Project management is a process of organizing resources so that a project meets its goals, time line and budget. It is separate from other business activities and at the same time it incorporates all of them. Project management deals with three main factors: time, cost and performance. These factors also have many different components that are essential in a project like: planning and scheduling, developing, communicating, managing resources, monitoring progress, and all of these things require different tools of management.
Each project has its starting point which usually is the planning and scheduling phase, where you define your project goals. How well you plan them will have a huge impact on the end result of a project and, in order for a project to be successful, project goals need to be well defined. When goals are not clear, it is impossible for the team to meet them, so they need to be presented visually. Many projects focus on creating just a database of tasks, thus the end goal or plan may be difficult to grasp. Therefore, visualizing a project with an easy to understand tool is needed.
In order for a project to be completed successfully and on time, each task and phase of the project life cycle must constantly be tracked. Keeping track of every task, as well as the overall project, can be difficult without some kind of tool, especially if it’s a bigger project with many work items. What is more, tracked time of the project and tasks need to be presented in a form of charts or reports to have some benefit to the stakeholders and the team and so, yet another tool is needed. In addition to this, different project teams may need different reports and charts, which may require even more options to summarize tracked information.
Moreover, effective communication between team members is the foundation of a successful project, therefore, effective means and tools of conveying information are needed. As teams get bigger, or multiple projects are being worked on at the same time, certain barriers in communication can arise. Conveying information verbally or by documentation sometimes may not be enough, because tasks need be presented in such way that every team member should understand their purpose and in what project lifecycle stages these tasks are. Some teams may require to integrate information from other sources. Information may be passed back and forth between project leaders and team members regarding deliverables, changes in scope, and any other important issues regarding the project. It is also common for members to send important, and possibly sensitive, electronic documents to one another, including contracts, budgetary information, and detailed timelines. This means that a team may need to work with different programs or tools that may or may not be connected to one another.
Finally, project teams have to choose different project management softwares and techniques altogether, as every company is unique in some way. There is no software which would suit every company, as most of them try to provide customized solutions for a specific industry. This is why there are so many of them, not to mention that each software has its own tools, and because of this different variety, it may be difficult to choose the right software.
Eylean seeks to solve this problem by incorporating all tools that are needed in project management. This software targets distributed teams and suits any agile process. It contains all Kanban and Scrum features which can be applied to software development, manufacturing, construction, sales and marketing teams. Reports and time tracking are there as well, so you can focus on managing just those activities which create value without wasting time. Also, it can be integrated with Project, TFS, Outlook and Excel. Overall, Eylean seeks to increase productivity, transparency and efficiency in project management.
