Competitive Analysis

To broaden our understanding of current planning and execution practices in industry, we examined several project management software packages, and three industry-specific planning tools. Microsoft Project, Easy Project .NET, and Primavera are critical path project management tools marketed towards IT organizations. In addition we examined three planning tools utilized in the Airline, News Broadcasting, and Space industries.
The consolidated analysis revealed important aspects of project planning support across tools and improved our understanding of current methods and terminologies. In addition, the exploration of industry-specific tools exposed different approaches to tailoring planning and execution to the specific needs and requirements of a domain. Results from the competitive analysis, summarized below, ultimately influenced our research findings.

Our analysis was structured around major planning themes that surfaced during our initial exploration of the problem space. We documented the notable features and functionalities of each tool with screenshots and short descriptions.

Identified Planning Themes

Multi-User Collaboration
Allowing multiple people to create edit and execute portions of a plan

Issue Tracking
Identifying problems in a plan and assigning responsibilities to resolve

Execution Management
The real-time plan execution interface

Progressive Granularity
Viewing and managing the plan at increasing resolutions over time

Version Control
Viewing and duplicating previous stages of a plan; tracing the life-cycle of a plan

Task Dependencies
The ability to create contingent relationships between tasks

Resource Management
The allocation of personnel and equipment

Summary of Findings

Project Management Tools

Commercial project management software typically utilizes the Critical Path Method, which models a project in terms of the activities, durations, and dependencies in order to determine the longest set of sequence-dependent activities required to complete the project. These tools promote features such as task dependency modeling, issue tracking, and visibility into the personnel and equipment allocation. While all analyzed tools support some level of asynchronous communication, the tools differ in support of multi-user collaboration and concurrent communication. Additionally, beyond supporting undo, these project management tools ostensibly do not support version control or tracing multiple versions of the plan.

Industry-Specific Tools

Generalizing from our analysis, domain-specific planning tools are tailored to handle domain-specific constraints, such as flying conditions in Airlines, or anchor reading rates in News Broadcasting. Additionally, features and functionality in these tools mirror the unique needs of the workflow in each industry. Interestingly, tools in each domain vary in their support of the planning and execution divide. While some industries maintain a strict division between planning and execution in tools with separate interfaces, others combine planning making, iteration, and execution into a single display.