Are there project management tools and technologies you need to maximize your efforts?
Project management is all about creating effective outcomes in efficient ways. It is about caring for the right priorities, keeping track of everything that is going on, keeping tabs on the health of the project and the status of the resources. It is also about keeping track of human resources and the performance generated by the whole team.
So, all in all, a project manager has a pretty vast job description. Can one person manage to keep up with this position? Yes, and they have held and honed this position for many years now.
However, when you have to multitask and take care of more than one thing at a time, you need to implement more innovative methods to take care of it all. Now, if you live in the 21st century, which I know you are, you know what the word “smart” means here. Smart is technology. It is anything that shortens your work hours, cuts down your work, makes activities doable, and incorporates work efficiency.
In this article, I want to enlighten my fellow readers about the project management tools, technological innovations, you can incorporate into your daily work lives to bring about a tremendous change in the way you manage projects, people, and work as a whole.
How Do Technology And Effective Project Management Go Hand In Hand?
Every Batman needs a Robin, every Wonder Woman needs a Wonder Girl, and thus a project manager, or a manager none the same, needs a tool (number of tools) that can assist them in maintaining a status quo with the project requirements of the clients.
Here are some reasons why technology in the form of inventive project management tools is a necessity today:
> Track what is going on
To learn all that is going on, all that has been accomplished, and all that is still left to do, a manager has to keep up with the team’s activities. This is a hardship that cannot be overcome with meetings. How do you expect meetings to do the bidding for you when you cannot visualize or calculate the progress of the tasks? Better yet, what happens when your team is working remotely from all over the world and meetings just can’t be timed, right?
For all of these reasons and causes of uncertainty, we need an effective platform to help us track tasks and employee performance on the go.
> Keep the team in the loop
To send out updates and make sure that everyone has the resources they need to get ahead of their tasks, a manager needs to be in the loop with their team at all times. With the help of collaboration or communication tools, teams can easily stay in touch and share important information in links, files, and folders on the go.
> Plan the project effortlessly
To plan a project that works without hiccups and produces desirable outcomes, you need to use tools that can help you set up projects, define priorities, set assignees, and do a lot more. I believe planning tools can help a project manager manage all the details and ensure the swift execution of all tasks.
> Pick up the pace
To bring in more efficiency is to make sure that you deliver more in less time. A project management tool, for instance, will help you understand the project better, flatten out the kinks with ease, and execute the whole project flawlessly, therefore, helping you speed things up.
5 Project Management Tools and Technologies You Must Implement Right Away
Now that we have covered the presence of advanced technology and tools out there that can effectively bring about a change in the way we manage projects, let’s move on to find out which tool/tools will be able to sort out work in the best way for you:
#1 All-in-one Work Management Tools
With all-in-one work management tools like ProofHub, you can create an efficient project management plan and easily work out the planning, executing, tracking, reviewing, and approving of tasks and documents on one singular platform. These software platforms help you set up projects in a jiff and help you collaborate with your team through different task management features like Kanban boards, discussions, and Gantt charts.
With all these fantastic features thrown in the blender, you have a tool that gives the perfect results while eliminating the need for several other software platforms to help you keep everything working on track.
#2 Time Tracking Tools
Some tools help with effective time management; take Time Doctor, for instance. This is a tool that will help you set reminders, work with timers, and increase productivity. These tools allow the team to pick up a pace and save time lost due to distractions and disorganized agendas. It will help you visualize the schedule for all individuals in the team so that everyone has clarity of assignments and deadlines.
Time tracking tools are a blessing for project managers since they help keep tabs on their most important resource: time.
#3 Project Planning Tools
Project planning tools like InstaGantt or GanttPRO will help you set up projects, break the project down to tasks, tasks down to subtasks, so on and so forth. These tools can help you visualize the timeline of the whole project and work out the details with the utmost ease. These tools will help you assign tasks to the people in the team on the go and track how said tasks are reaching fruition.
These tools are necessary for a time like this because, with all these moving parts, tasks, and different kinds of risk measures, project planning software can help us track how we are progressing and thus assist us course-correct on the way.
#4 Communication Tools
In today’s corporate climate, where we have office-bound teams, hybrid teams, and remote teams working together, communication tools that help get the message across are a no-brainer. While emails are a fantastic medium to share project information and assign tasks and share all sorts of media and files, it is also subject to security risks (not to mention it is a tangle of confusion).
Communication tools like Troop Messenger and Chanty can help you untangle the web of miscommunication and confusion. These tools help teams have an unhindered connection through the airwaves and provide them with a platform to share information, notes, links, and files, in the fastest, most efficient way possible.
#5 Kanban Software Platforms
While communication can be handled really well with the tools mentioned above, I feel there is a need for a tool that provides unstoppable collaboration within the team. This can only happen if we work with Kanban Boards. Now Kanban boards, as you must know, show you all the stages the task has to go through in its tenure to reach the “Done” stage.
Now not only does this make tracking of tasks and progress as a whole a complete breeze, but it also helps teams understand their part in the assignment and come together to work on the same task with ease. Tools like Kanbanize and Trello are perfect examples of the top Kanban Software platforms out there.
To Summarize
There is no doubt that businesses, small or large, juggle a plethora of projects, tasks, and teams. No matter how big or small a project is, there’s a lot that goes into planning, executing, and managing it.
Whether you believe it or not, Project-centric businesses that do not use technology will always struggle to create an efficient project management plan and will deal with different constraints at once: money, time, scope, quality, and more.
Therefore, having a technology that reduces your effort to half and gets most of your work done automatically will only make your life better.
