ProjectWork

To successfully implement a project, various project management methodologies are available, such as PMBOK and PRINCE2. Based on experience, they describe the aspects involved in planning and executing projects, such as agreeing on the scope, recording the work required, assessing the risks, determining the required expertise and materials, calculating the expected time and costs, structuring the documentation and communication, etc.

Planning and executing a project is often a complex matter where a lot of information comes together. In order to have guidance and to keep overview, a project planning is necessary. Creating and adjusting this takes a lot of time and effort, but it pays off in a better functioning team and a satisfied customer.

ProjectWork planning software speeds up and simplifies planning by showing a project in one schedule with its scope, work, time, resources, costs, documentation and communication. The information is available in tabular form, graphically and via linked information. It allows you to create and track project schedules online, even simultaneously by multiple users from different locations. ProjectWork is integrated with Google Workspace, so that planning is in your own Google Drive and Google apps are integrated with it. Two versions are available:

• Free: The owner can edit a schedule with tasks in Google Drive, but not share it with others. The result is a WBS decomposition with Gantt chart.
• Business: Users share and edit schedules with tasks and resources and integrate them with Google Drive, Google Chat, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, and Google Maps.
  Try Business for free for 14 days with no obligations.

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ProjectWork PM software can be used online at every location with an internet connection using every computer (Windows, Mac, Chromebook, Linux) with a modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge). Installation and maintenance are not required for a web application, this is done centrally in the cloud.

You need a Google account to sign-in. ProjectWork is integrated with Google Drive, Sheets, Calendar and Maps. Planning files are in Drive so you can always share the latest version with whoever you want. You can even work on the same file at the same time.

A Google account can be 1) a Gmail account (@gmail.com), 2) a Workspace account or 3) a Google account without Gmail.  A Workspace account is part of a company domain which has Google Workspace for its productivity software (email, calendar, text editor, slides, spreadsheets, video conferencing and much more). A Google account without Gmail means that you can have a Google account on any email-address, like from a company without Workspace, but also from email providers like Yahoo and Hotmail. Here you can create such a Google account: https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail.

After installing ProjectWork from the Google Workspace Marketplace, sign-in to ProjectWork, allow access to your Google Drive and register after a choice from

• use ProjectWork for Free with limited functionality,
• start a free 14-day Business trial without obligations,
• buy in-app a Business license for a certain period.

You can use these options in succession, the schedules you work on will remain compatible.

Read the Terms of Use and the Privacy policy.

ProjectWork for Business can be used during a license period, without subscription or direct debits. You buy a number of months, the minimum period is 6 months. A month before the end of the period you will be informed about extension in the app itself and by email. An extension is purchased before a trial or license expires but only starts at the expiration date. Without an extension you can still edit your schedules with limited features for free and purchase Business later.

Purchasing is done in the app itself, ensuring you order for the correct account or domain. The license options, periods and prices will show in ProjectWork after you register in the app. The options are a license

• for a single Google account,
• for a Group with multiple Google accounts that activate themselves once with a license code,
• for all accounts in a Domain with Google Workspace, without account administration and activation.

The buyer of a Group license will receive the license code and is responsible for forwarding it to the accounts to activate. A Google account activates itself permanently, there is no option to deactivate in favor of another account.

The (sub-)domain in a Domain license is the part after the @ in the Google accounts that can use the license.

After selecting the desired license, you pay with a PayPal account. You can also copy and send the PayPal link to the person who executes the payment. After payment, your new expiration date will show immediately in ProjectWork after page refresh. With a Group license an email will be sent to the buyer with the license code and instructions, on how to activate Google accounts, including from the buyer if desired.

In the support section of the site you find the manual.

Help desk support is available for Limited and Business use.
You can contact the Forscale help desk directly in ProjectWork.

Task breakdown

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) gives an overview of the total project divided in summary tasks and tasks. ProjectWork helps you to easily create and edit a WBS by indenting and renumbering tasks.

Task dependencies and conditions

A static project schedule has tasks entered with start date and end date or better start date and task duration. Changing a complex schedule consisting of concurrent and dependent tasks costs a lot of time and effort.

A dynamic project schedule has tasks entered with duration and links to predecessors to include dependencies. Based on this information the shortest schedule is calculated by ProjectWork using the critical path method. Changing a task duration or start date results in a re-calculated schedule. Summary tasks resulting from the WBS can also be linked.

