Project Management Software
Even a relatively simple project like moving an office from one location to another can become incredibly complex. Project management software helps keep track of a project's many components, schedules, and stages of completion. Project management and software for managing projects take a wide variety of forms.
Some project management software simply tracks the parts of a project, their deadlines, and current progress. More sophisticated project management software calculates critical paths (the chains of related events whose delay can cause the whole project to fail) costs and payments for components, labor hours, and many other factors.
Business project management software often includes collaboration modules: online whiteboards, desktop-sharing, real time chat, and other tools which enable persons in different physical locations to interact as if they were in the same location. Construction project management software includes blueprints, building code specifications, certificates of inspection, and other things peculiar to construction.
Enterprise project management software is generally more complex than small business project management software. The former must accommodate multiple departments, while the latter is often used by just a small closely-knit group of people, or even just one person in charge of a project.
Project management software ranges in cost from hundreds of thousands of dollars to the best price of all -– free! Free project management software is not necessarily rudimentary. A number of sophisticated enterprise project management software packages have been developed by companies for their own use and then released to the open-source software community to be used by others free of charge. The catch is that you have no vendor upon whom to rely for support. You have to figure out the software yourself or depend upon a community of other users, which may large and responsive or small and not very helpful.
If you only occasionally need project management software, your best bet is probably an on-demand Web project management software service. Instead of buying a software package, you simply use one that's owned by someone else and pay by the minute, the number of items tracked, or some other measurable quantity.
Project management software is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Sourceforge.net is an excellent source of free project management software. Many vendors offer trial versions of their project management software, generally limited in the number of users and/or project components supported until you pay the registration or licensing fee.