. This covers all types of resources including human, equipment, materials and costs.

Nowadays businesses can work efficiently only by managing resources. With materials and costs things are pretty easy: you buy a stock and it is yours. Human resource management is not the same. You can not just own a human resource, but need to retain one. With the help of a resource management software, project managers can make sure that the right human resources are working on the right tasks and following a real-time project timeline. This is achieved based on several factors like employee’s skills, experience, and availability.

Resource planning software – must have features

In today’s global economy, when projects are spread across multiple regions or even countries it only makes sense that the right resources should make up a project team, regardless of their physical location. Even more project managers need to have powerful project planning tools capable of managing multiple projects with shared resources. At any moment in time they need to view resource availability and utilization even across multiple projects.

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Who needs a task management software and when?

Many people find themselves at a certain point in their life looking for a task management software to help them refocus and keep their finger tips on what is important. Task management products organize, schedule and ensure that tasks get done on time. On short it can boost your productivity. By being better organized and more focused on what you have to do, you save time and reduce stress.

Good task and project management software was hard to find a few years ago when people were using Outlook. Nowadays productivity has become almost an obsession of geeks everywhere, so the increasing request for such tools generated a large base of good task and project management solutions. There are a lot of choices to help manage the tasks, ranging from standalone applications to web-based services.

What exactly are users looking for?

Most of them are actually looking for a personal organizer application to put some order in their busy and messy life. “In the beginning, I somehow managed to keep everything in my head. Then, as I began to take on more projects, I realized that I needed a task management system to keep me organized and focused.” says Deborah Woehr a freelance researcher and writer.

These personal organizers generally take the form of the so called “To Do List” applications where users create a list of tasks for which they set a start date, some deadlines and a priority – something very simple.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology

Most of the to-do-list applications these days adopt, to one degree or another, the GTD approach to task management according to the work-life management system by David Allen that provides concrete solutions for transforming overwhelm and uncertainty into an integrated system of stress free productivity. Apps vary as to how tightly or loosely bound to GTD they are.

The problem, though, with To Do lists and personal organizers is that are only good for your work. Task management or task tracking software is more than just a to-do list. In a business many of the tasks are collaborative and require multiple team members to fulfill several tasks in a single project. In this case you need an application where assignments could be made, all tasks could be tracked, and completed work could be archived. This is a true task management tool.

Users sometimes need to manage multiple projects and delegate work to resources, schedule tasks in time or even create plans. This is a further step to an upper level: project management or project planning software. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00July 22nd, 2011|Project Management Software|Comments Off

Project Management Software Alternative for Microsoft Project

One of the most used project planning software of all times is Microsoft Project with millions of users worldwide. The product is used mainly by companies to manage projects in almost any activity area. However the users base does not end here and the software package is also used for educational purposes or for personal use.

In the past there were very few project management tools hence a poor competition and for this reason the prices for such tools were high. In the last years the software market has grown rapidly such that at this moment there are hundreds of such products: some of them have just some basic functionality while others offer a full solution to manage projects. For this reason the prices have dropped significantly.

What to look for when searching for a Microsoft Project alternative

However many users still use Microsoft Project despite the high price. Why? Simple: Microsoft Project is still considered as the “de facto” standard in project management and many project plans are stored in its format. The biggest problem in migrating to another project scheduling software is the conversion of existing data to the new format. For this the new adopted product must be able to successfully read Microsoft Project files. Even more if it is needed a Microsoft Project integration then the new product must also be able to export data in MS Project Data Exchange format.

Another important factor in deciding what alternative to Microsoft Project to choose is the list of available features. It must supply some powerful tools like Gantt charts, scheduling mechanisms, resource management, cost management, etc. If it provides even additional features like running on multiple platforms, support for collaboration or even the possibility to handle multiple interdependent projects that is even better.

One major problem that users have with MS Project is the fact that they do not always need to modify projects. Many times they only need to view the projects or even less to see what they have to do. OK you might say that some printed reports will do the trick but this is somehow limited. Instead of using some static reports it would help a lot more to have a dynamic view over the projects: on short a Microsoft Project viewer.

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By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00July 11th, 2011|Microsoft Project, Project Management Software|Comments Off

RationalPlan Project Management Software 3.22 Is Available With Stronger Server Privacy Options

RationalPlan project management suite version 3.22 added support for custom roles and rights for its Project Server module and the possibility for users to work from different timezone locations world wide. More reporting capabilities, easier to use and more intuitive interface, improved Microsoft Project integration and many more useful features were added. All these also available in German and French language.

