In modern days’ time all things are changing fast, whether business, lifestyle,
approach or even thinking. And the change is happening so fast that it sometimes
becomes difficult to adopt and synchronize us with this fast moving world.
To overcome this lagging behind, we started use of technology as a helping
tool and now it has become a core part of our lives. Even though it creates stress,
demands fast responses and reflexes towards the situations, still we are not able
to detach ourselves from it. Software’s are also the part of the game of solving
puzzles, which I tried to study from the project management prospective and tried
to have opinions of project managers over their thinking and approach towards project.
The study was conducted with a small sample size using a methodology of questionnaire.
The objective of the research was to find out what matters most for the project
managers in terms of knowledge, skills, support, technology or other things and
how these can affect the project itself.
After getting results from the different project managers, we came to some of the
findings which I would like to share with you all.
Research was conducted on the parameters which have importance in the eyes of Project
Manager. These parameters are represented vertically on the scale of 1-5 and the
horizontal scale represents the questions. The answering was done in the manner
of lowest to highest; 1 means the lowest importance and 5 means the highest importance.
Figure 1. Marking Graph for Question
: What is most needed for Project Management
As our sample size is small it’s not rock solid for us to say that these results
are 100% correct but we can surely make some conclusions after analyzing the graph.
Finding No. 1. Project manager knowledge (Marked green) is given
the highest importance by 6 individuals, which makes 60% of the people consider
this as most important factor for project manager; this might include their technical
& managerial knowledge both.
Finding No.2. Good project plan (Marked blue) is given the second
highest importance by 4 Individuals who consider it as a most important factor and
through our research it becomes the second important in our list. This can be considered
as requirement.
Figure 2. Marking Graph for Question : Rate the Helpful Software Tools for Project
Manager
Finding No.3. Gantt Chart is least used or considered tool as compared
to more simple tools. This can be because of gap between project manger’s
knowledge about it and its benefits in real sense, or may be project managers find
it complicated as compared to the other tools or spreadsheets.
Finding No.4. Excel (Spreadsheet) is the most preferred way, or
we can say it’s not project management tool but it is a record making tool
which can be used in multiple ways and up to the greater extent. The reason for
liking the spreadsheet may be because there are no curves & graphs to learn,
no dependencies or restriction and most important, spreadsheet is usually available
on most of the machines.
Finding No.5. Project management software and small applications
are at par with each other and does not have any significant difference in their
preference of use. The use of both depends upon the personal choice of the user;
in which sense he wants to use it, online, mobile or standalone for PC.
Figure 3. Marking Graph for Question: Rate the Reasons for Failure of a Project
Finding No.6. This is the most important part of our study which
gives somewhat scattered results and does not form any definite pattern to analyze
the result. If Person 1 has strong importance of “Lack of project understanding”,
the second person gives it the least priority and what we get is scattered result.
Although this graph does not show any pattern but its randomness signifies that
each project manager has his own experience and he might miss few important factors
(which led to project failure) which in his opinion, are not the important part. But
altogether, we cannot say that there is any perfect reason for project failure or
there is any type of hierarchy (rating between 1 to 5) present to number the factors
of project failure.
Figure 4.
Marking Graph for Question : Most Needed Process for Planning a project
Finding No.7. According to graph, “Pre-Research”
(Marked in Blue) is considered most important, as usually, an unrealistic project
or projects which are based on some individual’s out-of-box idea are more
likely to fail without a pre-research; if they go-ahead with such kind of projects
and later realizes its complications, it becomes very difficult then to handle and
face the consequences.
Least priority is marked for “Execution Plan”; may be because we need
to do other three activities before actually planning how to execute, but I don’t
think it will be right to say that execution plan has the least priority. It is
just the nature of question otherwise all have their perfect importance at right
point of time during project management.
This is a small research based on small data, so accuracy is not guaranteed. You
are invited to share your thoughts and experiences with us over this research.
To judge whether a project management software can prove to be helpful for
you as a project manager, download Project Cafe, our project management software extensively designed
for providing help in successful prroject management.