Information Systems for Accountants - Essay Example

Project management is an imperative component of a planners tasks. Managing a project includes two essential steps, project planning, and project tracking. A project consists of several tasks, each of a certain duration that is to be carried out in an interrelated sequence. Project planning is the initial stage of project management, here is where the planner identifies the work or the task involved to complete the project. The planner will manually estimate the duration or the time each task will consume, approximate the cost of each task, determine the workers and equipment to use, and arrange the sequence of the task. As the project progresses, some of these tasks may change due to unforeseen or miscalculated circumstances, therefore the original task duration, and its sequence must be modified. These methods diverge in intricacy from simple to-do lists to GANTT charts, to a more complicated network scheduling techniques such as CPM or Critical Path Method, PERT or Program Evaluation and Review Technique, and Precedence Diagramming. CPM and PERT charts consumes a lot of time to create manually thus outshine the real work to be done by the method used to represent the work. Precedence Diagramming is like CPM and PERT but it let different logic relationships to be signified in graphic form and it allows relationships to be represented in various ways making it more illustrative of the real life construction process. All of the above techniques when done manually are unfortunately very difficult. Project tracking or monitoring involves registering these various changes throughout the project, and making suitable changes to the projected schedule. Making constant schedule revision throughout the life of the project is an arduous task for the planner and the result may not be accurate and probably will not meet the deadline. Nevertheless, there are tools available to help plan and track projects more efficiently like Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project is a computer program designed to automatically plan, schedule, and track the progress of the project. An easy, powerful, and flexible project management tool that puts you in command of your projects, helps you keep everyone up to date and involved, and is well suited with the working style of today. Manage simple or multifaceted projects by scheduling and tracking all your activities so you can stay on top of their development. Sets up your plan swiftly, initialize your plan by creating and arrange your task list so you can simply validate details and overall status to maintain your project under control at all times. You can also keep information about your resources (people and equipment) and schedule them to work on your tasks. Depending on the quantity of resources you designate and their available working time, Microsoft Project determines how long it will take to conclude your tasks. Most importantly, you can keep track of your project’s budget and all costs included. Depending on pay rates and one-time costs, this program calculates total cost for specific tasks as well as the whole project. For the reason that Microsoft Project reproduces task and resource expenditure accurately, you can hastily revise your plan to variations to keep your project on track and within the budget. Fig. 1- View of a simple schedule using Microsoft Project’s Gantt chart Fig. 2 – View of automatically calculated “Actual Cost” accumulating as project moves on. Microsoft Project assists you to weigh up and fine-tune your schedule to make sure that it matches reality as intimately as possible. With a more accurate schedule, you can anticipate and avoid various inconveniences such as irregular task allocation, over allocated resources, or recklessly wasting your budget. With a frequent status report from your resources in the field, you can swiftly verify progress and make the required schedule modification. For instance, when work on a task is suddenly disrupted, you can split the task and continue segments of it at a more fitting time. Fig. 3 – Note the split in tasks # 4- part of the work of the tile setter moved to another segment. Fig. 4 – A Gantt Chart with “Actual and Baseline Cost” Fig. 5 – Sample budget report Microsoft Project is capable of multiple project management tasks. If you have to track more than one project or want to perceive the overall picture of all ongoing projects, you can also combine various projects into one project file. You can use a merged project to view cross-project dependencies, deliver multi-project reports, and administer resources among projects. When joining projects, you can promptly distinguish the effects of changes at a project level. Alternatively, you can drill down for details on any project’s task level, just as if you would in a single project. Coordinate your project with anyone anywhere; it has an e-mail system for interchanging task, status, or project information. With Microsoft Project, you can electively set and control the duration of the project. For instance, when management suddenly announce that they need to have the office building renovated before the company’s anniversary, which is just a month away. In normal situation, manually doing the schedule, a planner would instinctively start the project schedule in the soonest possible time and squeeze all tasks to fit in a month’s period. The problem with this technique is the enormous computations the planner will undergo to get the exact quantity of resources and tasks durations. To come up with a realistic schedule using this method is impossible considering the massive adjustments he will have to make to shorten the duration of every task and calculate the quantity of every resource required. Microsoft Project address this problem by giving the planner the option to control the schedule of the project’s “finish date” itself. By setting a fixed “finish date” for the project, the program will automatically adjust the resources whenever the planner alters the duration of the tasks. The planner can also do this the other way around; the duration will shorten or increase whenever he adds or delete a resource. To ensure that the entire project would not slip, the program will also automatically control and restrict all tasks duration within the “total” duration of the project. Fig. 6 – The window to change scheduling method. While Microsofts Project continues to be the leader in this specific software arena, other similar applications include: a) AEC Softwares FastTrack Schedule b) Kidasas Simplicity and Milestones c) Primavera System’s Primavera Project Planner d) IMSIs TurboProject e) CAs SuperProject. Each of these softwares is presenting diverse method to the fundamental principles of project management, while offering comparable as well as remarkably different features. Matthew Steele, Project Manager for Trigon-Sheenan, an engineering, procurement and construction firm base in Denver, Colorado, evaluated Primavera Project Planner and Microsoft Project. They found Microsoft Project extensive and offers ease of customization that allows scalable plug-in solutions for tasks, resources, and projects. Moreover, Steele states that Microsoft Project is easier to customize than the Primavera Software. He liked the API (Advanced Programmers Interface) that has an open database architecture, which he found very extensive. Steel added that the Primavera product is not right for them due to cost, lack of flexibility and staff estrangement with the product. Fig. 8 -Below is the snapshot of Trigon-Sheenan’s customized Microsoft Project. Fig. 9 – Sample of Task Usage Report clearly showing man-hours used. Fig- 10- Sample Cash Flow Report In using any project management software, a user must have at least a basic concept and principles of project management. It will best if the user have some prior experience with a similar application, or with Microsoft Project. This program is unmistakably designed to run on a network for the business community and is not designed for ordinary computer user. Microsoft Project would be more appropriate to engineers and managers with experience in project management functions that would further augment their efforts to manage their complex projects. References: Cremer K, n.d., “Microsoft Project Proposal”, [online], http://www.people.memphis.edu / ~ kcremer/Proposal-1.htmlx Farris D., 2000, “Microsoft Project 2000”, Golden Triangle PC Club, [online], http://www.gtpcc.org/gtpcc/project2000.htm George V., 1996, “Using Microsoft Project to Manage Projects”, [online], www.urban.uiuc.edu/courses/Varkki/msProject/msproject.html Microsoft, 2003, “A Case Study of Trigon-Sheenan LLC”, [online], www.pcubed.com / Work/Trigon-Sheehan LLC.doc Microsoft, 1998, “Microsoft Project Help”, Microsoft Project98, Product ID#53606-412-1234567-02843 Read More