RationalPlan is a project management software that follows the general recommended guidelines from project management domain. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget. RationalPlan Project Server is a better solution for those companies that need a concurrent user project management system by adding a server module that gives project managers concurrent access to a central project data repository.

Important changes added to this version:

Added support for rights and permissions for users on RationalPlan Project Server
Possibility to create custom roles
Added the notion of TimeZone on server
Translated to German and French
Possibility to create task details reports
Render special working days in resource sheet
Added more filters to assignments page
Possibility to clear history on server side
Store graphical interface settings for resource sheets from all Gantt views
Allows users to select different positions for the labels on Gantt task bars
Possibility to move resources up and down in the list
Improved Microsoft Project integration
Possibility to fit horizontally to visible area on Gantt chart
Allow setting a fixed cost and accrual on phases

Some significant improvements regarding data privacy were added to RationalPlan Project Server. Business owners have now more powerful tools to keep their projects sensible data under control. “We decided to give our customers the possibility to create custom roles and rights and the ability to assign them for each created user. This is necessary to hide certain data like costs or other project details that should be kept private.” says Gabriel Toader, CEO of Stand By Soft. The list of rights usefulness expands further so that it can be used to also restrict access to certain functionality and features of the product. A resource or a stakeholder should always have less power over a software product than a project manager.

A sensible problem for companies that work over multiple locations is the timezone variable. Time related data like dates and working hours may be perceived differently by a user from Europe as compared with a user from Asia or America. This is why a solid project management tool should correctly manage time zone differences. Other improvements were also made to RationalPlan Project Server: the possibility to clear the history of changes, more filters for resources assignments and much more.

Current version also gets translated to German and French languages. “We would like to thank to all the users that helped us in translating RationalPlan products with special thanks to Mr. Jan Hefer from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft research organization.” says Gabriel Toader, Stand By Soft CEO.

When resources in a project work according to a special calendar it is very useful to see those special working days while controlling the worksheets. All these are possible now in RationalPlan. Special working days are displayed with a different color while in Resource Sheet. It is easy to select the corresponding resource by just clicking on those special days.

All charts but especially the Gantt chart have been redesigned to offer more flexibility in presenting and handling data. A very useful “fit to page” action was added that will help users to easily scale the charts such that to fit horizontally to the visible area. This is neded when a project is spread over a large period of time and you want to easily see an overall presentation of it without too much details. Another useful feature is the possibility to present task details near the task bars in customizable locations (left, right, center). With this feature it is possible to generate better looking reports and printouts.

Other features: task details reports were added, the Microsoft Project integration was improved with a better support for MS Project 2010 files and more changes were made regarding the input of project’s data, allowing more flexibility in managing projects and resources.

RationalPlan suite includes:

RationalPlan Single Project – project management software for single projects
RationalPlan Multi Project – project management software for multiple projects, projects that are interconnected through dependencies and share common resource
RationalPlan Project Viewer – free project management software viewer, the solution for anyone (from project stakeholders to team workers) to view projects details
RationalPlan Project Server – a centralized management of company’s projects while offering concurrent/controlled access for different users

RationalPlan Project Management Software is available at http://www.rationalplan.com. It can be download from https://www.rationalplan.com/download.php.

About Stand By Soft

Stand By Soft was founded in 1997 as a software company specialized in building desktop applications and components. RationalPlan is a project planning software that follows the general recommended guidelines from project management domain. MOOS Project viewer is aMicrosoft Project viewer that allows you to open, view in a dynamic way and print any Microsoft Project file.

Contact name: Lucian Ioan
Address: Aleea Parului, Nr.4A, Craiova, Dolj, 200346, Romania
Email: marketing@rationalplan.com
Phone: +40771610710

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By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00June 17th, 2011|News, Project Management Software, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Things To Check When Choosing A Work Management Software

There are certain things that a project management software must have in order to be sure you pick the best one available and to maximize your return of investment.

One of the key features that a project management software should have is the possibility to track the progress, for both the project manager supervisors and workers that participate in the project execution. This is related to creating tasks that can be easily and clearly quantified or on short to create deliverables – tasks that have measurable parameters.

Analyzing the workload is very important feature that a work management software must have. Managers must be sure that an optimal work force is assigned to various parts of a project and that no overallocation occurs. Assigning more work force than it is necessary to tasks would be a waste of resources. A good project planning software must have the workload analysis process in inter-dependency with the list of analysis features.

