Lately, the term ‘productivity’ is the most hotly debated subject in most management circles. Several business enterprises have begun to understand the importance of productivity and have started to optimally manage team resources to fulfill project goals. Business houses realize the contribution of ‘team dynamics’ towards speedy implementation of projects. Team dynamics is the intermingling of individual aptitudes, attitude to work, work culture, personal styles, of all the team members within a group.
Understanding Team Dynamics and Project Requirements:
To make it simpler, team dynamics constitute the five areas of core competency that a project team needs succeed - project objectives, methodologies, roles of individual members, varying degrees of professional competence, and the team’s capabilities in coping up with organizational surroundings. A team working cohesively to complete and deliver a task on a pre-determined scale and within available resources and time limits - is known as a Project Management and it should be the common endeavor of all team members to achieve these without any time or cost overruns.
Project Management is, ideally speaking, a systematic and orderly method of managing people, utilizing resources, containing costs and deploying technology to ensure the smooth functioning of a project and leading it to timely completion. Seasoned professionals define project management as the skillful interplay of human relationships where individual attitude, individual aptitude, and individual skills have a combined effect on the performance of the project and its end result.
By truly understanding the macro as well as micro levels of project management, Project Managers can measure and monitor the project status from time to time and responsibly instruct and interact with the project team members as also with the clients. Therefore it is a delicate balance of the overall factors which are constantly measured in terms of time, expenses and work performance in order to determine the project status at any given point of time for a return on investment.
Project Management Software and Team Productivity:
Till not long ago, when information technology was less developed, project management was done with relatively few tools and use of the Gantt chart. But in today’s dramatically changed scenario, project management entails a sophisticated and highly evolved approach with a set of tasks which require different type of specialized skills.
Now, market is flooded with a variety of project management software and each one capable of performing a multiplicity of tasks. The selection and purchase of reliable software that can aid the management of a project can ensure a lot of optimization by saving time, focusing on specific issues, support objective and logical analysis, exercise cost control, and aid decision making.
A review of some of the project management software will be useful to understand their salient features. For example, Genius Project4 Domino, flexible with team members, is a web-based project management application that is in sync with Lotus Notes. The distinct feature of this package is the facility it provides for a flexible mode of communication amongst the project employees who are in distinct teams. Yet another advantage is the online status can be shared by all members and it is easy for all to review documents, and interact with other team members who are online.