The IPM Blog

I’m sure most of us have heard of the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid. It can be applied to almost every aspect of our lives and jobs and is especially important in project management software.

Software is one of those complicated things where a consultant may show you the latest whiz bang product with all the bells and whistles aimed at helping you manage your project easier. Some features will arguably look impressive, but at the end of the day, you may just need something simple that will help you get your job done and achieve your objectives. And often, the simplest software can be the best.

With project management software in particular, you only get out as much as you put in. What good is a state of the art program if none of your project team members want or know how to use it? We find time and time again that this does happen, companies buy and implement an impressive, state of the art software solution then discover a few months later it is too complicated for their project team to use and hardly any of their staff are using it.

I recently had a comment on a blog entry that said the best software solutions are those adopted by the project team, and I couldn’t agree more. And this is true particularly in the case of project management software, where you are requiring input from all your team members so that everyone can get the most out of the program. It’s no use having team members who send sporadic emails rather than inputting the data into the system, or people who never log into the system to check the progress of RFIs and variations/change orders or changes to the schedule or budget.

With things like IPM’s Outlook integration, that team member who loves to send emails instead of using the project management software still can send emails and they will be stored in the software automatically. Outlook integration also means users can log onto the project management software every time they log into their email. And being based on a Microsoft product, the design of IPM is familiar to people who already use products such as Word, Outlook and Excel, so it is simple and easy to use.

So if there’s one thing we’ve learned in our 20 odd years experience in project management, it’s that the best way to get people to use project management software is to make it simple - KISS. Solutions with a simple design, that are easy to use and easy to maintain will by far win over more users than ones that come with all the bells and whistles, but no one knows how to blow them.

First off, I have to admit that I actually came across the idea for this blog whilst I was catching up on the hype surrounding the royal wedding. I know you either love it or you hate it, but I admit that I tuned into BBC World News on Friday afternoon along with 3 billion or so others. But as I was watching, something else caught my eye. Scrolling across the bottom of the screen were the other news stories of the day, and at once the word Microsoft jumped out.

According to a BBC news report from Friday, Microsoft has just recorded a 31% rise in quarterly profits, despite lagging sales of the Windows 7 application. But what has this got to do with project management you might be asking?

Well the main reason for the jump was strong sales of Microsoft Office, which includes commonly used project management tools Outlook and Excel. We know that many people are already familiar with the Office suite, but the continuing strong sales of Office show that Microsoft is still one of the most dominant players in this market, and people are continuing to rely on this familiar application.

Still don’t see the connection with project management? Well, as Office tools such as Outlook and Excel are often used by project managers, and strong sales of these applications show they still continue to be widely used, wouldn’t it be ideal if dedicated project management software could integrate with Outlook and Excel to enhance these two useful tools and provide a more sophisticated project management platform?

Not all project management applications can boast such a close relationship with Microsoft though. But as IPM is built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM framework, it has the ability to integrate seamlessly with Outlook, so you can manage all your project information from within your email, and automatically track and store outgoing and incoming emails. And as we know project managers often rely heavily on Excel to manage projects, IPM users also have the ability to import and export information to and from Excel.

So as Microsoft Office continues to grow in popularity and use, IPM is definitely coming along for the ride. And who wouldn’t want project management software so closely integrated with a company that has such a strong presence in our workplace and the way we manage our projects?

By Katie Belfrage