Projects are a sequence of some planned activities which an organization undertakes for the attainment of some specific objectives. Accomplishment of a project will likely result in monetary, commercial, intellectual, organizational, social or other gains for the organization.
A project has to be researched and planned about before execution. In online project management important aspects like the team members, budgetary allocation, starting date, closing date, tasks, activities, responsibilities and duties have to be properly defined and documented. The sponsors, consumers and other stakeholders have to be determined and effective communication has to be maintained with them. Every minor detail which is going to play a significant part in a project’s execution is given due attention.
A project manager is appointed as the head of a project who is going to track, control and oversee the operations involved in a project. He is responsible for the conduct of the project and has to play an active role in coordinating and organizing men, resources and other processes involved in a project.
A project manager has to arrange meetings, read emails, inform members, review progress reports, meet and brief the sponsors and communicate with the customers. Managing these tasks manually can be cumbersome and can result in some serious flaws in communication and operations of a project.
Online Project Management Software are the tools of assistance which help a project manager in performing his duties diligently and with more control. Project Management Softwares can perform a variety of tasks like documentation, communication, arranging tasks lists, sending email notifications, arrange to-dos and highlight milestones with the help of some useful features contained in them such as Calendars, Dashboards, Gantt charts, etc.
These Project Management Softwares are extremely useful tools in managing projects, but organizations have to shell out a huge sum of money for using them.
Providers of such software spend million of dollars in their research and try to recover the costs by offering them at a huge price.
Only the organizations which are financially well off can afford these.
The organizations which are new and are in not so good financial health cannot go for them due to their high price. But their projects are also too complex and in need of such highly priced software. But where is the solution.
Free Project Management Softwares have been specifically designed for these kind of organizations.
All they have to do is to visit the site of a free project management software provider, download it and install in their organizations and use them.
But these free software have their own share of problems and limitations.
A free project management software might be providing some very basic features which may not serve an organization well enough or they might be full of bugs which can put additional financial burden on the organization.
But at the same time, there are some very useful and unique free project management software which have some very useful features which cannot be matched by even paid software.
Another disadvantage of using these free software is that there is no provider support available when needed. An organization might come across situations when it needs provider support, especially when it faces some technical problems or if it needs to enhance the functionality of a free software. In these cases, there is no help available from the provider’s side. **This can result in a major problem at times when an organization has spent a considerable amount of time in using this and cannot shift to other software at a short notice.
Organizations can also switch to a free software on a trial basis. If an organization is thinking about using project management software for the first time, it is a nice idea to start with free software. Once they get the experience in using them, they can switch to paid software for better productivity in the long run.
It is a great practice to read a lot of reviews about the free software to choose any free software. By reading other users experience, you can make up your mind about choosing a particular software and how it can be of benefit to your organization.
Now the question arises why a company which is pumping million of dollars in research for inventing a new project management software is offering it free.
This might be a marketing strategy to popularize it. When a lot of organizations start using it, the providers can come up with a new and paid offer.
An organization wanting to go for a project management software has to analyze and study which software it should opt for paid or free. Only a truthful analysis can be a better guide for an organization in choosing the project management software that can prove productive for its working.
Sharon is a business manager of a ProofHub.com, a web based project management software that provides features like discussions, time tracking, file sharing, inbuilt browser chat and more. Her interest includes blogging, traveling and exploring new places.