(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?
(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.
Hi all,
I am currently working in a really fast growing team and our project manager is starting to struggle through it. In a couple of months our team has almost doubled, she can't keep on using Excel to manage all of our tasks and keep us all on track. I feel really bad for her so I'm looking for some software for her to help her out.
We are a vendor mostly dealing with translation and proofreading. Multiple clients send us multiple projects with pretty strict deadlines that have to completed, checked and peer reviewed a few times before being sent off. It needs to be internally hosted on our servers since a lot of the documents we deal with have confidential client information. However if possible being able to link it up to an external internet portal in the future for remote work would be useful, but not 100% necessary. Reporting progress and work schedules would be useful too, especially for reporting progress through a big document at the end of the day so that the PM can keep track of where people are at on a document, and whether they are on track for the deadline.
At the moment we're thinking about SharePoint and Project Server, but any other recommendations would be fantastic. Thanks everyone.
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Hi, Samuel. One more thing: Spider Project computes critical path drag, the most important metric in critical path analysis. Asta Powerproject has also apparently announced that their new version computes drag.
As far as I know, no other commercial s/w package computes critical path drag.
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Thanks a lot Vladimir!
Spider Project looks like a pretty good option and we're seriously considering with Project Server.
I expect that there are many tools that fit to your requirements.
I see your problem as portfolio management task.
One of potential solutions is to use Spider Project Professional that can manage projects and portfolios of any size and complexity.
In your concrete case you may need skill scheduling and I don't know other software that has this functionality.
You shall create the lists of resources that have certain required skills (translators from certain language, proof readers, reviewers, etc.). Resources belonging to the same skill may have different productivity (one translates 10 pages per day, another one 7 pages per day, etc.). Then you may assign resource skills to the tasks of the new projects. Each task has certain volume of work that may be measured in pages and type (language and area). The software will automatically assign resources basing on their availability, productivity and cost and taking into account your manually entered priorities.
To automate the work I suggest to create the databases (reference-books) of your resources, skills, resource productivity on different work types. If such databases will be created then entering activity (task) type you can automate everything else - what skill is required, what productivity will have assigned resources.
You will schedule the whole portfolio to get the planned dates of individual projects and resource plans.
You can also enter existing uncertainty, simulate risks and get reports on probabilities to meet set targets.
Let me know if this is the functionality you are looking for.
Regards,
Vladimir
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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