Category Archives: Project Management Software

Careers Advice, IT Project Management, Project Management, Project Management Software, Recruitment, Starting out in Project Management

Sales Manager with Project Management Skills, help? Q&A

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Hi Nicola, I have a long career of software sales experience and I am looking to make my next career move. My question is that I have a great deal of project management experience having delivered a number of software implementations to clients but I am always seen as “just a sales manager” – is there any advice you can give me on how I can be taken seriously as a Project Manager. Simon; Key Account Manager, West Midlands.

 

Hi Simon, many thanks for getting in touch – what a great question! I can see from your CV that you talk a great deal about the sales you have made and your track record is impressive. You place a lot of focus on the sales aspect which I suspect is why you are not being taken seriously for the roles which lean more towards the PM skill set. One piece of advice I will offer is that you need to be sure that your desire to focus on the PM aspect is realistic – at the end of the day there is a great deal of competition for PM roles out there and you will come up against out and out Project Managers. Should you reach interview with such stiff competition you will need a convincing reason why you wish to transition. However there are a lot of Software Project Manager roles available and most of them are strongly focussed on presales, these types of roles tend to require a good sales person to interface between the client and the development team and will do similar project management to your background – delivering integration of the product.

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Therefore I would suggest you balance your CV with information which demonstrates your strong sales track record but also talks through how you deliver projects, think about the project lifecycle and address the various aspects. Add in details on teams, stakeholders, budgets, project details and change management – let the reviewer of the CV really understand what your current and previous roles involved. Place some emphasis on key achievements which really talk about how you add value – this can be dealing with tricky customers, overcoming change and identifying/remedying bottle necks. You will put yourself in a strong position against the perceived strong competition as you have three or more core areas of competence versus the straight forward PM. I have always believed you need to have some good sales skills to be successful in Project Management, dealing with such a mixed bag of stakeholders and gaining buy-in, to be able to combine with a structured approach to managing projects you are in a strong position if you market yourself well.

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Why Project Management Software is Important for Your Business

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The goal of project management software is to support your organizational team with collaboration, achieving milestones, keeping the work budget within given limits and effectively completing the work on schedule. A project management software system can help you to manage complicated projects and avoid the common pitfalls of doubtful roles, communication gaps, complex tasks and insufficient responsibility.

Project management software is becoming an essential part of the present day business world. It manages the action of planning and acquiring the required people and resources, keeping costs within budget and scheduling limits. In any kind of industry (and some of the most common include construction, IT, architecture, software development and banking) you can use it to manage projects effectively and efficiently. The global project manager, along with other team leaders, uses this software to evaluate, plan, schedule, and manage the projects. However the project management software can also enhance the productivity of the entire project team.

Project management software includes programs that companies use to plan tasks in corporate programs (rather than ‘projects’). The software enables the manager to monitor the results of team members, restrict cost issues and ensure effective completion of corporate initiatives. Indeed it is often quoted as one of the easiest ways to enhance the process of efficiently allocating talent.

 

What makes for good project management software? Firstly using it will make your working existence more organized and structured and, ultimately, simpler. Secondly, everybody in your organization should be able to use and understand the application within a couple of days, with hardly any training needed.

Project management software is a good way to control four of the key project factors: work, time, budget and personnel. With the aid of relevant software, viewing the progress of a project should be simple. What’s more, viewing the length of time a specific project needs means that you can plan tasks accordingly. Project management software that includes time monitoring tools will also allow you to look into the performance and achievement records of personnel.

Organizing people and projects can be a frustrating and tiresome task, but if you understand the proper application of project management software, you’ll be able to easily handle all tasks, projects and team people. This can help in staying up-to-date with the marketplace changes, and you’ll be able to plan your moves accordingly.

