In a continuing effort to provide you with relevant information about the legal
ID: 3840722 • Letter: I
Question
In a continuing effort to provide you with relevant information about the legal field Virginia College provides you with virtual guest speakers or field trips in your online classroom. The presentation in this course is on project management software tools. Enjoy the video and complete the research assignment below. Project Management Software Tools https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z75rrjDO3cM James Marion is the Program Chair and Assistant Professor in the Master of Science in Engineering Management Program in the Department of Management Sciences for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide. He has been teaching since 2009 for Embry-Riddle in the Master of Science in Project Management Program, and became Chair of the MS in Engineering Management Program in 2013. After completing this week's required reading and viewing the PowerPoint slides, complete the research assignment. Project scheduling software gives project managers and key stakeholders a visual tool to see project schedules. This makes it easier on the project manager to break down large complex projects into manageable tasks. For this research assignment, do an internet search for “project scheduling software.” Find at least three different applications and complete the following tasks: • Summarize each tool and provide the link. • State the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. • Assess usability • State which tool you would choose to use and give your rationale. • How would this tool help you as a project manager?
Explanation / Answer
ANSWER:
Project scheduling software’s:
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Project is relatively easier to learn. This program will integrate with other Microsoft office tools like Excel, Word, Office OneNote, and PowerPoint which will help in keeping track of all the aspects of a project.
The standard version of the tool will cost approximately 600$ which comes with a tight budget. So, here you have the flexibility of using the cloud edition that runs about $25 per month. Microsoft Project is integrated with all Microsoft subsidiaries which allows you to track different variables and produce Gantt charts as well.
Weakness of Microsoft Projects lies in storing all information in one place which leads to concerns about the program crashing and losing everything.
In spite of this concern, Microsoft project is one of the widely used scheduling software. This piece of software allows you to club all other programs of the Microsoft suite.
Zoho Project
Zoho is a web based application. This means you need not install it on each computer. Zoho has a vast variety of features, it allows you to have many Gantt chart options also allowing users to set tasks and milestones.
Zoho has a timesheet for recording the time hours of the resources and a detailed reporting feature. It has many inbuilt template for those who do not want to have their own template.
Zoho is free for one project but you can upgrade to 20 projects on a cost of 20$ per user per month. Zoho has a limited storage of 10MB for free users and a large storage capacity for all of its paid users.
Zoho projects are good where number of users and number of projects is a constraint.
Freedcamp
This is also a web based project management tool. Freedcamp will offer you unlimited users for unlimited projects with unlimited storage. The user interface is good and attractive. Innumerable inbuilt functions comes with the tool. Best optimized for communications and keeping a track of the tasks.
Freedcamp is free for 1 project per user beyond which you will need a paid subscription. Administrators can limit different users’ permissions right down to the client level. Freedcamp also offers time tracking, templates, and invoicing.
The only con in this software is features like Gantt Chart, task dependencies and recurring task are not available.
I will prefer using Microsoft Projects. As we know all our project management work has a great involvement of Microsoft office tools and the ease of integration of Microsoft office suite with Microsoft Projects will make my work of project management easy.
Task Scheduling will involve various templates and presentation, with a large documentation work including reporting and customer sign off and all these documents for my work are made using Microsoft suite.