Project Portfolio Management Archives

Working With Subprojects And Master Projects

Managing projects is not a trivial job. You need to have the necessary skills, experience and of course the right project management tools to help you. But when it comes to managing large projects things are becoming even more complicated.

Sometimes companies need to manage large projects that extend on several years and that require a huge amount of work to be completed. This kind of projects are too big to be handled as a whole and must be decomposed in several smaller parts. Each part is treated as a separate project with its own assigned project manager and its own budget and time constraints. However all these projects are related and are actually subprojects of a master project.

The idea is that the program manager is running multiple projects and all those projects are managed by other project managers. As a program manager, you need to see a consolidated schedule view to see how the program is doing. The master project should offer the structure of the subprojects and show the dependencies between the projects. Of course resources can be shared so that overallocations and overtime costs to be detected and correctly computed.
(more…)

By Lucian Ioan|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00March 2nd, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management|Comments Off

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.

(more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2011-08-04T13:25:42+00:00August 4th, 2011|Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management, Resource Management|1 Comment

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.
(more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:12+00:00February 25th, 2011|Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management|Comments Off

Project Management Server Solution From RationalPlan Is Officially Launched

Stand By Soft announces the official release of RationalPlan Project Server. The product is out of Beta and it is available for interested users on request. By the end of the year the server will also be offered for free to all users. Plus the new version adds useful features like online launch from browser for RationalPlan Multi Project, automatic version upgrade mechanism, more filters, updates for tasks, a short online tutorial and much more.

RationalPlan Project Server is a concurrent user project management software developed to improve the existing RationalPlan suite of project management products by adding a server module that gives project managers concurrent access to a central project data repository when creating plans, tracking progress, allocating resources, managing budgets or analyzing workload.

RationalPlan can be considered a Microsoft Project alternative with additional features like multiple projects management, shared resources and email integration.

Important changes added to this version:

Update tasks directly from browser
About information
Multi Project launch button on login page
Role column on users page
Online tutorial
Version update mechanism
Late task filter for assignments

With current version users get better feedback from the interface like about information, an online tutorial and the possibility to launch RationalPlan Multi Project directly from browser as a Java Webstart application. The about information lets users know different details about their server like the path to the database, version, to whom it is licensed and so on.

From this point the administrator will also be able to see the role of each user in the users table. This makes easier to manage users and licenses based on their roles. Also since it was implemented an automatic version update mechanism the process of upgrading the server is easier and the administrator has the possibility to download and install the new version without the need to contact RationalPlan team.

The resources now have the possibility to also filter the assignments using a late task filter. This will allow them to see all the tasks with completion date before current date that is all tasks that are late or behind the schedule. These assignments are rendered with red color to suggest the importance of these tasks. Another useful feature for resources is the ability to update the percentage completion of the assigned tasks. This way it is easier to keep the project evolution up to date since the project manager delegates the work of updating tasks completion to the corresponding 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 is designed as an affordable alternative to Microsoft Project with some extra-features like multiproject management and it is covering project management area from WBS construction, project planning and scheduling to critical path management, over allocated resources detection, progress tracking, cost estimation, etc. Gantt chart support as well as various time line reports are also provided. It offers you the most important capabilities of a good project management software while being able to operate on various platforms starting with Windows, Mac, Linux and all other Java enabled platforms.

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 management software that follows the general recommended guidelines from project management domain. MOOS Project viewer is a Microsoft 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

###

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:13+00:00October 13th, 2010|News, Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Review – RationalPlan Multi Project

We are continuing the series of reviews for our products. This time Preetam Kaushik from Bright Hub has written a RationalPlan Multi Project review. Here it goes:

“RationalPlan Multi Project, the powerful multi-project management software enables developing of project plans, allocating resources, monitoring project progress, managing budgets and analyzing workload of all inter-related projects with common resources and shared dependencies.

Overview

Rating

RationalPlan Multi Project (www.rationalplan.com) is well-conceived project management software that is principally geared for people who have to centrally manage projects. RationalPlan Multi Project, as the name indicates, is designed for simultaneously handling multiple projects that are interwoven with common resources and task dependencies.

RationalPlan – Project Module and Technical Compatibility

Rating

The key functions of RationalPlan Multi Project are to develop plans, assess work pressure, assign tasks, monitor budgetary limits, control finances and track project progress. In a nutshell, RationalPlan Multi Project is capable of scheduling, estimating, improving the overall efficiency of team members and comprehensively managing inter-related multiple projects untill completion.

Computer professionals acknowledge RationalPlan Project software as not only as an alternative to Microsoft Project but even more powerful as RationalPlan has quite a few extra-features; including the complex multi-project management. It must also be noted that RationalPlan can be operated on various platforms – Windows, Mac OS X, Linux as well as all other Java enabled platforms.
(more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:14+00:00July 29th, 2010|Microsoft Project, Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management, RationalPlan, Reviews|Comments Off