Project Management Tools – What’s Your Flavor?

"I love MS Project"

"I hate MS Project"

"Excel can do the job"

"We need a robust Enterprise PM tool"

These are common expressions echoed by the project management community and there still seems to be a lack of consensus around these tools.  Why is that so? 

To a large extent, project management remains a decentralized function.  Project managers grow up in different project organizations, and leverage different tools.  Oftentimes, the project manager has the freedom to decide on a tool(s) from the available options—and a "comfort factor" usually comes into play.  Although we see more organizations today implementing PMO's and Project Offices, these tend to be built around specific business groups and functions. 

Project management is both art and science.  The 'art' comes into play when determining for example, the level of detail required to manage a work plan.  For example, do I want to track activities that take a week, a day, an hour, etc.?  Then add in factors such as the project manager's capacity to build/maintain the plan, in addition to tool familiarity.  More sophisticated tools require added overhead and time commitment, so the project manager has to find the right balance required for their specific project. 

Starting at the top, Enterprise Project Management (EPM) tools are most sophisticated and allow different teams managing sub-components of a project to update a single 'master' plan.  And with everyone using the same platform, a more standardized project management process can be implemented.  The challenge is these EPM tools require more effort and cost to implement/maintain, and resistance to change can be high.  Standalone versions of tools such as MS Project provide a good mechanism to manage tasks/dependencies/resources, but still require upfront work to 'get the project plan in good order'.  The downside is the limited ability to tie in project sub-components when other Project Managers/teams are managing pieces of the work.  And, MS Project requires a solid understanding of its functions and capabilities.

Tools such as MS Excel and Word can be leveraged for more basic project tracking.  They are simpler to use and less onerous to maintain.  However, functionality such as task dependency and resource allocation tracking is limited.  And similar to MS Project, these tools are used 'standalone' so not conducive for 'master plan' tracking. 

In summary, there are lots of flavors for project management tools and there is no ‘right’ choice.  Some Project Managers prefer plain vanilla, while others prefer the banana split.   Your selection should ultimately depend on your requirements, but in the end you have nothing to lose…except your reputation!