The Project Management Puzzle

March 1999

If you're underestimating the money, time, or resources your projects

need, project management tools can help. But how do you find a tool
that fits your particular company, team, and project?
by Constance Fabian-Isaacs and Ed Robinson
Software development projects are notorious for running over budget and behind schedule.
The Center for Project Management in San Ramon, Calif. reports that 99% of commercial
software products are not completed on time, within budget, or according to specifications,
and that the average project is underestimated by 285%. With statistics like these, its no
wonder software project managers are looking for ways to improve their processes.
One option many project managers are turning to is project management software. Is another
software tool the answer for you? Its worth serious consideration. When you start
investigating tools, youll find that your options are nearly endless.
Can a Tool Help Make the Pieces Fit?
With all the pieces a project manager must keep sorted at any given time, its not surprising
that you might consider a piece of software to be the answer. Before you jump on the project
management tool bandwagon, however, there are several things to think about. The primary
consideration: are you buying an ox to pull a little red wagon, or conversely, are you buying a
puppy to pull a semi? Either situation will thwart your efforts as a project manager. Whether or
not you need a tool depends on:
The magnitude and complexity of the projects you have to manage
The number of resources involved
The time frame of the project and the degree to which the processes are documented
The complexity and diversity of interdepartmental interfaces and budgets involved
The project managers experience with project management software tools.
Other considerations are task status, cost reporting, and other forms of communication
required by the organizations various segments.
What Kinds of Project Management Tools Are There?
There is no shortage of project management tools. One trip to the World Wide Web will show
you that. The most common categories of project management tools are project planning and
estimation tools, project tracking and communication tools, risk management tools, and
quality management tools. Some project management tool suites, such as ABTs Results
Management Suite, Platinums ADvantage, and Eagle Rays ER Project 1000, offer a complete
package of tools to help project leads manage one or more projects. You can purchase many
of these tools as individual modules and integrate them with various project management
tools, such as Microsoft Project. Before you begin investigating project management tools,
however, be sure to visit the Project Management Institutes web site at www.pmi.org. Its

Project Management Software Survey lists 200 software tools with information on their
features and capacities. Heres an overview of the major tool categories and typical features
youll find in most new project management tools.
Planning, Scheduling, and Reporting. If youre considering implementing project
management software, you should start prior to developing your project plan. If you dont,
youll always be playing catch up. But there are tools that make the daunting task of creating
a project plan a lot easierand help you create better plans from the get-go. Most planning
tools help automate the tasks required for an effective project plan by helping you:
Define project goals, size, and scope
Establish tasks and processes
Identify resources (people and tools)
Estimate deadlines and deliverables
Set the budget.
Most project planning tools feature wizards that take you step-by-step as you create your plan
and use repositories or knowledge bases to help you establish your estimates. These
knowledge bases, which feature data from hundreds or thousands of development projects,
help project managers establish sound estimates based on similar projects.
If youre not a metrics whiz, dont worry. Many of the tools offer estimating options to fit
managers varied expertise with metrics and estimation methods. For example, Knowledge
Plan from Software Productivity Research (a subsidiary of Artemis) offers three sizing
methodologies: Sizing by Analogy, Sizing by Component, and Sizing by Metrics. Sizing by
Analogy lets project managers determine estimates based on other similar projects. Sizing by
Component helps project managers determine size by counting the number of software
components in the design, and Sizing by Metrics helps managers estimate using function
points or lines of code metrics.
Marotz Inc.s Cost Xpert uses a variety of estimation tools to help project managers estimate
cost, deliverables, schedule, maintenance, requirements, tasks, and support requirements.
The repositories offered by Platinum Process Continuum and ABT Corp.s Results Management
Suite let corporations capture project knowledge and leverage expenditures across a large
project base. Each project leader can add to the repositories as his or her project progresses.
Both repositories come with the processes and best practices of leading consultants and
corporations. You can customize these processes and save them for future use.
Quality Management. Project management is the cornerstone to any quality program. By
defining and continuously improving your processes, the integrity of your product improves.
Some project management suites integrate process improvement methodologies, like the
Capability Maturity Model (CMM) or ISO standardsor they let you integrate your own
processes. These repositories can be a healthy resource for lessons learned and practicable
processes. Platinums Process Continuum, part of Platinums ADvantage package, integrates
various best practices into an online-help-style feature, so your team can follow and develop
the practices that youve established for process improvement.
Risk Management. One of the most daunting tasks a project manager faces is identifying
what can go wrong and how it will impact the project if it does go wrong. Every project
manager dreams of identifying risks and minimizing them in the planning stages. Some of the

