Software Review

Review of Planning Force Express Planner - Desktop

Planning Force Express Planner produced by Intelligent Software Company is a Desktop software application for planning projects. It is the foundation product of a larger suite of tools that includes Portfolio Manager, Program Manager and an upcoming collaborative product. 

Express Planner has many of the features you would expect in a full-blown project management application. You can input tasks in a hierarchy of Projects, task groups, and tasks. You can input resources with categories. Resources and tasks can each have their own calendars to indicate non-productive periods.

But keep in mind that Express Planner is only the first element in a much larger product. As such, it is primarily focused on task and resource scheduling. It's goal is to optimize task schedules and achieve realistic resource allocations. Features like cost and budget management, and variance reporting are available in the rest of the product suite.

I like this product very much. It has a simplicity and elegance in its design that would allow even a novice user to very quickly begin using it to build complex schedules of multiple projects, and balance resources across them all. The reports and charts are easy to understand and easy to produce.

One of the hallmarks of a good project management tool is the ability to protect the project manager from self-deception. Projects are often managed within a rigid climate where schedule constraints are dictated without regard to real-world concerns. Many of the popular software products offer a variety of ways to "tweak" and "adjust" the schedule to get it to fit into the predetermined constraints. The result is a schedule that is unrealistic if not patently false -- one that, if followed, could have disastrous results.

Express planner protects the project and its manager from this self-deception. It takes the input that it has been given and creates an optimized but realistic schedule -- without tweaks, adjustments or fine-tuning. It produces a schedule that has a high probability of leading to a successful conclusion.

Get more information or order Express Planner at www.planningforce-express.com.

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- Jake Alexander