Project Management On The HP Palmtop

Solutions for a Small Business

by

Ed Keefe

About This Document

___Tales___ ___Terms___ ___Tips____ ___Tools___ ___Toys____ ___Theory___


About This Document


Project Management on the HP Palmtop: Solutions for a Small Business is both a document and a project.

From Your Point of View

For you, the reader, this document provides a comparative review of some of the Project Management programs that work on the HP Palmtop along with a lot of background material, just in case you're not familiar with PM.

How Do You Read It?

The preferred way to read this Hypertext Markup Language document is with an HTML reader such as Netscape Navigator 2.0 on a desktop machine or Andreas Garzotto's HV HTML reader on the Palmtop.

In an ordinary document, where you'd see a cross-reference to another article, in an HTML document you'll see a cross-reference presented as colored text (on a desktop) or shown in a box (on the Palmtop). Simply move the cursor to the reference and press Enter or click on the colored text and the HTML reader will display the cross-referenced document. To get back to where you left off, just press the ESC key(on the Palmtop) or click the on-screen BACK button (on the desktop).

From My Point of View

For me, this document is a small project. It was undertaken as part of a larger project that involved learning HTML, the language of the World Wide Web. The HTML document could also be thought of as an experiment. I wanted to see if this kind of document really works? Is it just a fancy "electronic page-turner" or is it a viable means of communicating ideas? In places you may think that the document reads like a text book. You're right. Parts of the document will be removed when I try using it as part of the material in a Systems Analysis and Design class later on. I've left those parts in just so you can have some background reading material.

Here's What's Included in This Document

The Project Management on the Palmtop document contains six topics:

Click on BACK or press ESC to go to the top of the document


Tales (Short and Tall) from the Field


The following list will let you access some scenarios that illustrate the need for Project Management along with suggestions for possible implementations. Most of the scenarios are "textbook" cases. The one for WebPage Creation is an actual project that I undertook while developing this document.

Terms Used In Project Management

The world of Project Management has become a subculture, complete with its own language or at least a set of buzzwords. Click on the text to access a glossary of more than 60 such terms.

Glossary of PM Terms


Tips, Traps and Techniques

Here is a collection of tips, traps and techniques from professional project managers.


Tools: from Elegantly Simple to Simply Elegant

The items in the following list will let you read about various Project Management Tools that are available for the HP Palmtop and your WinTel Desktop.


Using Other Tools to Implement PM

Toys? Here are a few things you can do with the HP Palmtop's built in application to emulate true project management software. The attempts are not really toys, but they just look like toys in contrast to such heavy-hitting PM tools as Primavera, SureTrak, Project: VISION and ProTracs.


The Theory and Background for Project Management

There are many proven methods for planning a project. The methods deal with the plan's contents, time, and costs. The Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) are two of the most commonly used charting tools that show the time needed to complete a project. Gantt charts and milestone charts are also valuable methods for planning and tracking when events take place within a project. The following list of topics will let you explore these topics in more detail.

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Ed Keefe

A long time contributor to Hewlett-Packard Handheld support publications, Ed Keefe is an author, editor, programmer, computer science instructor, and part-time consultant in the computer industry. Ed's articles appear in The HP Palmtop Paper. He is also the editor of the book PC In Your Pocket: Information When You Need It.