Project management software is a tool that project managers use when managing projects. Projects are different than tasks, and project management software is different than task management software. Task management is basically an ongoing to-do list. Project management is for endeavors with multiple variables, with a defined successful endpoint. Projects have a goal, whereas tasks are recurring in nature.
What Are Project Manager Tools?
The key to project management is getting to delivery. Project management software gives a project manager the tools needed to manage a team working towards a goal. Some of those tools include
- a timeline, for project planning. A popular example of this is a Gantt chart
- task management tools, such as a kanban board
- file sharing
- resource allocation
- workload balancing
- data export
- forecasting
- budget tracking
- expense tracking
- employee time tracking
- scheduling
- software integrations
- calendar sharing
What Does Project Management Software Do?
Project management software helps project managers get to delivery, efficiently and successfully.
When you are managing a project, you need to coordinate the efforts of a team towards a goal. Think of an airline route map. The “hub” for the project is the project manager. Keeping track where every plane in the sky is at any given point is a daunting task!
Having a suite of tools that streamlines planning and operation of a project gives a project a much better chance of succeeding.
How Does Project Management Software Help Me?
Let’s say the project you are managing is an event. There are marketing materials to be made, ads to be purchased, an event schedule to be planned. What food will be served? Speakers need to be booked, breakout sessions prepared, hotel rooms arranged. Transportation options for attendees need to be tended to. And in the middle of all this, with all the people working on all those different aspects of the event, there’s a project manager who is supposed to coordinate it all. The project manager is the “Charlotte” illustrated in the map above. It doesn’t take a lot to realize that Charlotte needs the proper suite of tools to make sure everything is working properly and everyone arrives at their proper destination!
Staying with the example of the airline route map, imagine coordinating all of that in a world with no internet or telephones. It would be very difficult indeed! Project management software is the telephone or internet in this example — it keeps everyone in contact, working together. You can now know about a plane being delayed in real time, instead of discovering it the hard way when it doesn’t arrive at the expected time. Charlotte can even give instructions about which peanuts to buy for the in-flight snacks, if it needs to. When you have people in different places working together, it’s vital that the team is kept on the same page.
So we can safely conclude project management software is necessary to run projects successfully.
Choosing Project Management Software
Different project management software solutions offer different suites of tools. Choosing which project management tool is right for you is an important step! Investing money and time into a platform that doesn’t help you is a drain on resources, and doesn’t improve your project’s chances of succeeding.
Reliability is important. Remember all those #slackdown days, when Slack crashed? If you can’t rely on your solution to be available when you need it, it isn’t going to help. (Slack actually has a website for telling users if Slack is working or not — which isn’t the best sign of reliability…) It isn’t only about the platform crashing — reliability includes functions and features working consistently, and as promised.
Ease of use is crucial. The platform your team is using is the central interface for the project. If it isn’t easy to use, the team will be annoyed, your project will get derailed and delayed, and the tool that is supposed to be helping you get to delivery successfully is instead an obstacle to getting there. A good project management platform is simple, easy to use, and intuitive.
Ease of integration refers to outside tools you’ll want to use. If your development team is using Jira, it would be mightily helpful if your project management software integrated with Jira. If you use a CRM, it’d be great if it integrated with that central management hub you’re working with. Whatever the integrations you’ll want, those are the integrations to look for when choosing project management software.
There’s also price to consider. You might find the perfect project management solution — and it might cost something like $45 per user per month. On a team of thirty people in a small company, that’s a significant budget item! Price should not be where you start your search, but it definitely should be a factor before finishing it.
Proggio — Project Management Software Made By Project Managers
If you want to design a set of tools to help “Charlotte” or the poor event planner, it helps if you’re an event planner in Charlotte. Proggio was created by project managers fed up with the existing tools on the market, who set out to create the kind of project management software that would give projects the chance to be successful.
It’s intuitive, easy to use, and reliable as the sun rising in the East.
Proggio places the team at the center of the project. The timeline is a projectmap — it maps a project out from start to finish. This takes the focus off of tasks and puts it on generating momentum towards successful delivery. The task management tools have everyone working together, engaged in the project. The platform can optimize projects of all scopes and sizes. Proggio has all the bells and whistles like intelligent analytics, budget tracking, workload balancing, Jira integration, and more.
This project management software creates and manages teams doing great things together.
See why for yourself.
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