Dr. Joseline Edward, PhD

Project Managers - Want to Know the Commonly Used Tools to Manage Project Resources?

Resource management tools are vital to manage resources in all phases of a project. The people on a project no matter how skilled they are cannot succeed if they do not have a right tool to manage them. This article summarizes the list of tools commonly used by managers to manage the human side of resource management.

Resource management tools are vital to manage resources in all phases of a project. The people on a project no matter how skilled they are cannot succeed if they do not have a right tool to manage them. Cognitive Technologies Inc, a company specializing in project management, collaborative processes, and organizational effectiveness conducted a survey in June 2010. Target audiences were both upper management executives and PMPs in the United States. They approached 4,800 survey audiences to identify the tools that they were used to manage human resources from a list of 20 tools. Out of 4,800 audiences, a total of 250 executives substantially completed the survey. The following sections show the results of the survey. The % of response below represents the number of respondents who selected each tool to manage human resources

• 64% of survey respondents use Microsoft Excel to manage project resources.
• 63% of survey respondents use Microsoft Project – Desktop to manage project resources.
• 37% of survey respondents use -House Developed Application to manage project resources.
• 29% of survey respondents use Microsoft Project Server to manage project resources.
• 16% of survey respondents use Microsoft Access to manage project resources.
• 9% of survey respondents use Primavera (Oracle) to manage project resources.
• 7% of survey respondents use CA Clarity Project and Portfolio Management Software (CA) to manage project resources.
• 6% of survey respondents use PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications (Oracle) to manage project resources.
• 4% of survey respondents use HP Project Portfolio Management (Hewlett-Packard) to manage project resources.

The below sections show the key findings from the survey:

Most of the upper-level executives and project management professionals in the United States are using Microsoft Office Excel and the desktop version of Microsoft Office Project for managing project resources

Organizations that use more mature tools (example: Microsoft Office Project Server, Oracle Primavera) compared with less mature tools (example: Microsoft Office Excel) are more likely to track employee time at a more detailed level, track projects’ status at a more detailed level.

Organizations that use more mature tools (example: Microsoft Office Project Server, Oracle Primavera) compared with less mature tools (example: Microsoft Office Excel) are more likely more likely to have higher annual revenues and enjoy greater project success than their less sophisticated counterparts

For survey question, “How does your organization track employee time for projects?” the average response is that the upper-level executives and project management professionals in the United States  track employees, consultants and contractors time for projects at the project level only.

Reference:

Jackson C. Jennifer, Jackson M. Christina, Project Resource Management2010:Tools, Processes, and Challenges, Retrieved January 08, 2011, from http://www.cognitive-technologies.com/whitepapers/index.aspx

Article Tags: Microsoft Office Project, Mature Tools (example:, Tools (example: Microsoft, (example: Microsoft Office, Manage Project, Survey Respondents, Microsoft Office, Office Project, Mature Tools, Tools (example:, (example: Microsoft, More Likely

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