Project Management Software

What is project management software?

Project management software is software that helps project managers (PMs) plan, execute and control their projects across the five phases of the?project lifecycle.?It’s a suite of tools to help?project?managers, the?project?team?and stakeholders work together more effectively. The?ultimate goal of the software is to help deliver value?more efficiently by facilitating organization, communication, and?management.

This?software covers a huge range of functionality?– some tools focus on a discrete aspect of project management, like?resource management,?time tracking, or?Gantt charts, while others like do try to do it all.

Different tools offer features to facilitate every phase of your work, from planning the initial outline or proposal before you begin and then reporting on your successes or shortcoming after everything is said and done. Along the way, you’ll probably need access to tools for proposals,?note-taking, collaborative document building,?internal messaging, stakeholder communications, creating and assigning tasks,?plotting milestones, planning sprints, imaging user stories, data and analytics reporting,?project portfolio management, and budget tracking, and timeline scheduling. The best software will attend to the majority of these needs so that you don’t have to bounce between tabs or use multiple apps.

Although some PM software can be installed on-premise, most new tools are offered online as a software-as-service or SaaS which means new features and functionality are rolled out.

Which PM software should I choose?

I hate to break it to you, but it depends. The software you should choose is the one with features that solve your current needs. At the same time, you should choose a product that can grow with your company as you require more features or improved security. The last thing you want is to have to go through the process of choosing a new tool again further down the road.

Fortunately, most of the current online PM software solutions have pricing plans that you can pay month-to-month and upgrade any time.

I recommend you start by defining a budget for project management software licenses and go from there. Although these tools come at a low price point, PMs within our community have mentioned that they can get very expensive very quickly. Nothing beats proper planning.

What is Best-Of-Breed Software?

Many of the PM solutions on this list focus on being jacks-of-all-trades, packing as many features as possible to assign tasks, navigate team collaboration, flag status, perform resource allocation, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

Another kind of tool—the “best-of-breed” or “one trick pony”—does the opposite and hyper-focuses on doing one thing really, really well. You can find specialized tools for things like?resource scheduling,?communication,?managing tasks,?making Gantt charts,?creating reports,?managing digital assets, and?managing requirements. Tools like Slack (comms), Dropbox (storage), and Todoist (lists) are examples of these uber-specialized tools. Specialized tools can be great—especially for a small team working with niche requirements, fewer clients, or complex projects with unique needs.

Do I need more than one tool?

In an ideal scenario, you wouldn't. However, the reality can be frustrating. You will probably end up using more than one tool. You use one tool for communication, another for file sharing and yet another for task management. An important thing to remember is that the best pm software for you should integrate all these tools you currently use.?

If the tools can talk to each other, it can reduce manual update work and the number of times you switch between apps.

What features should I look for when evaluating Project Management software?

I’ve identified five key aspects of functionality that makes delivering projects easier. You can use them to get rid of your post-its and spreadsheets and to run your project more efficiently.

1. Project task lists:?Projects are made up of tasks, sub-tasks, checklists, and to-dos. Being able to outline what needs to be done, by when & by who is critical to delivering a project well. Individual task lists, as well as those accessible by the entire team, are essential. An in-house project team and/or remote team members should be able to assess any project or task progress at a glance.
2. Schedules:?Timelines, calendars, and Gantt charts help you track progress and know where tasks fit within the broader scheme of a project. This is key to being able to deliver a project on time. A robust, visual, and editable schedule is key to any good project plan.
3. File sharing:?No one likes having to waste time trying to dig around for random files. The ability to organize and share key project files and assets is important for delivering projects efficiently.
4. Communication:?A good collaboration tool that allows for contextual project-specific communication enables you and your team to hash things out quickly. Regular communication with your team and client is vital for tracking progress and keeping everything in line.
5. Reporting:?It’s your job to know whether or not a project is on track and to use this information in communication. Therefore, it’s essential to know how a project’s tasks are progressing—will it be delivered on time or not?

How do you implement project management software?

Implementing project management software will look very different depending on the size of your organization.

• For a small company, it’s counting how many people need access to the software, buying the licenses, and configuring the product.
• For a mid-sized organization, it triggers a change management project. You have to plan for a new tool because you may already have a system in place. This system (good or bad) currently works, and people are used to it. Therefore, a PM tool implementation involves meeting with the users affected by the change and getting buy-in from stakeholders.
• For a large corporation, it means change management plus strategy. At an enterprise level, your decision on a new tool implementation involves reviewing the tool and how it impacts the users, projects, company goals, and strategy. Add to that the security requirements of an implementation of this scale, and suddenly it’s not that straightforward.

Any implementation will have an adjustment period where people are either training on how to use the tool or being less productive than usual. Why? Because they are trying to figure out how to adapt their workflows.

Whatever the size of your organization, I suggest you schedule a demo and meeting with the vendor. Then, ask for available training services and if they support the initial product configuration. Finally, run some numbers and make sure you have enough money to support this implementation and a bit more (planning for growth).

Please note that this is the case for online project management software and not on-premise. Hosting services on your servers will require extensive planning, no matter the company size.

What's Next?

Remember that if you want to have more information about a specific use case, you can always?schedule a demo?with the vendor. This will clarify how the tool can solve the particular problems you are trying to solve.