DavidS said:
I am working with a construction company and would like to
use PDA's for my men in the field. This would enable them
to download new information on a daily basis without the
need to provide a data entry person. Will this work? and
if it does what type of PDA is the best to use or
recommended to be used.
Far as I know, you can't run Project itself on any PDA, including ones
with Microsoft's OS on them.
You can find a lot of resources simply by searching Google for "pda
microsoft project".
A while back I did some thinking and research on just this question. I
concluded it would work and even found indications from conversations
(and published refernences) that some are already using PDA. Opportunity
for me to progress that work didn't materialise, however.
From that thinking it reinforced my view that technology is (and has
been) here to allow field construction people to use PDA's. However, to
make them work requires some pre-requisites:
1. the business benefits have to be clear to support people taking on a
change. they won't change for change reasons. (field construction
people won't take kindly, I believe, to take on the job of the data
entry person that you laid-off or reassigned)
2. the work process needs to be redesigned to support the new tool
3. the data they deal with has to be data that *they* need
4. without a work process, use of PDA's will fail.
5. the users have to *want* to do this and need to see benefit.
Somtimes paper "just works".
6. the management has to lead by example and use PDA (or equiv).
I concluded that there is data in Project's I'd like to get on a PDA for
use by field personnel, and data that I'd like to get back from them.
There is also data available elsewhere outside of Project that ought to
be on those PDA's also. I concluded that some sort of "portal"
application covering the project, the site, the company, etc. would be
of some use. It's not so much about getting "Project" data to the
field, it's getting "information" to the field.
