What do you do if you need to choose project management software for R&D projects?

Je partage les orientations sur l'évaluation des caractéristiques car il est essentiel de bien définir préalablement l'objectif de la démarche pour construire l'outil. Bien évidemment cela demande de prendre en compte le périmètre d'action et son champs juridique pour garantir sa pertinence opérationnelle. En second lieu il convient également d'évaluer sa facilité de manipulation et les interconnexions associées pour les actions transversales. Il faut que l'outil réponde aux objectifs mais également aux attentes des utilisateurs pour lequel il est censé apporter une valeur ajoutée. Si l'outil ne répond pas à ces critères il est de fait inopérant. C'est pour cela que je parlerai de coconstruction pour un logiciel performant.

Good point! Do not invest into any solution until you match your needs to the capabilities and knowledge of the possible software solution(s). Instead of the outcome of the project I advise to focus on four main things which would influence your decision regarding the solution: 1) management needs and established procedures, 2) team size and project administration requirements, 3) size and complexity of used and involved resources 4) project complexity and project dependencies and connections to other projects. Those four will help to define and standardize your needs.

Start by identifying the specific needs and requirements of R&D projects, such as the size of the team, the complexity of the tasks, the level of collaboration required, and the need for tracking progress and deadlines. For example, if you're working on a large-scale R&D project with multiple team members collaborating on various tasks, you might prioritize project management software that offers robust collaboration features, such as shared calendars, task assignment capabilities, and real-time communication tools. On the other hand, if your R&D projects involve complex data analysis and require detailed tracking of experiments and results, one might prioritize software with advanced data visualization and reporting capabilities.

Very important part! Not just in selecting the most fit software solution, but also when you are in the initation and planning phase of your R&D project. The number of stakeholders, the operational and management tasks they have to perform within the project, the interconnections between them and other members, the information needs which have to be properly provided, are all very important aspects about how you define your needs regarding the possible software solution.

You should select the software which can be easily fit to your organization's project management methodology! Do not forget that the software is a tool which should serve and support you, not a solution which will solve your problems as it is, and as such you should align your operations to whatever the software is offering. Software are usually offering framework plus building elements from which you can choose and decide what parts of it you may and can use what elements or functions are not necessary for your team and your company.

When choosing a project management tool, the most important aspect from my experience is to define requirements with the different users. If this part is done properly the choice of the software itself is pretty straightforward. But user requirements is the most critical: how are we using it, how do we envision to use. This is the most time consuming part of the whole process as well.

There are enormous amount of possible project management software solutions out on the market. I suggest to try to use the one which fits most to your operational needs, your working environment (eg. if you have cloud based solutions from everything, then you should go for a cloud-solution), offers a good value-for-money ratio. If there is no special requirements and you already using some big software vendors' solutions, most probably the best choice is to get their project management solution as well which offers a good integration to your existing infrastructure.

I would not even suggest to start any R&D project without proper project management software. If there are many projects not just one running parallel within your organization, the only way you would be able to properly plan, execute, monitor and control your R&D projects if you have a software solution behind. The resource allocation, the time management, the change management, the risk mitigation all tasks need some kind of online tracking, visibility and management tool. The best solution is to have a cloud-base team accessed project management software.