The Project Management Thread: it cost more than I thought it would.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > The Project Management Thread: it cost more than I thought it would.

Jasper Tin Neck: Nov 14, 2008; "Scientifically proven, rich and creamy."

What project management software have you used and what were their pros and cons?

My organisation doesn't currently use any but it's becoming increasingly evident (at least to me) that Excel just doesn't cut it when managing ever larger and more time-constrained engineering consulting projects across multiple department boundaries.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2023 17:57

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 19:18

Jasper Tin Neck: Nov 14, 2008; "Scientifically proven, rich and creamy."

Maera Sior posted:

Are you looking for yourself or for company-wide use?

Preferably company-wide, but I will settle for adoption in our 800 strong division in exchange for not resigning and letting my business area finally implode on itself.

Obviously software won't magically fix things around here on its own, so what kind of training program would you recommend to get the basics of project management drilled into hapless engineers promoted into project management in an engineering consulting business?

# ¿ Jul 5, 2023 20:31

Jasper Tin Neck: Nov 14, 2008; "Scientifically proven, rich and creamy."

daslog posted:

Your doomed. Engineers that can do Project Management are also known as Unicorns or CTOs.

I know, but I'm not entirely convinced engineers can't either learn to do project management or learn to hire people who can. The reason I haven't quit my position as the load bearing SME is because the entire industry is pretty dire in this respect.

I don't think my demands are even that unreasonable: I just want my projects to have work breakdown structures, schedules and a task list so that we can hand out tasks and follow progress without multiple weekly 2-hour all hands meetings.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2023 21:23

Jasper Tin Neck: Nov 14, 2008; "Scientifically proven, rich and creamy."

Maera Sior posted:

I took Google's project management course, which is geared towards software engineers for the obvious reason. It's pretty fast to breeze through if you have any experience in watching projects come together.

Sounds good, I'll have to look into it. The jump from software to civil engineering might be a bit challenging though.

Maera Sior posted:

Without an understanding of why a process should be followed, any attempt at enforcing new software is doomed to fail.

Tell me about it. We tried to use Wrike in a big project we did in partnership with a few other companies. It failed miserably because the project managers had no idea how to define deliverables, nor did they think to involve SMEs in defining them.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2023 23:47

Jasper Tin Neck: Nov 14, 2008; "Scientifically proven, rich and creamy."

Higgy posted:

Primavera P6:
Pros:
-incredibly detailed
-allows gnats rear end resource loading and ties into existing enterprise systems for labor rates
-lots of bells and whistles for analysis and reporting

Cons:
-unnecessarily complex and requires specialized training to be halfway proficient at it (this is where my career basically started)
-lots of support needed on the back end for data management
-$$$$!

MS Project:
Pros:
-decent enough to build out resource loaded project schedules
-ties into rest of M$ ecosystem if that’s where your company is at
-straight forward UI

Cons:
-limited data tie ins to other systems
-can sometimes not be detailed enough

Knowing how we've always left the planning functionality in our ERP untouched because they're "too difficult to use," babby's first project management software sounds like the way to go, especially since we use a lot of other MS products.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2023 19:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > The Project Management Thread: it cost more than I thought it would.