Estimating budget costs and managing budgets makes a great difference between a good profit and waste of investment. A project scheduling software without a detailed cash flow, at task level, can do more harm than help. Tracking project evolution, in each stage, with a good correlation between costs and progress is very important to be sure that the level of funding is adequate at any time.

Also do not forget to check if the selected work management software is capable of handling multiple projects, being able to track resource usage (workforce usage) over multiple projects. You don’t want to assign a worker to two projects at the same time. In the case that it still happens a resource leveling mechanism is always welcomed.

Avoid project management software that do not have a trial version. It is imperative to check all the aspects before deciding if that one is the management program that best suits your needs. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00June 14th, 2011|Project Management Software, Resource Management|Comments Off

MOOS Project Viewer 2.4 – A New Microsoft Project Viewer Version Available

Stand By Soft is pleased to announce the release of MOOS Project Viewer in French language. Besides this major change some other features were added like support for estimated task durations, more columns for tasks and support for MS Project 2007 .mpp files that were obtained by converting them from Microsoft Project 2010.

Here are the most important changes added to this version:

Added French translation
Added support for estimated task duration values
Added more columns for tasks including baselines
Support for 2010 to 2007 .mpp files conversion

MOOS Project Viewer is a cost saving solution for project stakeholders to view project details in a dynamic way and not just using static reports. By adding French language support the developers from Stand By Soft hope to better serve French users needs to view Microsoft Project files.

Estimated values for tasks duration is an important indicator regarding the status of the project. It helps project managers to easily see which tasks are still not a certain fact and which are well established. This is possible to be seen now with the current version of MOOS Project Viewer.

All tasks columns that are available in Microsoft Project 2010 are now also available in MOOS Project Viewer. This includes columns like baselines and all corresponding data (start date, finish date, duration, work, cost). This way users can see them not only on the Gantt chart but also in more detail on the table.

Certain problems where solved related to MS Project 2007 .mpp files that where generated by exporting them from Microsoft Project 2010. Companies that have purchased both version of Microsoft Project – 2007 and 2010 – and that are using just 2007 files for compatibility reasons will now be able to correctly view them.

MOOS Project Viewer allows you to open, view and print mpp files and it is running on any Java enabled platform including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

It is available at http://www.moosprojectviewer.com and can be downloaded from http://www.moosprojectviewer.com/download.php.

Stand By Soft develops software specialized for the project management area. Its main product RationalPlan is a project management software that follows the general recommended guidelines from project management domain. It has been developed to help small and middle sized companies to plan and manage their projects.

About Stand By Soft
Stand By Soft was founded in 1997 as a software company specialized in building desktop applications and components.
Contact name: Lucian Ioan
Address: Aleea Parului, Nr.4A, Craiova, Dolj, 200346, Romania
Email: marketing@rationalplan.com
Phone: +40727159969

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By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00May 13th, 2011|Microsoft Project, MOOS Project Viewer|Comments Off

Project Management Tools For Project Managers

A well done project management is one of the keys to a projects success. Pretty sure every one of us manages projects using some kind of tools. But the right project management tool does not replace the knowledge and experience of a project manager. It only helps him in the process of managing a project.

The value of project management

So why do certain projects succeed while other projects fail? Clearly, it is not about luck although that might also help, it is not about the tools that are being used to manage the projects and certainly it is not only a matter of budget and dedication. The most important factor is the project manager, its experience, training and skills but research shows that projects which are designed and planned with care have a much higher success rate. So through effective project planning software there are better chances to reach projects success.

Over time project management tools have evolved from the classic pencil and paper method to software spreadsheets and now to dedicated project management solutions. There are several types of project management software. It may be a desktop application, a web-based software or it can also be a hosted software solution that allows access from remote locations through Internet or Intranet.

Tools & Techniques

It is a good practice to follow certain techniques to obtain the best results when managing projects. Among them it is worth mentioning: critical path methodology, task analysis, gantt charts, actions planning and closing the loop. For each of these techniques there have been developed dedicated tools. Any chosen type of project management software should offer a set of these basic tools. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00April 19th, 2011|Project Management Software|Comments Off

When And Why Do You Need A Project Planning Software?

Project planning is a process used to establish how to complete a project within a certain time period, under a certain budget and with a set of resources. To accomplish all these a project plan must be created. It will help you to plan the steps of your project and it will save you money while getting the project done on time.

