How to Choose the Right Project Management Tool

IT departments were early adopters, but project management software is now becoming a must-have tool in all sorts of disciplines. As the complexity of initiatives increases, so does the need for collaboration and interdependence between a company’s internal departments. Strong coordination and smooth handoffs of a project’s moving parts are also essential between organizations and their vendors.

Whether a business is developing a cutting-edge website or building a new facility, a project’s myriad parts need to come together. Project management tools provide centralized methods of assigning tasks, tracking progress, setting goals and timelines, and communicating across teams. While most applications share some basic features and functionalities, these can also vary widely between solutions.

Knowing what your business needs to get out of a project management tool is the first step toward selecting the right one. However, some other considerations and scenarios can influence your decision. This article explains how to determine which project management solution is the right fit for your team.

As you align an app’s functionalities with your pain points, ask stakeholders whether they think those features are actual solutions. For example, a tool may have an attractive interface but may not provide a helpful overview of a project’s timeline or progress. If tracking where everyone’s at with their tasks is a problem, activity logs and automated status updates will prove more valuable.

A smaller business with a team of five employees may not need to share project information with external vendors. But a medium-sized company or large enterprise might want to exchange data, share project timelines, and coordinate tasks with third parties. Without a standard tool to use, deadlines and other vital information could easily fall through the cracks.

While some project management solutions are installed locally, others are cloud-based. Local applications can work well for organizations that don’t need to share project data with outside vendors. Such apps will allow internal teams to access project information as long as they’re using company-issued devices on your network. This may be the best solution if only in-house teams will be the only hands-on deck for now and the foreseeable future.

Investing in a project management app that’s scalable and has features to solve your pain points is one thing. But it’s a completely different ballgame when it comes to getting your team to use the tool you’ve provided. Purchasing a project management solution that’s difficult to understand is sometimes worse than not getting one at all.

During the selection and evaluation process, have employees try out the tools that are on your shortlist. Many project management app developers offer free trials or demos so you can experiment. Have the team go through the interface and test the features with a dummy project. If the demo or trial period is long enough, load an actual project into the tool and see how well it works.

Because there are so many options, choosing the right project management software for your business might seem overwhelming. It’s challenging to know where to begin and easily get distracted by a list of promises and functionality claims. That’s why it’s best to start with an internal list based on the obstacles your team sees. Whether it’s an unclear definition of roles or difficulty knowing where assignments are at, determine which pain points are the most problematic.

Once you’ve identified why your business needs a project management tool, you can go about finding the right one. Matching available features to your “why” is a good start, but you also need to figure out who will use the tool. From there, evaluating ease of use and fit will trim your shortlist down to the winning candidate.

Finally, your business will gain the solution it needs to improve project execution significantly.

Image Credit: William Fortunato; Pexels; Thank you!

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