One thing that software providers have often been guilty of is making the claim that their particular software can solve any problem encountered on a project. Yes, technology has come a long way and has revolutionised the way our world works, but how far can technology really go to solve our project management problems?
Although it would be nice to think technology is the end to all our problems, we know that’s just not true. There are some things that simply work better in the human mind, so every software solution has to have a human aspect to it. And with software, like many things in life, you only get out what you put in. There are some fantastic features in project management software applications these days, but they depend on one very important thing. The user. At the end of the day, technology is only as good as what the end user can do with it.
So where does that leave people like us, developers and designers of project management software? Our role is simple. We have to design the best software possible. That doesn’t mean something that is a sophisticated solution to every single problem ever encountered on a project. It simply means we have to create something that can work with the project team, adapt to the way they work, align itself with existing processes and, above all, not create more problems than it solves.
We have taken all this into account with our development of IPM, and we really feel we’ve struck a balance between technology that can assist a project team and help do things better, without becoming the main focus or requiring hours of training. Because at the end of the day, good technology is not about what has all the bells and whistles, but more about what can fit into the real human context of a project team.