Enterprise project management software

“Enterprise” is a term that you come across often. But do you know what it means exactly, especially when used in conjunction with other terms? In this article we want to shed light on enterprise project management software.

Definition of project management

Project management in general describes the process of driving a project through its lifecycle until closing according to the project goals. Thereby, planned resources, budget and time frame need to be adhered to. If you want to read up more, please find our project management guide here.

What is enterprise project management?

Enterprise in an economic environment is defined as an organization with an intention to make profit, i.e. a business.
So when we talk about enterprise project management, it covers all projects within an organization. Many projects run simultaneously or overlapping. They can range from easy and short to very complex. However, all these projects require a variety of resources from the same organization. Thus, it calls for a project management approach that focuses on maximizing the broader company objectives besides the regular project management that tries to complete all single projects within the given constraints. Business goals need to be prioritized and projects managed and grouped to achieve the overall objectives of the organization. In order to streamline and improve project management across many projects, most enterprises use a project management software and create project management departments.

What is enterprise project management software?

An enterprise project management software aims at supporting an organization to manage multiple projects. The software will help to keep an overview about all projects’ status and thus the organization’s progress, manage a project portfolio, facilitate cross-functional and remote collaboration, scheduling projects and much more.

By replacing manual methods, spreadsheets, or office tools to manage projects with an enterprise project management software, you will gain the following:

• save a lot of time due to more efficient collaboration,

• have a more accurate view over projects and resources,

• create consistent processes across project teams,

• transparent information for team members and stakeholders.

What does OpenProject offer enterprises?

OpenProject as the leading open source project management software offers various features to support the management of an enterprise project landscape.

Project portfolio

To get an overview of all your projects, OpenProject offers a project list with all important project attributes, e.g. project status. You can use this project overview to create a multi project status dashboard if you include your own project custom fields, e.g. custom status options, accountable, project duration etc. This list will display all projects including hierarchical relationships from parent projects to sub-projects.

Project dashboard

OpenProject offers the module project overview. It serves as a dashboard for a selected project where all relevant information can be displayed. You can customize the information by selecting widgets for the dashboard. Choose order and size of the widgets to match the project dashboard with your needs. The project team can also have access to the project overview so that everyone is aligned and up to date.

Project report

Within the project dashboard, you can choose work package graph widgets to display the work packages status of a project like a report. Thereby, you can choose between several graph views (bar, pie, lines etc.)

Your personal project dashboard

In OpenProject, you can use the My Page module to set up your personal dashboard. Choose from a variety of widgets to e.g. display work packages that you are assigned to or that you created or include project information such as the latest news of a certain project and many more.

Project templates

In order to make project management consistent across an organization, we encourage the use of project templates. On top, it will save the project team time as it reduces effort to set up a new project. In OpenProject, you can create as many templates as you want. Either use an existing project and save it as a template or create a template from scratch. All properties of the project template will be copied to the new project.

Project custom fields

OpenProject allows you to customize your projects to your organization’s needs. To do so, you can introduce as many project custom fields as needed. Add additional information that is specific to your organization, e.g. project accountable, project due date.

These are OpenProject’s main project portfolio management features. To discover all features, click here.

OpenProject is available in three versions: the free Community edition which needs installation in your environment, offering a comprehensive feature set. For enterprises who would like to use the full feature set as well as the OpenProject support, we offer the paid options Enterprise cloud and Enterprise on-premises edition. These two Enterprise versions include additional Enterprise add-ons and professional support. Find your perfect set-up and choose between on-premises as well as flexible hosting options. Compare the features of all 3 versions here.