Exploring Functionality of Mobile Applications for Project Management

Mobile devices and applications are changing the way individuals gather, process and share information. A development which also applies to project management. This paper reports an explorative study on the functionality of 50 project management apps. The apps were analyzed on the variables: type of functionality, project management processes supported, methodology/standard supported, topics covered, website support, languages supported, project roles supported, number of team members supported and number of projects supported. Our analysis showed that the professionalism, functional and technical support of the apps differ hugely, with some being developed as entrepreneurial experiments and others as professional products. From the summary of our findings we concluded that the functionality of project management apps today is mainly focused on two application areas: (A) Supporting the role of the project manager individually in the planning/organizing processes of the project and (B) Supporting team communication and team collaboration.Lacking in functionality seems to be the communication/collaboration with project sponsor and other stakeholders. Based on our study we recommend project managers to be selective when starting to use project management apps. The most professional apps that appeared in our study were developed as additions to web based project management tools or collaboration platforms.