Project Management Software and collaboration software provide many services. Let’s talk about a few of them:

  • Team collaboration: Forget office conference rooms and late evening conferences. No need to travel to different locations for discussions and demos. Your team and clients can collaborate online. It will save energy and keeps your team and clients up to date with the latest information.
  • Versatility: Web project management software provides versatility in company projects. Online project software typically provides up-to-date dashboards for rapidly reviewing the latest events in a project. When combined with online collaboration, these tools can keep everybody in your team on ‘the same page’ and helps to ensure each group or resource knows what others are doing. This then allows project managers to assign tasks and to-do lists, monitor progress, schedule due dates, accomplish key events, and much more.
  • Accountability: When used well, the software increases personal and financial accountability. The majority of the online project controlling system provides graphs, feedback, time sheets, key events and task assignment. The more sophisticated or specialized ones also monitor project costs, checks expenses, adjust assets and provide estimations about future project expenditure.
  • Organization: Effective resource management is flexible. The project controlling system handles all assets-employees, free-lance talents, budget and time. Often knowing your teams’ potential and effectively applying their abilities can mean the difference between failure and success. The right resource management enables you to build a thriving team.

Your company is important, and so is your ‘bottom line’. If there is a means to increase your productivity and improve your profits, why not take advantage of it?

Whether opting for online or stand-alone software, do try to make use of the many reviews available. They honestly do assist you in find the solution that best matches your needs, and (most of the time) are genuinely written by people who have used the program.

Author Bio:

UntitledSeamus Collins has 18 years of experience in the Project Management industry, and has completed assignments with leading global companies in China, Argentina, Israel, Malaysia, the UK and the USA. He is also the founder and owner of Velopi, – a PMI Registered Education provider that has helped hundreds of people obtain their PMP certification

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Project Management vs. Task Management Software: What to Choose?

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Increase productivity. Save time. Get organized.

Both task and project management software share these three goals. To make that happen, they both offer features for collaboration, coordination, status-tracking and planning. On the surface, they often look similar, but despite these similarities, there are certain differences in the company’s needs that they address.

So how do you decide which one is best for you? Just check out our short comparison below and pick the type of tool that suits you best!

Task Management Software

Task management tools, by and large, are about organizing, assigning and prioritizing ongoing activities. These tasks may or may not have deadlines, and they don’t involve complex scheduling. For example, a journalist handling multiple articles can see each of them as a task and then cross them off as they are completed.

Task management software can help to keep employees focused on priority tasks and make juggling multiple responsibilities less overwhelming, as they can more easily decide what to work on next. All the workers need to do is work down the prioritized task list.

Task management software may be a good match if:

  • Your goal is to better prioritize your tasks and your team’s tasks.
  • You need a place to track an individual’s or group’s “to do” list.
  • Your tasks are not dependent on each other.

Schedule

Project Management Software

Project management tools are more about scheduling, setting deadlines and tracking progress on a bigger scale. Sure, you still have individual tasks, but when those tasks are part of a larger project, you need to complete them in a particular sequence. This sequence of tasks is heading toward defined milestones, marking the completion of the project’s major stages or the whole project.

So while an individual journalist might go with task management to make sure he turns his articles in on time, the managing editor needs to think about how the deadlines for those articles affect the deadlines for the department editor to proof the article, the photographer to shoot images to accompany the piece, the layout editor to plan where the article will fit and the printer to produce the final magazine. And the sequence of all their actions eventually leads to the big milestone, i.e., the publication of the monthly issue.

Some of these tasks may be worked on concurrently (the photographer and layout editor can do their jobs before the department editor delivers the final draft), but others are dependent on the previous task’s completion to move ahead (the printer can’t do his job until everything else is complete).

Project management software helps you to see these dependencies more clearly and set milestones that a project (or its phase) is heading toward. By monitoring the progress every step of the way, you can plan ahead more accurately and carefully manage your team’s resources.

Project management software may be the best way to organize work for your company if:

  • Your goal is to better schedule and monitor the overall progress of projects with defined due dates.
  • You’re managing the workload of multiple people performing different tasks for the same project.
  • Your tasks are dependent on each other.

What’s Right for Your Company?

If you’re just working on a few tasks, you might think that task management software is all you’ll ever need, but you never know what the future will bring. Maybe those tasks will evolve into a connected project. And while those who use project management software may be more concerned with the bigger picture, they still need to keep an eye on the details and progress of separate tasks.

That’s why choosing an all-in-one tool that incorporates the best of task and project management features can be the most efficient (and scalable!) solution for a company that wants to manage its work more efficiently and, therefore, achieve more!