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Clients And Access Rights to Project Management Software

Every project either small or big has its stakeholders. The way the communication between them is done can keep relations on a happy note or can put some hurdle between them. The second situation might influence both the current project and the future ones in a negative way and should be avoided.

Examples of project stakeholders include the clients, the user group, the project manager, the development team, the testers etc. practically anyone who has an interest in the project within or outside an organization. It is obvious that either part has a well established procedure or process when it comes to managing a project. But are the processes from the two sides compatible and if yes at what degree? If everyone is working using the same project management methodology or the same software solution then all it is fine. The problems start if this is not the case…

What project management solution side to choose?

There are three possible solutions that can be chosen:

each part uses its own solution
everyone is using the clients solution
or everyone is using the management team’s solution

As early as possible in a new client relationship, the manager needs to ask his client how he usually works. This is a very important factor in deciding which project to undertake. It is necessary to know if the clients are comfortable with the system because many clients will expect the manager to work through their software. Bottom line is that an easy communication will also indicate an easier management over the project. (more…)

By Lucian Ioan|2022-11-18T10:20:09+00:00December 10th, 2012|Project Management Software|1 Comment

Black Friday Discounts For RationalPlan Project Management Software

The developers from RationalPlan will offer special discounts to their users on Black Friday. So on November 23 the discount will be 40% for all the products. Customers are invited to keep an eye on RationalPlan website as the offer is limited to 400 licenses.

Updates will be posted on RationalPlan’s social media networks. “Users are invited to follow us on our Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages for the latest news regarding our Black Friday promotion”, says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft. From time to time the status of the promotion will be updated so users will have an idea on how many licenses are still available.

Users can get RationalPlan for all major operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

RationalPlan is a project planning software suited to many types of users starting from novice or accidental project managers and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:09+00:00November 20th, 2012|Promotions, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Third Place For RationalPlan At 2012 Project Management Election

The project management provider RationalPlan obtained the third place at Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012. RationalPlan has been nominated as being one of the 55 contending project management software providers. These 55 nominees were chosen from a few hundreds of software solutions.

Providers were split into two:

The Traditionalists – those who identified a Traditional/Phased-Approach as the methodology that best fits their software
The Contemporaries – those who identified Agile or another methodology as the best fit (as well as those who indicated their solution is tailored to multiple methodologies)

The election started on October 9th and had four rounds, each round for a duration of one week. The candidate pool was narrowed down at the end of each one-week voting “round” based on which candidates had the most votes. Project managers could vote their preferred project management solution just once every day during the entire campaign.

After the first round we were classified as one of the first 10 players from The Traditionalists category so we were validated to enter the next round. The election continued with Round 2 where only the first 3 products from each category went to next round. Round 2 ended on October 22 when RationalPlan was chose as one of the six best project management software providers. Many were and few remained. After Round 3 which ended on October 29 only the best project management product from each category went to final round. RationalPlan was classified on third place.

“We received a great support and a lot of votes from our users that allowed us to obtain this place. The community was very active on social media like Twitter, Google Plus and especially on RationalPlan Facebook page. We thank all those that voted RationalPlan as their preferred project management software”, says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00November 9th, 2012|Awards, Contests, News, RationalPlan|1 Comment

Project Management Terms – Baseline

A baseline is a reference that is being used as a base for future measurement. In Project Management, the term baseline refers to an accepted and approved project plan. A project baseline is a must for a project manager to monitor and evaluate the success of a project. Without it there is no possibility to compare the current status of the project with the initial estimated one.

Once the project plan gets approved the manager should save it as a baseline plan. For a project there can be saved multiple baselines depending on the project size and how often the project plan changes. Ideally, once the project baseline is created it should not be changed anymore. However, it is sometimes inevitable to adjust it due to a new requirement that implies a major change to scope or cost. Also in rare cases the project was not well scheduled in the initial phase. In these cases the best solution is to keep the initial baseline and to save the adjusted schedule as a new baseline. This way there will be several interim baselines that can be used to remember the potentially bad project management or the team members that did not deliver as promised.

Types of project baselines

Since a project baseline includes many data from a project it is difficult to manage it as a whole and usually it is broken into several parts. This makes the complexity of baseline management easier to deal with. Project baselines generally include:

Scope baseline – the technical, physical and functional requirements for deliverable products
Schedule baseline – the project schedule and all of the elements supporting the schedule
Cost/Budget baseline – an approved budget usually in a time distribution format used to estimate, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project
Quality/Risk baseline – the set of known possible changes (uncertainties) that could impact the performance of the project (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 26th, 2012|Project Management Glossary|Comments Off

Top 6 for RationalPlan in the Race for the 2012 Project Management Election

Another week is gone and RationalPlan continues the competition for Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012 as one of the six best project management software providers.

Many were and few remained. In the previous round we were classified as one of the first 3 players from The Traditionalists category so we were validated to enter the third round. Thank you all for your support and votes! We hope that you will continue to vote us daily.

Now the election continues with Round 3 where only the best project management product from each category will go to final round. Round 3 ends on October 29 so give us a helping hand and vote RationalPlan as your preferred project management software. Voting is easy and fast and does not require anything from you except two mouse clicks: one for selecting RationalPlan in the The Traditionalists red column and the second one at the bottom of the page to Submit your vote:

Thank you and do not forget to vote RationalPlan for the Project Management Election 2012 every day!

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 23rd, 2012|Contests, RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan in Round 2 of the Race for the 2012 Project Management Election

Last week we announced that RationalPlan has been nominated for Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012 as being one of the 55 contending project management software providers. In the first round we were classified as one of the first 10 players from The Traditionalists category so we were validated to enter the second round. Thank you all that supported us and voted for RationalPlan!

