Project Tools

The method I am describing is available today. There is a cost, of course, for access to the tools, but that cost is already funded within your existing project. How? Two simple concepts: (1) SaaS (software as a service) and (2) cost avoidance, allowing for shifting of funds from one purpose to another. Software as a service is just a fancy name for buying access to an outside (web based) software service for a fee. Think of this like renting access to a dedicated website that runs your project management application. There are several major benefits in using this strategy: Availability is immediate, rather than months of planning, hardware and software acquisition, integration, testing, rollout, etc. This allows impact, or benefit to be immediate. Also, rather than incurring all costs up front, this is a pay as you go approach, so, with an associated cost savings, the two costs offset each other. In our experience this is always the case, so, the service is already funded within the project. Just allocate some of the saved labor costs to the SaaS fee, and you’re up and running, live, and funded, within the project. Where is the labor savings? Simple: All meetings for progress reporting are completely eliminated. Meetings are still required, of course, but they take on a whole new tone. Meetings are now for conflict resolution, not for progress reporting. Progress reporting is now fully automated, to a live, quantified level with greater accuracy than was ever possible, at a lower net project cost. Expect to save one hour per week from each resource assigned, and as much as 25% of each project manager’s time on a weekly basis. These numbers are conservative and consistent across our previous experience.