Project management software is a shared online plan of who does what by when, with timelines, dashboards and approvals. It is also called work management software. Its users are often people who would otherwise run their projects in a spreadsheet.
The plan is made of tasks. Each task has an owner, a start date and a due date. Some tasks depend on others: one cannot start until another is finished. This link is called a dependency. The software can show the plan as a grid, like a spreadsheet. It can also show it as a Gantt chart, a timeline in which each task is a horizontal bar and the dependencies are arrows between the bars. A milestone is a date that marks an important point in the project, such as "handover".
Why not use a spreadsheet? A spreadsheet is copied, emailed and changed by many people, so nobody knows which copy is correct. It does not remind anyone of a due date. And it does not move later tasks when an earlier task is late. Project management software keeps one plan, online, for everyone.
Say a property developer in Navi Mumbai must hand over 120 flats in a new tower by 31 March. The plan has about 400 tasks. "Lift inspection" depends on "Lift installation". "Apply for the occupancy certificate" depends on the fire safety approval. In January, the lift supplier reports a 10-day delay. The project head changes one date. The software moves every dependent task 10 days later, and it marks the handover milestone as at risk. The developer's director sees this on a dashboard, a page of charts that summarises the plan: 82% of tasks done, 14 tasks late. When a buyer asks for different kitchen tiles, the request goes to the project head for approval, and the software records the decision.
The software also connects to tools around it. The plan's tasks can link to pages in knowledge base and wiki software, where the details are written. Action points from a meeting in video conferencing and team chat can become tasks. Enterprise search can find tasks along with documents. Above single projects, project portfolio management (PPM) decides which projects a large company funds.
Project management software is different from an issue tracker. Software teams use an issue tracker to plan their work as a list of bugs and features. Project management software is used by every kind of team: construction, marketing, events and finance. The same plan idea is also used for a new customer's first months, in customer onboarding software. Two products built mainly in India sell project management software to project-based companies around the world. One maker is based in Pune. The other has its Indian offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru.