A new way of looking at project management tools: AirSaas
Because portfolio project management is not just a Gantt, AirSaas offers a tool that simplifies your reporting, governance and project communication
Because portfolio project management is not just a Gantt, AirSaas offers a tool that simplifies your reporting, governance and project communication
Project management tools give managers visibility and the ability to effectively prioritize projects according to their potential benefits for the company.
AirSaas does not require any setup: import your Excel and start using the tool. No training required - the tool can be used by your project team from day one.
The price should not be an obstacle to your productivity. Enjoy a free trial period and then pay for a subscription based on the number of users.
AirSaas makes you gain visibility and makes your teams more productive regardless of the size of your IT department. Don't wait until you're overwhelmed to equip yourself.
A good project is a well-prepared project. However, 90% of the scoping sheets are incomplete. On AirSaaSs we guide your employees in filling out the information that is essential for a good framework.
The scoping sheets are dynamic and collaborative. Your teams can iterate together until the project is validated.
Not all projects are created equal. As a business partner, you must set up a method for managing IT projects according to key indicators.
AirSaas offers a filterable view with all consolidated information to make informed decisions.
You are at the center of attention and must keep business managers and your management informed of your projects' progress. To do this, we created automated flash reports.
In one click, generate a report (.ppt, .pdf, URL) with project progress details, points of attention and all up-to-date indicators.
You'll never miss a thing thanks to the timeline view. Get a bird's eye view of all current projects and their associated milestones.
Move elements around using click-and-drag, and test new arrangements according to stakeholder availability and project urgency.
Start now with an effective project flash report solution
The main frictions stem from a lack of understanding of the IT department's set of constraints, and of how to take account of business expectations. Bringing stakeholders together in a steering committee, around a dashboard displaying key indicators, improves understanding of what can be done, and by when.
A clear and shared decision workflow helps to improve understanding by providing transparency.
And finally, communicating on a regular basis about the progress, the problems encountered and the successes of the steps helps to reduce the frustrations and the impatience of the people in need. Less friction allows your team to move forward more calmly.
The main failure causes of a project are poor scoping, leading to time and cost overruns, and lack of adoption by end-users (internal or external customers). This is why AirSaas facilitates collaboration between IT and business units. Projects are better prepared upstream. You remain agile throughout the project lifecycle to maximize employee commitment and end-user adoption.
Setting up a communication plan is beneficial to all companies, and boosts the performance of IT departments. Designed for executive committee members and business managers, it has the benefit of reducing frustration, raising the profile of IT teams, and training all managers in the methods that work. Good communication on progress is all the more important with remote work. The automatic flash report is your best ally!
Start now with an effective project flash report solution
There are many different types of project management, each serving different purposes. However, it is not uncommon for there to be confusion, particularly between those that enable project management, and those that aim to simplify the management of a project portfolio.
Project management tools make it easier to manage the various aspects of a single project. They support the project manager or steering committee across a range of tasks. They enable you to :
These tools will facilitate the planning of not one, but all of a company's projects.
Small companies with few projects don't necessarily need tools to manage project portfolios. But as companies grow, the number of projects increases, until a global, organized management of all projects becomes extremely time-consuming for each project manager or for the steering committee: this is a sign that investment in such a tool is surely necessary.
A project portfolio management tool makes it possible to:
Project management tools already existed on the market as early as 1980. But similar new tools have continued to develop in the meantime.
While, in recent years, these software programs have tended to meet the needs of single project management as well as project portfolios, this has not always been the case. Some of them were originally created to deal with only one of these two issues.
Pain pain targeted at the date of creation
As you can see on this graph, most project portfolio management tools were first created in order to meet the need to manage a single project. It was only over years after that these were enhanced to allow several projects to be carried out simultaneously in an optimal manner.
It's worth noting, however, that some software solutions, such as Planview, had decided to focus on project portfolio management from the outset, while other tools, such as Sciforma and Ganttic, were able to address both issues from the outset: management of single projects, and project portfolios!
The overwhelming majority of project management tools today deal with these two issues from the outset: there is a need to simplify decision-making between the various stakeholders, whether at the level of a single project, or at the more global level of the project portfolio.
Project management tools may have similar goals, but their functionalities can be quite different. The origin of these differences is twofold: depending on the need to which the tool was first designed to respond, but also on the vision of project management they promote.
Start now with an effective project flash report solution
There are a number of reasons why project management software can offer a variety of functions. The way in which they were originally developed has an influence, but their features also depend on the vision of project management they promote. But why do different visions of project management coexist in IT Departments?
For many years, the IT department has been confined to a technical role, but now it is increasingly called upon to help the company achieve its business goals. It must no longer simply ensure that the run is running smoothly, but must also get closer to the organization's various departments to understand their difficulties and be in a position to provide them with appropriate solutions.
The needs of IT Departments in terms of project management tools have therefore evolved considerably. Indeed, an IT department will not need the same features depending on whether it wants to monitor technically-focused projects and manage IT incidents, or whether it wants to structure a collaborative approach in order to gain a detailed understanding of the day-to-day needs of the business units.
With the growing importance of digital technology for organizations, CIOs can add value to their companies in a multitude of ways. For example, by automating business processes, the IT department can help its employees optimize their working time and thus become more competitive. Another aspect in which the IT department can support the company is the improvement of its business model: digitization offers new opportunities that can bring huge benefits from a business point of view.
Digital technology's growing importance in recent years has changed the nature of the tasks assigned to the IT department. And these new missions are not carried out in the same way, which leads the IT department to have new expectations in terms of project management tools!
