Hey guys…
Some firms have been employing ‘Project management software’ to manage delicate issues and functions in a project like planning, estimation etc. I am confused about the impact such software will have when it comes to human effort and elements involved in management areas. I wanted to know your views and opinion on the same!
Waiting for your interesting opinions and ideas…
Cheers!
~Maneet
when you have a team of people working together, software like this would really help to get things done in an orderly fashion.
There are many different products out there from open source to standalone to fully integrated project accounting software.
PM software helps you when it comes to reporting, billing projects, if the project is large it can help you identify the critical path, project dependencies, resource shortages, integrated software can create requisitions for project resources.
The problem with this software though is it is very dependent on data entry and keeping everything accurate can almost be as time consuming as the work it saves, particularly for smaller projects.
If you aren’t using some sort of project management tool, then you should be 
Almost every business needs one, as almost every business has projects they need to keep track of. It could be accounting projects, projects for your customers (like building a website), projects for your managers (like implementing a new system) and so on. The best way to make sure that your projects are completed successfully is to use a project management tool.
What tool? Well, that depends. Most companies go today with web-based tools <snip>. Others go with more old fashioned desktop tools, or Excel charts. But whatever you choose - you’ll find that managing your project with tools makes it far easier to make sure that everything gets done - and gets done on time.
Mike Drew
<snip>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project-management_software
The two I usually hear about are basecamp and Microsoft Project.
In my opinion Project Management Software can go both ways, I’ve worked on collaboration projects with people around the world where the software was really what tied us together and enabled us to focus on our tasks to eventually bring it together in the end.
However… I’ve also worked on smaller scale projects, where the actual management was nothing but a hassle and seemed like a lot of extra work just to please a few people that glanced at it once in a while. In this case, it meant that some of the people working on the project (myself included eventually) weren’t very commited to the software, and instead started sending emails, which then undermined the whole idea behind project management and so on and so on…
In short, if you mean collaboration project software, then I’d say it’s a great bonus if you use it correctly (and depending on the quality of course). For the most “administrative” work of keeping an overview of Projects, I find a simple Spreadsheet or Database powered grid still works wonders