TABLE OF CONTENTS An individual without information cannot take responsibility; an individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility.
Jan Carlzon,
Riv Pyramidera!
If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?
Voltaire
The formal methods for planning, budgeting, and control in the last six chapters might seem too sophisticated, complicated, or time-consuming to be practical. Whether that is true or not depends upon how they are implemented. Those chapters illustrated the kind of information needed to manage projects, but they presume that the project manager is organized and has the means for collecting, storing, and processing the information. Generally, formal methods for planning and control do not require any more input data or information than is, or should be, available in any project. What they do require, however, is a framework and methodology, a system, for collecting, organizing, storing, processing, and disseminating that information. Here, we refer to such a framework and methodology as a project management information system (PMIS).
The term PMIS can pertain to a manual or computer-based system, but most commonly it refers to the latter. With the growing importance of computers in management and the proliferation of computer-based PMISs, it is important that project managers understand the kinds of computer-based PMI software and hardware systems available, and appreciate the issues in selecting and implementing these systems. These are the topics covered in this chapter.
It is almost impossible for any contemporary manager to do her job...
