An experienced project manager knows that there is a thin line in balancing the number of project documents and the ease of information flow.

What tool do you use for planning and managing projects?

It’s probably no wonder, as one of the main developers of ConceptDraw Office, that I use ConceptDraw Office suite every single minute of every business day.

Various reports and documents used within different stages of project management often contain the same data. How do you optimize the number of documents created to avoid too much redundancy in documentation?

There is no doubt that different forms of representing information are useful for different stages of project. During the planning stages, representing information in the form of mind map using ConceptDraw MINDMAP is most effective. For presenting to management, the same information can be used in the form of Gantt chart within ConceptDraw PROJECT. The data in both of these instances may be same but is being presented to match the audience. As this data can easily be transformed into a mind map or Gantt chart, therefore is no need to store both formats. With ConceptDraw Office, the information is easily interchangeable.

How can project managers minimize paperwork while maintaining the same level of information to make decisions and solve critical issues?

Those of us who use ConceptDraw Office actually apply the visual approach to management process. We use a mix of graphical indicators that provide a complete picture of a project’s past, present, and future health. The graphical project dashboard is the tool that accumulates all necessary indicators. No paperwork necessary!

What is display on the Project Dashboard?

The project dashboard contains visual indicators that display current status of key project factors:

• Project status indicator
  Displays the current grade of project difficulty, and how the project is being managed.
• Task Status Completion Indicator
  Displays the completed, on target, and late tasks.
• Task Status Indicator
  Contains information about task completion status, tasks in progress, and tasks not yet started.
• Project Progress Indicator
  This report contains data about the overall project progress current to date.

How can the project dashboard be used to optimize the quantity of project documentation?

If the project dashboard indicators show the green signal, we know that everything is all exactly as it should be. There is no necessity for additional reports. The red signal means it is necessary to resolve outstanding or urgent project issues. Additional information is needed to analyze and resolve critical failures within the project . At this point it is necessary to generate additional reports within ConceptDraw PROJECT.

List the minimum set of documents than are needed to support the planning and management process.

The possibility to exchange data between ConceptDraw Office applications enables you to transform the same data into a mind map or project Gantt chart. Thus, the optimal set of documents for managing a project consists of one fully detailed mind map, a project dashboard, and graphical and tabulated reports.

The following HowTo will help you to compose the package of reports created by ConceptDraw Office that can be in a help for your certain project.