The relationships between project activities can become complicated in medium- and high- complexity projects. Dedicated project management software can compute the sum of activity durations along several different paths through complex relationships and recalculate them immediately if any of the durations or starting times is changed. Similarly, charts and reports are updated automatically based on the new data. The most popular software for medium-complexity projects is Microsoft Project. If a project manager begins work on the project in the belief that it can be managed using a list of activities in a word processing program or in a spreadsheet, the list of activities and their durations can be copied and pasted, or imported, into the project management software’s table of activities, if the original document or spreadsheet was designed with that possibility in mind, as shown in Figure 6.25.
Once the data are placed in the project management software, the relationships can be defined and reports created. Organizations on a tight budget might consider using an open source program named OpenProject. Open source software is usually available at no cost for individual users and with fewer restrictions than proprietary software like Microsoft Project. OpenProject is similar to Microsoft Project, as shown in Figure 6.26, and could be used on low- and medium- complexity projects that do not need the more advanced features available in Microsoft Project.
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