The two trends described above are transforming the way in which IT departments work with business units. If we take the example of a technically-focused IT department, one of its priorities will be to ensure that the run operates smoothly, so that no employee has to suffer from purely technical problems. But if the IT department's ambition is to add value to the company from a business point of view, it must provide itself with the means to communicate regularly with business units in order to understand how it can help them achieve their business goals. But structuring such collaboration is no easy task, especially when the various departments are not used to working together.
An IT department that aims to control the behavior of its employees to avoid negatively affecting the IT system will not need the same type of project management tool at all, as one that aims to establish a strong dialogue with the business units, in order to bring them value in their core business.
To materialize a typical ideal of these two opposing visions of the role of an IT department, you can think about those two Maslow pyramids:
As we have seen, not all project management tools offer the same features. The best way to find your ideal tool is therefore to ask yourself what your vision of project management is: what are your expectations and goals - and more importantly: what role do you expect the IT Department to play in your company?
First off, it should be noted that project portfolio management tools can offer many different functionalities, including :
But rather than listing the features that these tools can offer, it's interesting to note that there are more structuring differences in style between them.
Not all project management tools are designed to meet the same number of needs. While some (such as ERP-type software) aspire to meet all the needs of IT Departments, other tools prefer to specialize in one or more of the functionalities traditionally offered by project portfolio management tools.
Each of these two types of tools has pros and cons. An ERP makes it possible to centralize all actions on the same tool, but has the disadvantage of being complex to evolve. In fact, these solutions are not very flexible and their upgrade is slow and expensive.
Conversely, a specialized project management tool has the disadvantage of not offering as many features, but offers other advantages. It is faster to implement, and makes it possible to reduce the exchange cost as the company evolves.
Again, there is no ideal solution: it all depends on your vision of the role of the IT derpartment, and the expectations you have of your project portfolio management tools. Some CIOs prefer to acquire heavy software that meets all of their current needs, while others choose to be able to install and uninstall solutions quickly at a reduced cost, according to the evolution of their business needs.
Many IT departments who have remained mainly focused on technology settle for communicating with business units through the traditional channels that are used in their company.
However, when the IT department wishes to establish stronger collaboration with its employees, and to be able to exchange regularly and in a structured manner, it'll be in its best interest to acquire a project portfolio management tool that offers a space for collaborative exchange. Thus, reporting is simplified, information is organized and the involvement of business units is facilitated.
When developed, some project management tools had the goal to offer a particularly intuitive interface to their users. This type of tool is ideal when you want to structure a collaborative approach between the IT department and less technical profiles. Indeed, inviting professionals to work on the same tool that is used by IT teams can discourage them and strongly hinder their involvement.
Thus, tools that rely on user experience simplify collaboration between business profiles and technical profiles by offering an interface that can be quickly understood by all stakeholders, while maximizing the overall adoption rate of the software.
Every tool necessarily carries with it a more or less advanced methodology. The match between the methodology carried by a tool and that already in place in the company using it is a key factor in the rate of adoption of this software by employees.
Indeed, the intrinsic methodology of your tool must correspond to your work processes, your goals and your vision of project management. Otherwise, each of your employees will have to work twice as hard to get to grips with the tool and use it, which will inevitably reduce its adoption rate and therefore its impact on the company.
You therefore need to consider the practices in place in your IT department before choosing the project management tool best suited to your existing processes, and thus maximize its influence on your employees.
While it's best to adapt your choice of tool to the methodology already in place within your company, it's important to note that a project management tool can also be used as a means of driving change in existing work habits. After all, a company's culture is the fruit of its environment - an environment that includes the software you use! By changing your employees' tools, you can influence not only the company's culture, but also its working methods.
However, while project management tools are relevant levers for getting your employees to change their practices, their impact should not be overestimated. Simply investing in a new tool is not enough to revolutionize practices that have been in place for several years.
Two conditions are essential to maximize the tool's impact. Firstly, the implementation of the tool must be supported by guidelines and instructions along the same lines as the change you want to create. But you also need to ensure that the methodology supported by the tool is not too far removed from the one currently used in your company, as completely transforming practices is complicated and can only be achieved over the long term.
In conclusion: the ideal solution is to choose a tool with a methodology close to the one already in place in your company, or at least the one you'd like to install.
AirSaas is a fairly lightweight PPM that is not intended to be an all-in-one software, but includes most of the key features an IT department needs to ensure the execution of its projects.
Jira
By integrating Jira with AirSaas, you automatically get project progress data into the platform. This allows you to have a global view of all projects and their progress without effort.
Microsoft Teams
AirSaas is integrated with Microsoft Teams. Automatically, the most important information on ongoing projects is sent to your dedicated Teams communication channels. With this integration, you can easily share the progress of projects with the entire company. If you use other software, let us know!
Our motto: to involve business users, the IT department needs to offer them a tool that they can learn to use quickly and without friction. We believe that it is not by forcing business teams to work on complex tools that companies will succeed in breaking down silos and structuring close business/IT collaboration.
We've taken this collaborative approach to its logical conclusion: AirSaas offers a search engine for solutions (external/internal) accessible to business managers. When a business has a need, it is already looking for solutions on its own, without necessarily notifying the IT department, which may even find itself faced with Shadow IT.
The idea here is to give IT Departments the tools they need to structure their solution-seeking efforts, by helping them understand the technical constraints of the information system.
AirSaas is a lightweight PPM, which integrates with your existing tools, and uses a strong collaborative methodology in order to involve business units.
