Two new tools are included in the next release of TeamWorks PPM to help organisations improve their project governance.
Project lifecycle processes. All projects have stages they must follow from start up to close down. Within these stages, actions and decisions need to be undertaken by the project manger, stakeholders and other people involved in the project. For example a business case may need approval and a budget allocated before the project can start. Once the project starts up a risk assessment may need to be done and a quality plan drafted.
The next release of TeamWorks PPM allows the system administrator to set up a range of pre-defined processes which can be attached to a project.
As the project progresses, the project manager can mark these actions as complete or not required for this particular project. A new dashboard is provided that lets auditors and PMO staff check at a glance which projects are following the defined process.
Project status reports. Most project managers have to produce weekly / monthly status reports and we know it is a pain of a job. The next release of TeamWorks PPM includes the facility to build status reports directly within the software tool. As TeamWorks has knowledge of a projects RAG status, issues, risks, costs etc it is a simple matter of selecting items from a pick list to include them in the report.
Reports can be worked on over time until finally published to a status report dashboard. Not only does this dashboard provide a single source for all the status reports in the organisation - but it also allows stakeholders and PMO staff to see which projects are missing or are late producing status reports.
Both of these features plus a host of others are due to ship in TeamWorks PPM 3.2.
TeamWorks, governance, risk management
governance, iplanware, project management software, project status reports, risk management, TeamWorks
Every couple of weeks we get contacted by someone asking if our project management software TeamWorks is free (of charge). When I politely tell them that actually no, it is not free they always seem a bit disgruntled.
So, after I explain that our employees have bills to pay, kids to feed and our salaries are paid because we charge for software…. I then start explaining further why our software is not free - and that software that appears “free” is not.
- “Free” software started as a matter of liberty and not of price and this point is well summarised here. Free means free to fix, augment and share things back with the community. If you are not going to do this, then why not contribute money to the free software foundation.
- Everything has a cost. Freeware has ended up costing something to someone, somewhere down the line.
- Companies like iPlanWare invest a substantial amount of time and money in their products. Good design costs and we have to pay for our R&D somehow.
- Software needs supporting. I don’t mean just bug fixes but general help with the software - “how do I do?” type questions. Who is going to support the freeware you use? This is exactly why organisations like sugarcrm offer a “commercial open source” option. When you investigate the pricing of commercial “paid” freeware you quickly realise it is going to cost you the same as regular paid software.
- With freeware you have the option to fix and augment the software yourself. But are you really going to do this? Or are you just going to use it? If so refer back to point 1.
I have a couple of builders quoting me for a new extension at the moment. Perhaps I will ask them if they would build it for free. No wait a minute, next time someone asks me if our software is free, I will tell them yes, if you give us some of your organisations products or time to the same value for free. Seems fair?
I should stress, I have nothing against freeware and use quite a few freeware products myself. In fact this blog is created using freeware. And in thanks I have answered quite a few questions posted by Wordpress users to problems we have also encountered.
Business of software, Commercials, TeamWorks
Add new tag, freeware, freeware is not free, iplanware, project management software, TeamWorks
