Improve Your Workflow with Project Management Software

The contemporary world is what it is today, thanks to an enormous and unimaginable digital revolution. Complex tools and software make some challenging tasks seem incredibly simple.

We can add unthinkable efficiency to our daily tasks—whether work-related or pertaining to our personal lives—with the help of digital tools.

I’ll leave personal project management aside—like side hustles or DIY home renovations—and tackle the corporate world. Even so, a myriad of tools is catering to everything imaginable, from forecasting consumer trends to deeptech.

In addition, more collaboration tools have been developed to assist remote and hybrid work cultures, which are more widespread than ever in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Would we have imagined something like remote project management a few years ago? Surely something for the distant future. But now, it is adding immense value to companies’ project success.

This article explores how some of the best project management tools (tested and reviewed here) optimize workflow and how you can implement and benefit from such software. So, let us get started.

Here are five ways project management software streamline workflow:

1. Improved planning

It’s not a mystery that project management is all about planning. Let’s say your team is newish, so as a project manager, you can’t expect them to be familiar with all sorts of project management methodologies, like scrum or agile.

They need to know what you plan out, schedule, and assign. So, task management is all about keeping work efforts organized in one place to help align your team to nail every deadline.

Then, each team member must understand the project aims, scope, and due dates. Any good task management tool allows you to prioritize tasks, assign multiple users, set due dates, add files, and keep track of the time worked on each task.

As a project manager, the planning stage involves other steps, such as managing financial and time estimates (to ensure project profitability), doing risk analysis, or handling the project charter. Without project management tools, you’d have to rely on pen-and-paper methods, which are too time-consuming in today’s work environments—and obsolete, no less.

See how your initial estimates fare against internal costs and billed AR. (Source: Paymo)

Another critical aspect of project management tools is visualization. Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendar views and timelines, milestones, and list views help the team understand project statuses and identify possible bottlenecks.

A simple Kanban board helps you visualize the next step and thus spend less time deciding which task to perform next. You’ll have more time actually to work on it. Speaking of visualization, logging work hours in a user-friendly interface is helpful – that’s where managers can monitor and approve employee timesheets.

But I’m digressing. As I said, everything from planning to execution can easily be managed and visualized using project management software.

Through project management optimization, you will stumble upon fewer bottlenecks and thus improve the overall workflow of your project. This ultimately leads to business growth.

2. Better Collaboration

Let’s say your team is distributed across states or countries—so mind the timezone—and you can’t have regular in-office meetups. You’ll need Slack integrations, videoconferencing tools like Zoom or Google Meet, and even collaborative idea board software.

If your team has good collaboration skills and tools, then and only then will they be able to give their best as a team and outshine the rest of all other competitors.

Besides, we all know that no man is an island – one person cannot handle the whole scope of the project. It’s always effective collaboration and communication that make a project successful.

Also, what’s great about client-facing project management software is that it helps you keep a system in place to keep track of contractor work and juggle multiple clients.

Even so, handling different projects and tasks at a time often gets difficult for the project managers to keep a record of who is doing what. But with features such as team scheduling or active timers, you’ll know who is working on what and how under or overbooked they are.

See your team’s bookings and unscheduled work in Paymo.

Or use Gantt charts that trace all the delegated tasks and their dependency on each other. Or use file proofing tools to review designs faster and provide actionable feedback to speed up the approval process.

When team members feel engaged and actively contribute to the successful execution of the project, it’ll generate employee satisfaction. This leads to increased employee motivation and decreased job turnover (having said this, it’s not foolproof against the Great Resignation phenomenon). Ultimately, better employee retention saves time and money, which is good for business in the long run.

3. Real-time insights and reporting

It’s undeniable that today’s business world runs on data and insights. This is the third reason you need project management software in your company, namely to collect data from every possible source integrated with your applications.

Data collection is essential when monitoring and evaluating the progress of your project. Project management software has robust reporting features that give you insights and a clear picture of your project.

Also, these key insights and data will assist you in identifying whether the operating factors are making your project management KPIs impressive or not. Once you have that clarity in mind, you can eliminate the factors setting you back.

Plus, real-time reporting helps you make informed decisions at the right time. For example, you can determine scope creep or overscheduled employees by generating visual summaries of time tracked and tasks completed and see how they fare against estimates and deadlines.

This way, you can monitor the pace of your team and identify whether your team is meeting the desired goals or not. If their work progress is less than ideal, you can take further actions based on real-time data and analytics.

In a nutshell, once you have all the data and reports at your fingertips, you can eliminate any step or process that delays your whole strategic plan.

4. Streamlines all the processes

As discussed, good project management implies smooth sailing from one process to another, e.g., budgeting, real-time reporting, effective communication, to better collaboration. All of these can be performed in one single software application.

The benefit of a unified work management platform is that you won’t have to waste time looking for data in a dozen apps or folders.

In urgent cases, you’ll be able to solve issues or queries quickly. Moreover, as everything is on one platform, it is easier to onboard team members. In addition, there are multiple layers of visibility for members with different need-to-know clearance.

Furthermore, along with streamlining every process, business leaders or project managers can also automate tasks or processes – for example, generating and sending recurring invoices for monthly subscription-based services.

This simple automation of repetitive tasks frees up your time and allows you to focus on high-impact tasks.

Besides, eliminating mundane tasks keeps employees energetic and motivated. I daresay your employees will experience employee engagement, a sort of zeal for significant projects.

Again, by improving workflows, your team will work happier and thus achieve project goals faster and more efficiently.

5. Ensures quality control

Quality control (or quality assurance, aka QA) is quintessential in project management. In a nutshell, it assesses whether the designed/manufactured product (or service) meets the quality requirements.

In this quality assurance process, project management software can be your one-step solution as you can easily codify the standards required for the project’s successful execution. This is predefined in the planning phase only.

Once the project is in its last steps of execution or its manufacturing stage, the software automatically inspects and cross-verifies whether the product is up to standards according to set key quality metrics or key performance indicators. Then, you may identify and evaluate the factors that contributed to product failure.

QA can identify problems, which, if solved timely, ensures there’s no disruption in the workflow. Without dedicated software for QA, employees would have to identify issues manually, which stunts productivity – it’s the mundane task routine all over again.

I won’t bore you with the details if QA is not among your duties. Read this practical excerpt from the PMBOK on the nitty-gritty of QA.

All in all, what you need to know is that the quality of your deliverables must match what your stakeholders want.

Takeaway

To sum up, few businesses (if any, at all) can operate without project management. But good project management is impossible without tools and software, which boast incredible benefits to your organization.

If you’re not convinced just yet, read how twelve of the best project management tools meet the needs of freelancers and small businesses. Pilot a tool of your choice. Then, you’ll see how easily project management software improves your workflow.

First published on September 15, 2022.