Project Management software review, methods and books

Wake any project manager at the middle of the night and ask him to describe his profession in just 3 simple words; he would smile and whisper "cost, time, performance" and fall asleep again. Those are 3 main goals of any project (whether we build the dog hut at our yard or plan the construction of the new city airport) -the project should be finished in time, in the budget and of course meet the strict requirements or our customer that should approve the state of the art creation. So why project management methods and techniques are so widely adopted in every industry of the modern society? It was proved that any company that adopts the project management methods usually succeeds in achieving it's goals, management effectively allocates their teams to tasks, directs material resources in the timely manner through the project cycle.

There is variety of software, methods and techniques that is used in the project management, each company should use the most appropriate to it's corporate culture, business environment and goals. According to the cross industry researches the most important issue that any construction projects face is the issue of time and resources planning and deadlines.

Software.
We set up five criterias of evaluation for Project Management Software presented in today's market. Review based on those criterions helped us to decide which PM tool satisfies our requirements. We suppose written for us review can be useful for our visitors.

Methods.
Few words about methods in Project Management. Interesting results of more than 1000 companies research indicated that each industry has it's specific priorities in the "magic triangle" of project basics - cost, time and performance. Banking project managers define a project cost as a main priority, while R&D project leaders care mostly about performance of the developed product. Construction Project Manager is mostly interested in completing the building in the timeframe defines by the project owner usually any delays in the project completion results in heavy financial penalties.

Books.
Facets of Project Management are discussed by many authors in their books. The recent years have been rich in new, top quality Project Management books and publications. Here visitors can find a list of the newest PM books with a comprehensive overview.