_.png)
Someone formerly said, “Any tool that forces you to change how you do your job just to accommodate the tool… is a tool that’s not suitable for you”. She was right: tools should improve your ability to function as a Project Manager as efficiently and effectively as possible and not force you to implement fresh practices to use the tool.
Project Management tools aid your business to increase by making every project properly organised. It escalates the workflow by keeping track of each task and maintaining the timeline. These Project Management tools make functions of project managers such as; running meetings, planning and scheduling, managing resources and budget and analysing reports easy to be executed.
Based on research, 77% of companies utilise project management tools and 87% of top-performing companies utilise project management software. While we’d all like to download the magical tool that implements all the tasks, there are certain features the tool must possess.
In this article, the key features in Project Management tools will be looked at. Listed below are the key features you should be looking for:
Planning and Scheduling
To manage a team, it is essential to have everyone’s tasks and responsibilities outlined and visible. Aiding to evade misunderstandings and recognising whom to delegate fresh tasks. The best project management tool should enable allocating tasks to team members and setting priorities and deadlines. Aside from that, notifications about the due dates of tasks should be automatic.
Tools with task management features will make prioritising tasks and leading a project team very easy. Thus, the project manager will be able to avoid risks with a shared team calendar and a planning and task scheduling tool.
Here’s how the planner improves your project management:
· The workforce planner view will give you an overview of the amount of time and tasks allotted to each member of your team...showing the unscheduled time slots.
· You’ll get insight on who is suitable for specific tasks in the next step of a project.
· Fast overview of all team member’s tasks and unscheduled time aids to set realistic deadlines and to evade overbooking people.
· Whenever an urgent task needs to be prioritised, you can move other tasks ahead for the urgent tasks.
· In a situation where a team member finishes a task ahead of time, you can assign them additional responsibilities if required.
· Your team will be a hugely productive project team.
2. Collaboration
A project team consists of tens or hundreds of people that are in charge of specific tasks and possessing expert knowledge in various fields. More often than not, project team members are required to assess each other’s work to complement their own. Thus, it’s highly essential to establish an organised and quick communication through multiple channels.
Features such as file sharing, shared calendars, and contact lists should be included in the best project management tools. Every team member needs to insert information into the system for others to have quick access to it.
When selecting project tools, check whether they provide free storage for uploading your files and data. This will improve team communication and the sharing of customer data. For meetings; a team dashboard can function as a project KPI report.
3. Documentation
It’s highly advisable to make use of a project management tool instead of Excel spreadsheets. The benefit of having this feature is that all data will be accessible in one place.
Additional, it will make sharing of files with your team easier and accessible in a few clicks. When seeking the best project management tool, ask companies which types of information their tools enable them to store and manage. Finally, you will get detailed reporting when you gather information in a single place.
4. Reporting
For the success of your projects, you are required to be aware of the shortcomings and problems that require a fast solution. You need two features to obtain a detailed overview of your project progress and these are; insightful reports and a KPI dashboard.
The best project management tool must include reporting features to collect your past inserted project data and enable producing customisable reports. For instance, you can get reports on your project budget, expenses, completed tasks, and team members’ performance.
Lastly, the fastest way to keep track of your project performance is to make a project dashboard that updates the information automatically in actual time. You can create multiple KPI reports for multiple purposes such as; Shared team dashboard, Financial KPI report, Project Performance Dashboard, and Project Manager Dashboard.
5. Resource Management
When selecting a project management tool, you need one that will permit you to keep track of other project resources and not only your team’s time. For instance, meeting rooms and materials utilised in the project process.
It will enable you to outline all the scheduled and planned resources and calculating the cost of their use. This aids to evade over-assignments and possible conflicts for inadequate resources.
You’ll quickly notice when a resource is over-utilised and can decide whether to limit its use or set fresh guidelines for its exploitation.
Bottom Line…
As a project manager, you can manage and assign resources to particular tasks and ensure that everybody has the resources and tools to complete their tasks. In doing so, you need to seek for the aforementioned key features before choosing them.
Contact Laevo today, to see how our platform provides these wonderful benefits and so much more.