Project Management Software: Pros And Cons

Introduction

Special Olympics is operational in Northern California serving athletes with intellectual disabilities. These athletes are majorly children and in some case the young adults who are being coached by the best trainers and being provided the services by hundreds of volunteers each year. The company was developed in 1968 with the aim of providing benefits and services to the disable person. This number has been increasing since then and the company has been trying to reach the disabled intellectuals to try and support them. The company provides different types of sports platforms for children, young and adults who have intellectual disabilities to try and compete in various competitions. With the help of these activities being provided to these individuals, the company has been using many opportunities to keep them fit and trained. These individuals are provided courage and zest for life by experiencing normal activities and entertainment activities including the awards ceremony. The skills and experience of these individuals are shared with others in order to develop a healthier environment for disabled intellectuals (Special Olympics, n.d.).

Vision, Mission and Objectives of Enterprise

Vision

The vision of the company is not only to provide the facilities to intellectual disabled person but also to bring a social change and to unlock the joy of fitness and sports for everyone. The company has vision to let people understand and accept the human giftedness and to accept the intellect which is present in disabled individuals in all aspect of lives. It wants to unite people with different capabilities and disabilities to join hand and bring change to the world.

Mission

The mission of Special Olympics is to provide sports and athletics trainings and competitions to children, young and adults with intellectual disabilities for various sports activities and provide them opportunity to build themselves physically and mentally. The company envisioned to provide courage and motivation to these special individuals for standing up in the society with other individuals and allow them to share skills and experiences with each other.

Objectives

The objective of the company is to provide opportunities to the intellectual disabled persons and thus providing various benefits and opportunities in the form of sports activities and platform to learn and share experiences with each other. The objective of the company includes.

1. Providing excellence through the use of each opportunity and to improve the quality of the programs developed for the disabled intellectuals.
2. The company aims at integrating these special skills from different cultures and backgrounds and providing respect and strength to everyone in their style, culture, ethnicity and thoughts.
3. The company has aim to make a difference in the society even if no one is looking and paying attention.
4. The company’s objective is to bring these intellectual disabled individuals together and give them resect and honor for their difference in abilities and to treat them like they deserve to be treated.

Organizational functions Under Study

Special Olympics arrange different gaming programs for the students and youngsters. The USA games in Seattle by the company bring different students on board and promote inclusion, understanding and friendship among them. This program is the heart of Special Olympics activities. In Northern California and Nevada chapter, the teams were sent to Seattle to play at different platforms. There were more than 300 events to be handled by the Senior Manager named Abe Cruz (Kitch, n.d.). He was the only person responsible for every activity done at these events including handling of marketing team, producing the whole event including voices, images etc.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of using Project Management Softwares

There are various advantages which the companies has for using project management softwares for handling the projects and project activities and to keep track of these activities. The advantages which the software provides to the organizations is given below

1. It helps in improving the collaboration among team members
2. It helps in improving the planning and scheduling activities and to keep track of these activities.
3. It helps in better integration of different project tasks and events on a single platform and to include more components to the projects.
4. It helps in better handling and eases in the management of cost of the project.
5. It helps in assessing to the project resources remotely.
6. It helps in mitigating the overall risks on the project and events.

Certain disadvantages of the use of project management software include.

1. It is a costly investment to develop or buy project management software to handle the project activities and communication.
2. It is difficult for many individuals to use complex technological systems.
3. With the need for providing control access to the project components, there is a need to handle the access control mechanism in these systems which is costly to implement.

The companies need to use project management software for handling the activities of their business. It depends upon the nature of business and the number of individuals to be handles and number of activities to be scheduled. The companies handling a huge number of events and projects need to use these softwares in order to keep track of all the activities and tasks.

Use of Project Management Software

The team at Special Olympics decided to use project management software in order to handle the work management. They decided to use Asana because of its simple interface and specific features which can be used by the company including custom fields in multiple templates. It was found to be effective by making the workflow easier and efficient. The company got the featured product and services at 50% discount rate because of the nature of the business and the social benefit it provide to the society. The use of Asana for the company resulted in better and efficient results (“Special Olympics”, n.d.). The usage of software for Special Olympics in described briefly.

1. The team of the Special Olympics has been able to manage more than 300 events each year using the project management software. The templates from the software are being used to develop and plan the Summer Games fundraiser with much faster speed than usual. This also helps in keeping the critical things evaluated and the software allows them to track the entire plan from start to end.
2. Requests and Approvals are now much easier for the program manager because he has everything on the software that needs approval or suggestions or requests. This is done without any delays in the system operations.
3. It also helps in prioritizing of the tasks. The project manager prioritizes the tasks based on urgency and adds more resource to the critical and urgent tasks. This helps in handling the tasks by arranging the team meetings and discussion sessions online.

Role of Project Manager

The role of project manager is important for handling the project management software. In Special Olympics, the project manager was handling all the major functions of the system. All the approvals and requests were personally handled by him in order to keep informed of all the activities being done on the project. It allows the project manager to develop a more innovative and useful schedule to handle hundreds of events and thousands of resources on those events. The project manager keeps himself informed of all the activities which was not possible to do before the use of project management software. The performance of the daily tasks is monitored by the project manager at the end of the end which allows him to calculate the overall status of the project activities.

Implications, Conclusion and Recommendations

It was observed by Special Olympics team that with the use of Asana, they were able to produce the event and handle the marketing chores in half time than before. Yet, this time, the event was more memorable and successful in many ways. The company admitted that it was not possible for them to manage the great opening of the summer games without the help of Asana. So it is concluded that for the companies who are handling more than one project and more than one event at a time, there is a need to use good project management software. This not only helps them in streamlining their activities but also helps in handling the resources in easy way.

It is recommended for companies to first evaluate the need for the project management software and then consider multiple options. Evaluating each option can help them identify the best software which they can use for handling the operations of the business. The second thing is training the team members to use the software in a way that it can improve the efficiency of the business functions and project activities.

References

1. https://www.disabled-world.com/sports/special-olympics/
2. https://www.sode.org/about/mission-and-vision/
3. Kitch, B. (n.d.). Special Olympics Northern California & Nevada is leveraging a Legacy of Impact to Build a Data-driven Future. Retrieved from: https://blog.upmetrics.com/special-olympics-northern-california-nevada-is-leveraging-a-legacy-of-impact-to-build-a-data-driven-future
4. Special Olympics Northern California and Nevada produces more impactful events with Asana. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://asana.com/case-study/special-olympics-norcal
5. Special Olympics. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.specialolympics.org/programs/united-states/northern-california