leading planning tools feature what if analysis, so managers can estimate all kinds of
different scenarios (what if the deadline moves uphow many programmers will I need to add
to the project? How would adding six developers affect my cost, or the other projects Im
managing?) Products like Primaveras Monte Carlo can take a scenario, simulate the situation,
and provide a list of probabilities.
These tools, however helpful, are not for the faint of heart. They are complex and require high
levels of risk management expertise.
Project Tracking and Team Communication Tools. Project tracking and communication
tools automate the myriad day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month activities of
everyone on the project team. Most project tracking tools help you establish calendars,
prioritize activities, and, of course, track the teams progress using Gantt or Pert Charts, or
more elaborate graphs. Newer tools also help track resources to help you determine what
people, or tools, youll need for any given task, and when theyll be available.
Every project leader wants to keep everyone on the project up-to-date with whats going on.
Many of the project tracking tools newer versions let you publish project views and data to
internal web sites, so all team members, from newbie coders to the CEO, can follow the
project status. Some toolssuch as ABTs Publisher, Welcoms Spider, Computer Associatess
CA-SuperProject/Net, and Platinums Advisorlet you tailor the view to the users needs by
filtering out certain information and concentrating on information thats relevant to his or her
job. Mesa Systems Guilds Mesa/Vista helps teams collaborate by bringing together
information from the various tools used by team members, letting you access all of them via a
common web interface.
How to Evaluate Project Management Tools
Check to see if your organization has an enterprise-wide project management system in place.
If there isnt one, you will need to evaluate your options to determine if you need a project
management tool and which tool would be best for your organization. Project managers who
have successfully implemented and used project management tools are convinced that
choosing the right tool can make all the difference. To effectively evaluate your tool options,
you need to:
Lay out and understand your current process.
Prepare a written specification.
Design a benchmark.
Prepare the bid packages.
Conduct a team review.
Following are tips on processing each of the above items.
Layout. The evaluation process is like the design process. The first step is to be familiar with
your project and its needs. Lay out your project or lay out an example of the projects for
which you might be using the project management tool. You need to see the major pieces (the
work breakdown structure), make a detailed analysis of the data flow, know how the major
pieces need to flow between the modules, and familiarize yourself with the organizational
structure and responsibilities. The more you know about your projects and the demands of
your organization, the better equipped you will be to justify the tool expenditure and to use

the tool once you implement it. Many tool failures are not due to the tool, but due to the lack
of planning prior to its implementation.
Its tempting to go to the information technology department and ask them to evaluate a
system for you. The danger here is that your information technology department, while
eminently qualified to define the systems the tool will run on, wont be qualified to analyze
your projects and understand the reporting detail that you require. However, their input is
instrumental when it comes to identifying ways that the tools must integrate with existing
systems. All the systems that will talk to or require data from the project management system
should be well documented in your specification.
Specification. Prepare a written specification that outlines your requirements for each tool
module (such as the schedule and cost modules) in detail. You will need to know the capacity
and limitations of your current enterprise system, the operating system the tool will run on,
and the time frame for implementing it.
Your information technology department will be the most helpful in this area. You will need to
find out how your selection will impact and be supported by them, and youll need to find out
who will implement the modules and how much that will cost.
Describe each required module in terms of your input, processes or calculations, and output
requirements. The output requirements should address the format in which the output will be
received. Also, describe how the project management tool will interact with other tools already
in place, what kinds of interfaces will be required, and the capacity and form of data to be
transmitted. For example, is the actual man-hour data in your organization currently compiled
into an Access or Oracle database? Or will the output need to be transformed into an Excel or
Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet? You must specify what you want the system to do with the raw data
(sort, filter, and so on).
Think about the level of detail to be gathered and reported. It shouldnt be so trivial that its of
no value, nor should it be so complex that team members and others have difficulty
understanding it.
Another important consideration, if youre implementing an enterprise-wide system or if your
project spans multiple locations, is whether or not the system will run on multiple units and
how.
Next, you should specify the known user limitations. How many users will be using the
system? What are their current skill levels, and what training needs do you anticipate?
Once youve completed your specification, determine what to test the various product
candidates against. Then, design and develop your testing criteria and benchmarks.
Benchmark. Design a benchmark that represents the kinds of data you want to process.
Make sure that the benchmark is portable to other projects rather than applicable to only one.
That way you can leverage your costs across the project base, rather than dumping the entire
cost onto one project. Youll want to design your benchmark to work with a modular
implementation so you dont limit yourself to testing entire systems. You might want to
combine the best modules of a number of products.
Bid Packages. Put together a bid package tailored to each module. Each package should
include everything a vendor needs to prepare a competitive bid: layout, specs, benchmarks,
testing environment, and interface environment.
Team Review. You should conduct a team review of the entire evaluation package before the
bid packages are sent out. The team should include representatives from each organizational

element that the tool implementation will affectthose who will be supplying, processing, or
receiving data. The team should develop an acquisition strategy, examine all the pieces that
have been assembled, and decide the following:
Should we bid modules with different vendors, bid single vendor suites, or both?
Are the pieces compatible with the acquisition strategy or should they be combined or
modified?
Do the pieces presented satisfy the organizations requirements in a manner that is optimal
to the enterprise?
Should we pursue the acquisition strategy by seeking suppliers, running the benchmarks,
collecting costs, and assembling tool combinations?
Who is going to design and implement the interfaces between modules if we buy them as
separate units?
When should we initiate the selection process?
Finally, youve done your homework, selected the best tool, and all thats left is implementing
it. Implementation could be as simple as buying a single package off the shelf, installing it on
your local machine, and obtaining guidance from an experienced project manager. It could be
so complex that youll need an implementation team to assemble the modules, develop and
customize the interfaces, and train the project team. An implementation of this magnitude
could require the same level of project management as one of your projects.
If your projects are out of controlthat is, they are over budget and behind scheduleyou
could benefit from implementing a project management tool. Whether you choose a single tool
or a system of tools depends on the number and size of your projects. Its important to note
that installing a system of tools at the outset lets you pick the module features, control the
interfaces, and replace individual modules as newer, more efficient, and more flexible options
become available. In addition, you will likely have the control you need to continually execute
successful projects.