Managing Projects Using Project Baselines

Baselines in RationalPlan Project Management SoftwareA 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 |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 24th, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Tracking|1 Comment

RationalPlan Project Management Software Goes Viral Using Popular Social Networks

Social media networks for RatinalPlan Project Management SoftwareThe team behind RationalPlan Project Management Software recently revamped their website, offering a new modern look to their users. In addition to that, the social networking life caught form on the project management blog and through the help of the well known social platforms Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Project managers need more that just a project management solution to successfully manage their projects. They also need to have access to project management related articles and discussions on forums, blogs and social media. The experience and knowledge is gathered in time and this is a long process. However a faster solution is to obtain it from experienced and senior managers.

“We reached the conclusion that our users need more besides our RationalPlan products. They also need to learn how to use them, they need tools and techniques to be applied, they need a place where to chat and share opinions. And what better place to find all that than through our forums, blogs and social networking sites?” says Gabriel Toader, CEO of RationalPlan.

Users can stay up to date with the buzz around RationalPlan products by subscribing to feeds or can actively participate on the Project Management Facebook or Project Management Google Plus pages. Twitter fans were also not forgotten. (more…)

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 11th, 2012|News, Project Management Software, RationalPlan|Comments Off on RationalPlan Project Management Software Goes Viral Using Popular Social Networks

Project Management Terms – Critical Path

Critical Path is the sequence of activities for which the slightest delay will influence the end of the project. The critical path of a project may change in time according to the new changes of the project schedule. In a project there can be several critical paths. Tasks that compose the critical path are called critical tasks.

Critical tasks need a special attention as they are more likely to compromise the completion date. Sometimes the project manager needes to see those tasks that could delay the project finish if they are late with a certain amount of time, in other words the tasks with a slack smaller than a given value.

In RationalPlan Project Management Software the Critical Path can be displayed by pressing the corresponding button from the toolbar while in Gantt view.

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00August 20th, 2012|Project Management Glossary|1 Comment

Project management is a difficult but thankless job

Project Management - a difficult and thankless jobFor a thankless job the success is not that noticeable while the failure is very obvious and with strong impact. Applying this in project management it results that in the case of success there is little evidence that the manager had any merits while in case of failure the manager gets all the blame.

This is the conclusion that Ike Maboe also reached in a LinkedIn post on the Project Management Expert group. According to him “Project management is a thankless job, everybody wants the glory when the project succeeds and the project manager gets the blame when it fails!” And it is nothing more true than that.

But beside the fact that project management is a thankless job it is also a difficult job. Many problems need to be solved when managing projects and these are not easy ones. It all starts with a good project plan. The planning phase of the project is the most important one and if well done it will make life a lot easier for that lucky manager. At this stage arise questions like: are tasks correctly stated, are there enough resources for every task? Optimized planning is necessary for best results: for example how can we use limited resources most effectively? And this is not an easy job to do although using project management software with resource leveling capabilities helps a lot.

Things go further and can become even more complicated once the project is started. Managers need to control how the progress affects the plan and conclusions must be taken to avoid already encountered problems for the future.

Bottom line is that project management is a difficult job and as a project manager the “thank you” words for your efforts and hard work are kind of missing… But are there just not spoken or they do not exist at all? More than probably everyone from team members, clients, stakeholders etc. appreciate your work just that they do not say it, they forget to mention it. A simple “Thank you for keeping things on track!” would be just great. The strange thing is that they do not forget to blame you when the project fails or goes wrong.

That’s the life for a project manager!

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00July 20th, 2012|Project Management|2 Comments

RationalPlan 4.0 – A Brand New Design

The developers from Stand By Soft are pleased to announce the release of a major version for the project management suite RationalPlan. Version 4.0 comes with a new design, a modern look and a more pleasant color scheme for the eye.

This is a major turn around as the company decided to focus on three different areas or more exactly on three important needs for different types of project managers. These needs are covered by the main three products: Single, Multi and Server.

Although different, in the essence the entire suite has something in common. “Our moto – Manage your projects the easy way – defines in the best possible way what we want from this suite of project management products. Every manager needs to effectively handle his projects and there are many tools in the market for this. However what we want is to also offer the easiest and fastest way to achieve that.” says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft. And the main feature to sustain this idea is an embedded Project Guide that will get project managers through each step of the planning process.

“Your kick-start to manage projects” that is the purpose of the Single product. It was especially designed for the novice or accidental project managers and it is the right solution to choose when managing small projects or when the management experience is missing.

The Multi product is more a program management application. “Get your projects together!” explains the best what for it should be used. Those program managers that need to handle multiple inter-related projects and even with shared resources can find in this product a solid help to support their work.

