My review on using pda for Project Management:
PDA in Project Management(PM)
What is PM? It is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.(Ref: PMBOK 1.3)
PM covers nine key knowledge areas viz;
1.Project Integration Management
2.Project Scope Management
3.Project Time Management
4.Project Cost Management
5.Project Quality Management
6.Project Human Resources Management
7.Project Communication Management
8.Project Risk Management
9.Project Procurement Management
The main processes involved in PM are initiation,planning,execution monitoring ,control and closing.
As you see above ,PM covers many areas of management studies; and it is multi-disciplines in nature. The science part is acquiring the relevant knowledge and the art part is the application of those knowledge using experience and skills acquired.
From my experience,pda is not suitable in planning business project. We need a more powerful tool like MS Project or Primevera. However, it can be used to monitor simple (linear but not networked) schedule and progress of monthly activities. IMHO, there is no credible programs available and the screen size limits one’s view of the project plan/activities.
In managing my own project which involves 390 activities, pdas simply cannot handle it.I am using MS Project 2000 and Excel spreadsheet /Word programs. The most I can use pda is by extracting a particular month activities and monitor start date,finish date and progress. To do these, I can use Brainforest and Projects in palm pda. For big spreadsheet and reports, I am using pocketpc excel and word.
To use pda’s in PM, we must utilise the pda powerful “datebook” and “Todo” functions. The only sad thing is we have to extract the relevant data one by one from our master planning program.
MS Project has a palm version but for read only. You can’t update and make changes there. The program is available at : http://www.natara.com . The real PM programs are too big to be installed in pda’s for the moment.
For a personal and simple project, you can use pda’s, but I won’t recommend the use of pda’s( palm/pocket pc) for real business projects.
Recommeded readings: PM for Dummies and PMBOK from PMI.ORG
PDA in Project Management(PM)
What is PM? It is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.(Ref: PMBOK 1.3)
PM covers nine key knowledge areas viz;
1.Project Integration Management
2.Project Scope Management
3.Project Time Management
4.Project Cost Management
5.Project Quality Management
6.Project Human Resources Management
7.Project Communication Management
8.Project Risk Management
9.Project Procurement Management
The main processes involved in PM are initiation,planning,execution monitoring ,control and closing.
As you see above ,PM covers many areas of management studies; and it is multi-disciplines in nature. The science part is acquiring the relevant knowledge and the art part is the application of those knowledge using experience and skills acquired.
From my experience,pda is not suitable in planning business project. We need a more powerful tool like MS Project or Primevera. However, it can be used to monitor simple (linear but not networked) schedule and progress of monthly activities. IMHO, there is no credible programs available and the screen size limits one’s view of the project plan/activities.
In managing my own project which involves 390 activities, pdas simply cannot handle it.I am using MS Project 2000 and Excel spreadsheet /Word programs. The most I can use pda is by extracting a particular month activities and monitor start date,finish date and progress. To do these, I can use Brainforest and Projects in palm pda. For big spreadsheet and reports, I am using pocketpc excel and word.
To use pda’s in PM, we must utilise the pda powerful “datebook” and “Todo” functions. The only sad thing is we have to extract the relevant data one by one from our master planning program.
MS Project has a palm version but for read only. You can’t update and make changes there. The program is available at : http://www.natara.com . The real PM programs are too big to be installed in pda’s for the moment.
For a personal and simple project, you can use pda’s, but I won’t recommend the use of pda’s( palm/pocket pc) for real business projects.
Recommeded readings: PM for Dummies and PMBOK from PMI.ORG
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