Default tasks are scheduled to be completed as soon as possible (ASAP) to get maximum slack and the shortest project schedule. A task can get a condition to be scheduled as late as possible (ALAP) without slack or to start or finish on a specific date. The entire project can also be set to start or end on a specific date.

Gantt chart

In the Gantt chart, ProjectWork makes tasks visible in time, including their dependencies and the critical path.

Progress tracking

Progress can be entered per task with a percentage. ProjectWork calculates the resulting progress per summary task and resource.

A color code indicates delay with respect to the current date.

Resource assignment and leveling – in Business

Resources are needed to accomplish a task. A resource can be a person, but also a piece of equipment or an amount of material. After assigning resources to tasks, ProjectWork keeps a Capacity chart on the load of each resource.

A resource can have a site location. A site type resource will show the site location in Google Maps.

If a resource is assigned to multiple overlapping tasks, it can happen that a resource is assigned more than 100%. ProjectWork can shift tasks forward to resolve this over-allocation.

Work estimate – in Business

The advantage of dynamic scheduling becomes even more apparent when you base a task duration on work estimate and assigned resources. Changing the assigned resources will result in a re-calculated schedule and budget.

Sprint planning – in Business

Agile development projects successfully use iterative Sprints according to the Scrum framework. A sprint is a time-box of one month or less resulting in a useful incremental product. The Product Backlog items with their detail tasks are kept in the Tasks table. During the Sprint Planning event, at the start of a Sprint, Product Backlog items are selected for the Sprint by assigning them a sprint type resource from the Resources table.

A sprint resource can be filtered to only show the tasks belonging to this Sprint Backlog. Work, progress, and costs of all Sprint tasks are summarized per sprint resource.

Budget calculation – in Business

ProjectWork supports both fixed and variable costs per task. The variable costs stem from the assigned resources. The resource costs can be per hour, per used amount or fixed.

ProjectWork accumulates costs per task, summary task, multiple tasks and resource.

Set working hours – in Business

The standard working hours of 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week can be adjusted to reflect actual working times and working days. The schedule will take the available working hours into account.

Days which are non-working by exception, like holidays, can be entered. The schedule will skip these days.

Plan with saved tasks – in Business

Reusing groups of common tasks ensures uniformity and speed in planning. In ProjectWork the on the clipboard copied tasks can be saved for this and pasted in the schedule later. The paste options determine the information to be pasted from the clipboard and the applied factors for repetition and task duration. The saved tasks can also be copied to a new schedule where they can be used again.

Compare with baselines – in Business

Reference points are useful to monitor the progress of a project, for example per milestone. These so-called baselines are a copy of the schedule at that time. These baselines and the variance with the current schedule are visible per task and resource.

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is a well-known software package to create project schedules. ProjectWork can import XML files saved by MS Project. It can also export a created schedule to an XML file. The maximum file size to import is 25 Mbyte.

Slack – in Business

Slack can be used for project communication. Schedules created with ProjectWork can be posted into a Slack channel with a message using a webhook URL. The schedule's view can be preserved when opened from the post. Project information like its description can also be included in the post.

Google Chat – in Business

Google Chat can be used for project communication. Schedules created with ProjectWork can be posted into a Chat space with a message using a webhook URL. The schedule's view can be preserved when opened from the post. Project information like its description can also be included in the post.

Google Drive™

ProjectWork is fully integrated with Google Drive to create and open ProjectWork files from your own Google Drive. All changes are stored in Drive automatically.

Because project schedules are kept in Google Drive, it is possible to work on multiple schedules at the same time. Also sharing schedules with others is possible.

HTML in Google Drive – in Business

A published schedule can be viewed without an ProjectWork license. Depending on the required confidentiality the HTML schedule can be shown on a site or sent individually as a file.

Spreadsheet in Google Drive – in Business

If you want to make a report or analysis from your schedule, you can publish it to a Google spreadsheet for further processing. You can publish to a new spreadsheet or to an earlier published one which is than updated, keeping your added calculations, charts, notes, etc.

Milestones in Google Calendar – in Business

Milestones and deadlines are important events in a project schedule. In the schedule they are tasks with duration 0. ProjectWork can enter these events in its ProjectWork Google Calendar to keep track. The milestone events also appear in the calendars of the assigned resources.

Milestones of all your projects appear in the same ProjectWork Calendar. You can share this calendar with others.

Site locations in Google Maps – in Business

Resources that have a site location specified will be plotted into Google Maps to show the geographic progress.