ITs all about Management

For any industry vertical, maintaining business continuity is crucial.
Keeping minimum downtime is a challenge for any IT department across
organizations while dealing with a project, whether internal or external.

Sajid Sayed, manager, information systems, Jet Airways who is also a
certified project management professional (PMP) says, "In the airlines industry,
there is a need for best software for each area. There is in particular no
single or complete software tool that takes care of all areas of the airlines
business. Connecting all the systems seamlessly by using different tools is the
key challenge."

While doing so it is important to ensure business continuity and aim zero to
minimum downtime. All IT implementation at Jet Airways is on a real-time basis.

The company works on the scheduling tool called Microsoft Project. Sayed
says, "I believe in firmly keeping stakeholders informed all the time. About
80-90% of the time of a project managers goes into communication. If the
communication channels are open and all are informed, a project becomes
successful, and there is more ownership from stakeholders."

PC Suraj

surajp@cybermedia.co.in

In order to provide clients with solutions that enable them to manage their
business logistics better, one needs to use a tool that help in developing a
plan, assign tasks to resources, track progress, manage budgets, and analyze
workloads. According to Rajesh Chaudhari, implementation manager, functional &
technical retail projects, Groupsoft, using a project management tool such as
Microsoft Project helps him create a project plan in a few simple steps. The
tool also helps to calculate the projects critical path in the form of a Gantt
Chart.

Since Groupsoft provides complete retail solutions including ERP
implementation, supply chain optimization and implementation services, it is
important that managers use a project management tool that helps to calculate
the plan versus actual analysis. With the help of the resource graph option, one
can check if the resource is over allocated with tasks and can take a decision
to reallocate some tasks to other resources. Various filters and report options
help analyze various aspects such as project risks, project progress, critical
tasks as well as resource plans of a project.

Atreyee Datta

atreyeed@cybermedia.co.in

Using a project mamagement tool enables IT managers to guide a project from
point-to-point in a cost-effective way. At Andhra Cements, Microsoft Project
Management software is thus used for managing its projects. The MS project
management tool has helped the company manage expectations of all project
stakeholders on how they perform their roles and responsibilities.

Furthermore, the software assists manufacturing industries like Andhra
Cements in terms of executive level reporting for a single job or across all
projects and field administration such as punch list tracking, maintaining daily
report logs, change management and purchase order management. "Project
management best practice helped us to successfully initiate, plan, execute,
monitor, control and close our projects," says Shivannarayana Vemula, AGM,
systems, Andhra Cements. "The tool also helped us in process standardization,
document control, and cost control. With the help of this tool, we have executed
projects on time and under the budget allocations, to the utmost satisfaction of
our clients," he adds.

According to him, project management tools establish a relationship between
manager, client, and the core team.

Atreyee Datta

atreyeed@cybermedia.co.in