There is an urgent need for a distributed project management web software to help project managers and people doing the projects to get projects done.

In traditional project management, the project manager is central and personally manages the project. So project management software focuses on the needs of project managers, not the needs of people doing the projects. Interactions with people doing project work occur through meetings, reports, visits, and other communications.

Recently a number of project management software vendors have provided web access to people doing a project. This is a step forward, but the information is still presented from the project manager's perspective and not from the perspective of people doing the project.

People doing the project want to know what they need to do to contribute. Generally a project task is given to a team who develop a list of actions required to complete the project task. Each person needs to know the actions or ToDo's that are relevant to them. Then they can add the project task ToDo's to all the other ToDo's they have from other projects and tasks to create a consolidated ToDo list.

Over the last 12 years, TASKey had researched and developed distributed project management software. Fundamental finding were:

• Most of the features of project management software are rarely used

• Project information usually takes some time to be updated (and is largely used for reporting)

• People collaborate at the action/ToDo level (a level below project management tasks).

• Estimating and understanding the % complete for tasks is difficult, so a simpler means to estimate and communicate progress in real-time is urgently needed.

• Security and privacy on a need-to-know basis is required so everyone sees relevant information

• Project managers can still maintain control of distributed work provided it is conducted within their project framework (work breakdown structure)

• Projects are easier to get done when they are managed with other projects and tasks

TASKey has developed a simple method to breakdown project tasks into a list of actions/ToDo's. Then relevant ToDo's are aggregated on each stakeholder's personal ToDo list. The next step was to add ToDo time management to the regularly used parts of traditional project management.

Now TASKey has easy to use distributed project management web software that meets the needs of all stakeholders, handles the complexities of today's workplaces and provides critical information in real-time. By extending traditional project management, distributed project management meets the needs all project contributors, including project managers.

By,

Dr Neil Miller

http://www.me2team.com