As a project manager, you’re always juggling between demands from your clients, your team’s schedules and capabilities, and the overall scope of the project itself. You’d think short-term projects would be slightly easier to manage, but it turns out that’s not the case. Even with the best of intentions, over a quarter of projects, like developing a website or running an interior design project, go over budget.
To help you make sure you’re using a tool that lets nothing fall through the cracks, here are three must-haves for an iron-clad project management software:
Stop guessing how much time your team needs to complete tasks. A great project management software will equip you with mobile timers, email timing, task-based time, and automated time sheets so that you can know exactly how much time is being used and needed. By taking the guesswork out of the equation, you’ll be able to mitigate your risks with concrete answers and instantly convert work to billable time.
Ever feel like you’re not sure who to staff for a new project? If you could always see everyone on your team’s schedules, you’d easily be able to figure out who (with the right skillset) is available and assign them to the task or project in question. Having team scheduling integrated into your project management software will also allow you to quickly figure out who can help when a project’s scope changes. With dynamic scheduling you’ll be able to see how dependencies within the project affect the scope in real time as tasks are completed.
Have you experienced communications falling through the cracks when emails get archived or forgotten? When your email is directly synced and integrated with your project management software, everything is easily accessible from one simple place, so you can collaborate with your staff and clients seamlessly—no more jumping between different systems. This gives you the transparency you need to see what’s going on in your projects and within your business.
Simplicity is key. Having a smart technology platform in place that lets you see how everything in your project and business is connected (think: sales quote converting instantly to a project plan and seamlessly producing an invoice) is crucial for delivering work that is on time and budget—every time.
Any must-haves we missed? Let us know!