The project plan

The project plan reflects the current status of project’s activities and it is useful to monitor and control the project. Many people in the company are using it:

the project manager – to establish the resources activities and to communicate the status of the project to stakeholders;
the team members – to better understand the work they are doing;
the senior managers – to verify that the project’s cost and work are under control;
the stakeholders – to make sure that the project is on track and that their business is safe.

Why do you need a project planning software?

Creating a project plan is the first thing a manager should do when taking any kind of project. Often project managers (especially those without too much experience) ignore a project plan in favor of going on with the work. They fail to realize the real value of a project plan in saving time, money, resources etc. It is a known fact that a good project plan can make the difference between the success or failure of a project. A project planning software will help to create these project plans and will enable users to take the best strategic decisions regarding them and to reduce much of the uncertainty surrounding the execution of the project.

Today, project planning process is often enhanced with the use of software tools to develop the general plan and to keep all team members aware of the project’s progress. Project planning software makes it easier to create the work breakdown structure, estimate the work effort required for each task from the WBS, establish the most logical activities sequence during the project scheduling phase and easily define and identify those risks which may impact the progress of the project.

In more complex projects it is needed to compute the critical path of the project. This is the optimal path to project completion and using a project planning software you can easily identify it.

A project schedule is created by assigning resources to tasks and determining the working calendar necessary for each task. Having the right people in the right place at the right time is critical for resource allocation. Additional costs for overtime work can be reduced when using a software tool. Further more the overallocation problem is also solved through resource leveling – a process too complicated to be done without the help of a software, not to mention the automatic leveling. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00March 18th, 2011|Project Management Software|Comments Off

View .mpp Files Exactly As They Are In Microsoft Project

Version 2.3 of MOOS Project Viewer is able to display views as they were saved in MS Project. This way users will be able to see the tables as they appear in Microsoft Project. The same column order, width, and custom name will be used making it easier to watch to the projects’ data.

Even more the splits for the chart type views are displayed at the same positions. However these features are available only when reading from .mpp and .mpt files and not for other file formats. This happens because Microsoft Project saves these graphical settings only in these file type formats.

Besides these significant and useful features other improvements were added:

Better MS Project integration for tasks
Improved rendering for predecessors using dependency type and lag value
Added support for month and year units
Open large files in Mac versions
License registration possibility using a command line argument

MOOS Project Viewer is a Microsoft Project viewer that allows you to open, view in a dynamic way and print any Microsoft Project file. It is running on any Java enabled platform including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00March 16th, 2011|MOOS Project Viewer, News|Comments Off

What Is A Project Portfolio Management Software

Manage multiple projects with shared resources within your company

PPM, short for Project Portfolio Management, is a term used by project managers and project management organizations (or PMOs), to describe methods that enables corporate and business users to organize a set of projects into a single portfolio. Project portfolio management software refers to a software product that allows users, usually management or executives within a company, to easily organize and prioritize the projects. It will allow them to review the portfolio and will assist them in making key financial and business decisions for the projects.

A closer look

But project portfolio management is about more than managing multiple projects. Each portfolio of projects must be treated as a whole and needs to be evaluated by its business value and adherence to strategy. As each project must reach its goal and produce its final deliverable in the same way a portfolio should be designed to achieve a specific business objective or benefit. Bob Buttrick summarized it like this: “Directing the individual project correctly will ensure it is done right. Directing ‘all the projects’ successfully will ensure we are doing the right projects.”

A growing number of vendors offer project portfolio management software, which has dramatically simplified the process of building a portfolio. But the first step is for companies to prioritize their business strategies. Portfolios can then be assembled and assessed based on how they meet those strategic needs. Once companies determine the business priorities they want their projects to meet, they need to break down the portfolios. Teams are assigned to different business units, and each of those teams handles a separate portfolio.

Previously, projects were approved and then managed independently. They were evaluated as a whole at the executive level only when it came time to put together annual reports. Nowadays with the latest project management software solutions project managers can better handle the portfolio using executive dashboards and other such tools. Working at portfolio level is about working with summary or key data and as less details as possible. It is important to avoid information overload. The detail of each project should be kept at the project team level, managed by the individual project managers.

The recent trend toward improved resource tracking and leveling functionality in PM software is a great boon to the portfolio manager. Actually, without the possibility of knowing what each human resource in the pool of project personnel is capable of and when they will be available to work, you cannot say that you are managing a portfolio. You need such a work management software in order to keep your project’s work balanced and avoid supplementary costs introduced by overtime working rates.
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By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00February 25th, 2011|Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management|Comments Off

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