The purpose of this document is to build upon the research and background information we gathered on issues found when utilizing project management tools and to develop a quiz to help our users address this issue. The user document and quiz are intended to help project managers understand which project management tools are best applied in various teams and industries.
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Problem Statement
Based on a study investigating project teams, one driver for project failure is poor project management due to inappropriate tools for a given project [1]. We intend to investigate the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful project management, for both in-person and remote teams, and understand how to create the highest chance of a successful project by curating project management tools for a variety of goals and team sizes.
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Background and History of Project Management
Project management is a way of applying structural and organizational tools in order to facilitate the completion of a project. Project management tools are widely used by teams in all professions and industries. Typically, these tools are utilized by teams to “[create] management tools (WBS, schedule, etc.), [display] information about the project (e.g., WBS, schedule, budget, expenditures, etc.), [and collaborate] with team members and extended team members in executing or evaluating the project” [2].
Although effective tools and techniques can vary significantly among different types of projects, “many aspects of project management practice are common to most projects in most contexts” [3], meaning that some project management tools and techniques work well across many different projects. One important finding indicates that “[t]he top 20 list of the most useful tools and techniques is composed of very well-known and widely used tools” [4]. The prevalence of these tools and the benefits they provide have motivated the creation of various software project management tools in order to give the tools’ users better project management experiences.
Failures in Project Management Tools
However, not every tool is appropriate for every project. The majority of businesses surveyed in [1] responded that they felt they were using inappropriate project management methods for their given project, suggesting a need for improved project management tool selection.
For example, Desmond discusses that “MS Project is probably the most popular program in use today,” but later noted that the software is, at times, prohibitively expensive [2]. These budgetary mismatches are widespread, as explained in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge and Management: “only about a fourth of the respondents reported using EVM [earned-value management, a technique used to track the accomplishment of a project and variances between planned and actual costs and time schedules] or a network analysis tool such as PERT. The use of EVM would seem to be important given that a high percentage of projects go over budget” [5].
A similar article in the Organization, Technology and Management in Construction journal also indicated that MS Project is one of the most popular PM tools, but “there are many doubts about the justification of the type of [project management tool] that should be applied, its exact usefulness and its real contribution to the successful work of a project manager” [6]. This highlights an area to further investigate and understand the justifications of applying and utilizing project management.
The Best Chance of Project Success with Project Management
While good project management cannot always ensure project success, “best practices in project management increase the chances of success in achieving goals when dealing with projects” [7] by aiding in “internal efficiency and … reaching of project goals and maintaining smooth work relationships in the project” [1]. In investigating the correlation between project management and project success, many of the other cited articles emphasized similar values critical to project management success. The most commonly cited features of successful project management include communication, clear objectives and scope, and reasonably sized and well-defined tasks [8]. However, these values can be implemented in a variety of ways and should be adapted to the needs of each individual project.
Furthermore, many of the issues faced with project management arise from the lack of a centralized system to understand project management. When investigating methods of project management education, companies have found that building a “standardized project management model and internal project management training and education have been the ways of improving the project management discipline” [9]. However, in the International Journal of Project Management, they found that there was a general consensus that company project management education is lacking: “[it] is comparable to giving them a toolbox without helping them to understand the application of those tools” [10].
Companies have started to understand that their managers need to be educated with “a more balanced approach between hard and soft [project management] concepts” [11]. Based on the research, it is concluded that a more centralized education process can create a common company culture that understands project management applied specifically to the company, values investing in personal development, and generally raise project management competencies.
Virtual Collaboration and Project Management
With a great shift towards virtual collaboration due to the pandemic, project management tools have become even more valuable as collaboration challenges are further exacerbated by the additional constraints of virtual interactions. To create a successful virtual collaboration, “the human needs of trust, relationship development, and ensuring a shared understanding among team members and how all these interact with technology” is required [12]. Members of the team would need to demonstrate skills “necessary for negotiation, conflict resolution, problem solving as a team, and collaboration with culturally diverse members” [13].
