This was in my draft for quite some time and finally released today.
In the early morning today, i was thinking of day to day situation where as a PM, i need to know what my team members are working on today and how much of that is already completed.
I will be using this information in the regular status meeting with the customer, so that when the action items coming out during that meeting i can easily visualize when can it be accommodated considering the current work load. The customer also will be able to see exactly what the team is working and which resource is doing what. This will be particularly good when the whole team executes the project in the customer site which we did for one of the migration project recently ( more will come soon on that)
Eventually, one would come to know what are the activities we did for the complete project and who are the people worked on those. And this data will be really helpful when we bid for the next project.
MS-Project would probably help me out if the information is required only for me and of course with the help of Project server, i would be able to share this information with others. But i am not sure how complicated would that be. And i doubt they have something like a local replica which i can carry across to my meetings all the time. Even in this era of connectivity all the time, there are definitely still places where a local replica is going to help you a lot.
In those situations, IBM Lotus Notes will help address the needs. You can build a functional application in few days time using the Lotus Domino Designer which is free.
There are some very good products that are already available in Lotus Notes and Domino platform. For eg: Genius4Domino is a very good product for project management tool for a project group available as both Lotus Notes client and Domino web based application.
why do you actually require a tool for this?
ReplyDeleteYou must have estimates in MS Excel. Keep track of the variance in efforts. That would help you not just with estimates, but also tells you the variance.
MS Excel and macros would be more than enough for this, unless you are in search of a problem for the solution you have!
If i just need to numbers, then i would need just Excel.. nope, Symphony can do too. but the point here is even if it is just no's how can my team go and edit the actual effort? for which sharepoint server is required..Grrr.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing is am not only interested in knowing the numbers but also all the activities that went in completing the project and who has worked what etc? so that eventually this would serve as my knowledge base for my future project bids.
I have built a system in Lotus Notes which integrates MS Projet, Time management system and Work Tracker system. PMs create plan and the task go into the work tracker and Time is recorded against the work in TMS. Everything is synched.
ReplyDeleteGood to know that.
ReplyDeleteBTW by any chance are you Ravi Kodali and worked in SG :)