When there is real return on investment (ROI) associated with hitting schedules and milestones, managing complex projects can be risky and stressful for companies. Examples of such projects are enterprise resource planning (ERP) like SAP or Oracles EBS and planned plant shutdowns and startups. To get projects like these under control, managers need to prioritize planning and address.
Planning (what needs to be done)
• Dependencies (what tasks depend on what other tasks, and how)
• Testing of the project plan (verify that the plan can be executed in the order defined)
• Critical path (understand what the longest pole in the schedule tent is -- what path will take the most time)
• Progress and status reports (visualization for team members, managers and executives)
• Feedback from project members (how will communication be managed effectively?)
The most well-known tools used to manage projects like this are typical project management and spreadsheet tools. While helpful, they still fall short of what managers need as the tools are missing the ability to....
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