However, studies have shown that, with no or limited face-to-face interactions, students in virtual teams were more likely to get into ambiguity and tend to not know what exactly is expected of them. A few common team conflicts include “different opinions, blaming each other, hard to get consensus and, lagging behind [or slacking off]” [14]. This conflict often is a result of the disadvantage of missing verbal and nonverbal cues that would have been present in an in-person environment. One big issue is teams tackling “collaboration challenges with a greater prevalence of self-regulation strategies over engaging in socially shared regulation” [15] and tending to atomize labor division more when compared with face-to-face teams.
Research Conclusion
Our research demonstrates that the choice of the project management tool plays a critical role in preventing and resolving collaboration issues and increases the chance of success for the team project. Thus, our team has developed a quiz to help teams and individuals pick out the best project management tool for their personalities and also their projects. This tool ensures the best collaboration environment and hopefully reduces many virtual work issues while encouraging teamwork.
Project Constraints
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As ambitious Cornell University students, we put lots of hard work into this website and quiz to better help our target audience. However, it is worth acknowledging the constraints we faced whilst creating this project and what we would have liked to do if those constraints weren’t present.
No Budget
Due to the scope of this project, our team was unable to secure any funding. Should our team have found funding for this project, there are several improvements which we had hoped to make. Firstly, instead of using Wix as our web development platform, we may have instead been able to find a better paid service. Furthermore, our team could have also considered hiring part-time employees who specialize in web development in order to provide users with a more cohesive and effective experience.
Similarly, should our team have had a budget to work with, we could have used a different quiz making platform which charges a fee for its services. Through using a paid platform, our team could have had a larger variety of question types, a more complex mapping from users to project management tools, and better integration with our website.
Limited Time
As previously mentioned, our team is 100% composed of full-time Cornell University students. This project is a part of our curriculum in our engineering communications course, of which, each member can dedicate only a limited amount of time while balancing other coursework. For that reason, in an ideal world, our team would have hoped to spend more time on this project to expand its scope and refine its capabilities.
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Most notably, our team would have liked to research more project management tools to include in the quiz. Big name tools like Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace are two such tools, which could have helped provide users with another effective tool and also prevent users from inappropriately deciding to use these tools given their name brand developers. Also, we would have liked to explore more tools oriented for enterprise-sized companies, like Kissflow or Citrix Podio. By doing so, we would be able to widen our target audience and aid more users.
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Rigid Quiz Service
To create our project management tool quiz, we used a service called Interact Quiz Maker. In many ways, it was precisely what we were hoping to find given that the service allowed us to associate question answers to specific project management tools, and then provide the user with the project management tool that best fits their answers. However, what it didn’t allow us to do was create any questions which eliminated project management tools from being recommended to the user. Most notably, this means that occasionally, when someone prefers a free project management tool from our quiz, the quiz may very well still recommend paid project management tools.
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Fortunately, this problem didn’t hinder our project too much. In order to circumvent this issue, we provide users with our guides on all the project tools in our database, not just the ones the quiz recommends. However, could we have found a different quiz making service which allows for a more flexible mapping of quiz questions to project management tools, we could have provided users with a quiz that has a higher rate of impactful project management tool recommendations than it currently has.
Conclusion
Our research indicates that effective project management is both essential for success and also a common shortcoming of many teams. With hundreds or even thousands of project management platforms available, it’s no wonder a common shortcoming for teams is project management. Our team has created a website and quiz which can help users learn about project management tools and find the one best suited for their circumstances.
Project management tools may be oriented towards a specific industry, team size, project management tool proficiency, or may require payment for use. Or, tools can be more general in nature, and can be used by a wide variety of users. Our website helps target users to articulate their wants and needs as a project team, and then uses those descriptions to recommend a tool which will best suit them.
Our website also provides users with a guide to each of the project management tools in our database. For each tool, we provide users with a description of that tool, features, drawbacks, who it is suited for, and even tutorials and guides for that specific platform. Users can browse our catalog of project management tools with or without having taken the quiz. Either way, the catalog both helps users familiarize themselves with project management tools and also learn how to get started using the tools.