There is nothing easier that to “Manage your projects in one place“. And that place is the Server product from RationalPlan. With this product all the company data like projects, resources, calendars etc. are in one single place. From here anything can be accessed by anyone and from anywhere. All it needs to be done is to create some user accounts and set the appropriate rights. (more…)

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00July 4th, 2012|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off on RationalPlan 4.0 – A Brand New Design

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.
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By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00March 2nd, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Portfolio Management|Comments Off on Working With Subprojects And Master Projects

Support For Working With Subprojects In RationalPlan Project Management Software

RationalPlan version 3.26 was just launched with support for working with subprojects. Besides this feature, useful for big projects, other changes were added like improved printing customization, other types of task scheduling and much more.

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.

Important changes added to this version:

  • possibility to work with subprojects
  • dependency driven duration type scheduling
  • customizable header and footer for printing
  • added date range for Task deadline filter
  • more data added to the web interface of the Server

Certain companies often need to manage large projects. This kind of projects however are to big to be handled as a whole and must be decomposed in several smaller parts. And each part is treated as a 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. This necessity is now covered by RationalPlan Multi and users will have the possibility to work with master projects and subprojects. Of course resources can be shared between project so that overallocations and overtime costs to be detected and correctly computed.

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By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00March 1st, 2012|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off on Support For Working With Subprojects In RationalPlan Project Management Software

Project Management – The Light On The Critical Path

The mysterious critical path notion seems to put project managers in difficulty and especially the novice ones. However if anyone would take just a few minutes from his precious time to pay a closer attention to it things would be a lot more clear.

The origin

In order to clear things up we need to have a background knowledge. On short it all started with the Critical Path Method (CPM) an algorithm for scheduling activities within a project. This method is best used within the project scheduling phase and basically it requires to construct a model of the project that includes:

  • the list of activities needed to complete the project (aka Work Breakdown Structure defined in the project planning phase)
  • the duration estimates for these activities
  • the dependencies between the tasks

Graphical representation


There are two possibilities to render the structure created according to CPM: activity on arrow and activity on node. The most used representation nowadays is the activity on node. The activities are rendered as nodes and each node contains the duration of that activity while the dependencies are rendered as arrows where the arrowhead points to the successor while the tail to the predecessor.

To some extent a Gantt chart can also be considered as a CPM presentation although a more complex one. (more…)

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00February 21st, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Tracking|2 Comments

Time Management In Project Management

Time management is the act of planning, controlling and finally executing specific activities, especially to increase efficiency or productivity. It applies to a wide usage area starting from personal time organization and up to business related time management. For the best results and the biggest efficiency dedicated time management software should be used.

A time management system is a combination of processes, tools, techniques, and methods. There are many books and case studies focusing on these notions.

Personal Time Management

The notion of time management was initially used in business related area but in time the term started to also be used for personal activities. People started to be interested on it when they felt the need to be more organized and more productive. It all happens when you start working all day long and at the end you wonder why you haven’t accomplished much.

Time management methodologies consist of a series of habits and good practices which help you to get more organized. The most used and well known time management methodologies are GTD and ZTD. Getting Things Done (GTD) was created by David Allen and it is based on the following principles:

  • do not use your memory to collect your ideas, tasks and arrangements
  • do not delay decisions on what to do next
  • if you can complete a certain task in less than 2 minutes, do it now

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By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00February 15th, 2012|Project Management Software, Time Management|Comments Off on Time Management In Project Management

RationalPlan Project Management Software Is Now Available In Spanish

RationalPlan version 3.25 was just released. The most important thing to be mentioned in the new version is the availability in Spanish language. Other features include the addition of a new resource type – cost resource, the possibility to sort clients and resources, better notification mechanisms, improved printing and much more.

RationalPlan is a project management software designed around the principle “easy to use” and can serve many types of users starting from novices, those that need an alternative to Microsoft Project, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access for multiple users. It has been developed to help project managers keep their projects on time and within budget.

Important changes added to this version:

  • availability in Spanish language
  • improved printing
  • added cost resources
  • added accrual notion for costs on resources and assignments
  • improved notification mechanism
  • improved behavior for different time zones
  • better handling of external tasks from MS Project

The developers from Stand By Soft would like to thank to all the people that have contributed to translating RationalPlan in Spanish with special thanks to Pablo Avegno, Project Manager at Ventalum Argentina.

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By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00December 12th, 2011|News, RationalPlan|Comments Off on RationalPlan Project Management Software Is Now Available In Spanish
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