Now the election continues with Round 2 where only the first 3 products from each category will go to next round. Round 3 ends on October 22 so give us a helping hand and vote RationalPlan as your preferred project management software. Voting is easy and fast and does not require anything from you except two mouse clicks: one for selecting RationalPlan in the The Traditionalists red column and the second one at the bottom of the page to Submit your vote:

Thank you and do not forget to vote RationalPlan for the Project Management Election 2012 every day!

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 17th, 2012|Contests, RationalPlan|Comments Off

RationalPlan 4.1 Is Ready For Project Managers To Control Their Projects

RationalPlan version 4.1 is out. In this release were added some new features requested by users while others were improved: a customizable subject can now be used when sending emails with assignments to resources, more fields were added when exporting to spreadsheets, improved reporting and a faster way to establish the project workflow and to create dependencies.

RationalPlan is a project management software created to serve many types of users starting from novice project managers, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget.

Changes in RationalPlan 4.1:

added notes to risks on Project Info report
added more fields when exporting to Excel
a faster way to establish the project workflow and to create dependencies
added customizable subject when sending emails with assignments to resources
use auto completion for clients combo box in Project Info view
bug fix related to importing projects to Server
bug fix for computing total actual/remaining costs in Timesheet table
bug fix – scroll to the start of the project on chart each time the current project changes (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 17th, 2012|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Creating Budget Or Cost Baseline For Projects

Cost Baseline in RationalPlan Project Management Software In Project Management, the term project baseline refers to an accepted and approved project plan. Besides the schedule baseline, the cost/budget baseline is the most important part of a project baseline. The cost baseline handles the amount of money the project is predicted to cost and on the other side when that money will be spent. It is an approved budget usually in a time distribution format used to estimate, monitor, and control the overall cost performance of the project.

In some cases there can be several intermediary baselines. This happens when either the project was not well planned or when significant changes appear to the scope of the project. However the initial baseline is usually what gets budgeted in the company’s financials. All types of baselines are closely related and changes to one of them will result in changes to the others. If a change is made in the project scope baseline, the schedule baseline gets adjusted. Hence the cost baseline will probably have to be changed as well.

How is cost baseline created

When it comes to computing the total cost of the project some estimates need to be done. Once the project schedule is ready and approved, a bottom-up procedure should be used. For each activity of the project it is estimated a detailed cost. This way a total cost for each major phase and for the entire project gets computed. These initial costs of all of the planned activities will become the initial estimated budget.

Cost Analysis

According to PMBOK the cost baseline is a “time-phased budget that is used as a basis against which to measure, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project”. But many factors can affect the cost performance of a project. The above estimated costs established during the planning phase might not be estimated that well. The true costs of certain tasks may not be well known at planning time. If a given price for materials, trainings or travel costs was taken into consideration at planning phase but at execution time these are increased there is an unforeseen additional cost. (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 10th, 2012|Project Management|Comments Off

RationalPlan in the Race for the 2012 Project Management Election

We are pleased to announce that RationalPlan has been nominated for Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012 as being one of the 55 contending project management software providers. These 55 nominees were chosen from a few hundreds of software solutions.

Providers are split into two:

The Traditionalists – those who identified a Traditional/Phased-Approach as the methodology that best fits their software
The Contemporaries – those who identified Agile or another methodology as the best fit (as well as those who indicated their solution is tailored to multiple methodologies)

The election will start on October 9th and will have four rounds, each round for a duration of one week. The candidate pool will be narrowed down at the end of each one-week voting “round” based on which candidates have the most votes. Project managers can vote their preferred project management solution just once every day. The election will end on November 6th when the winner will be announced.

So give us a helping hand and vote RationalPlan as your preferred project management software. Voting is easy and fast and does not require anything from you except two mouse clicks: one for selecting RationalPlan in the The Traditionalists red column and the second one at the bottom of the page to Submit your vote:

Thank you and do not forget to vote RationalPlan for the Project Management Election 2012 every day!

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:10+00:00October 5th, 2012|Contests, RationalPlan|Comments Off

Managing Projects Using Project Baselines

Baselines in RationalPlan Project Management Software A baseline as the name suggests is a line that is being used as a base for future measurement. It is a reference. In Project Management, the term baseline refers to an accepted and approved project plan. Usually known as project baseline, it is a must for a project manager that wish to monitor and evaluate the success of the project. Without it there is no possibility to compare the current status of the project with the initial estimated one.

Once established what the baseline is, the next important step is to store it for future use. If it is not stored, then it cannot be used to compare against it and it is meaningless. For a project there can be saved multiple baselines depending on the project size and how often the project plan changes.

To obtain the best efficiency a project manager should best use a project management software to create the detailed project plan. After it gets approved the manager should save it as a baseline project plan. During the project execution, comparisons can be done between the initial baseline estimates and the current status to compute variances. This comparison can be done either manually or automatically by software tools. Of course the second approach is preferred.

Types of project baselines

Since a project baseline includes many data from a project it is difficult to manage it as a whole and usually it is broken into several parts. This makes the complexity of baseline management easier to deal with. Project baselines generally include:

Scope baseline – the technical, physical and functional requirements for deliverable products
Schedule baseline – the project schedule and all of the elements supporting the schedule
Cost/Budget baseline – an approved budget usually in a time distribution format used to estimate, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project
Quality/Risk baseline – the set of known possible changes (uncertainties) that could impact the performance of the project (more…)

By Tiberiu Ghioca|2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 24th, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Tracking|1 Comment

Read our latest articles

What project management solution side to choose?

Types of project baselines

How is cost baseline created

Cost Analysis

Types of project baselines