Handle Projects with the Web’s Help — Collaboratively

Sometimes I think there's more interest in project software than there is in developing good practices of planning and execution. Maybe it is the 'magic pill' that we oh-so-hope will work. PC Magazine regularly reviews project management software. Earlier this year they reviewed MS Project Professional 2002 and MS Server 2002 in the article Enterprise-Level Project Management from Microsoft. In the most recent issue they looked at the web-based competition in the article Handle Projects with the Web's Help. I'm more interested in what they do not write about than what they do. Perhaps they don't know how to manage projects.

PCMag emphasizes the conventional practices of large project management in their reviews: work breakdown sturctures, organization breakdown structures, costing, resource-loading, statusing, and CPM scheduling. Some of these programs do well in all categories (MS Project and Artemus) others are strong in the emerging practices — especially collaboration. In spite of their emphasis on conventional practices, PCMag gave it's coveted Editor's Choice award to Project.net saying, "Project.net is a capable and flexible product—especially for individual team members. Companies that want to emphasize collaboration over the centralized planning common to many enterprise project management programs will like its approach." Project.net differs in functionality from all the other applications:

"Project.net avoids terminology and processes associated with traditional project management apps. Instead, it uses an approach called Project Lifecycle Methodology, which includes planning and scheduling for Lifecycles (projects), Phases (project stages), Gates (milestones), and Deliverables (completed tasks or document elements).

"Project.net emphasizes a more collaborative (bottom-up) approach to project management rather than centralized planning (top-down). This philosophy is obvious in the Workflow Designer, a project management tool that lets users (not just project managers) create a series of tasks or documents."

So…some people are getting it — projects evolve; planning is collaborative (conversational); and centralized control is an illusion.

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