New web-based project management software can totally transform how your organization manages projects. Or, it can fail to bring any measurable change, be under-utilized, and resented by the staff that is “forced” to make a change and use it. Both scenarios are certainly possible. Like any project, without the correct planning, stakeholder alignment, and buy-in, total failure is a risk.
Its ironic that project management software is not always purchased directly by the project managers that must use it on a day to day basis. Often times, it is dictated from above or just an assumption that MS Project or Excel is just the PM software that simply “must” be used. Even more challenging, with today’s economic reality, getting any purchase approved is a struggle. Trust me, I have been there. Asking for additional budget for a software solution or tool, perhaps in midst of layoffs or other budgetary reductions, is certainly akin to swimming upstream at best, and putting a giant target on your back at worst.
So is it worth it to make a change? I think the calculus is simple: When properly deployed and utilized, the new breed of hosted project management software can save you time, make you a more efficient manager, and help you deliver your projects on time and on budget more often. For your company, it all adds up to cost savings no matter how you slice it, and those are just the tangible benefits.
The good news is that in the last 5-6 years, project management software has seen a tremendous boom. In one of my previous jobs, where I managed a large project with over 100 engineers, I used to spend at least 6 hours a week putting together the Friday Status “dashboard”– that’s over 15% of my weekly time! And most of that time was spent calling team leads, asking for status on their feature developments, tasks, and milestones, then formatting those updates for the deck. After spending hours doing admin work, I finally could focus on the real management aspects of my job, organizing risks and creating mitigation plans. If only there was a more automated way to do all this every week…
Turns out, there is a better way automatically create status reports and eliminate much of the “administration” work that PM’s must do everyday.
Tasks that once took project managers hours or even days to put together weekly, can now be completed in a matter of minutes with new project software. Some of this software features many “Web 2.0” features, combined with tried and true project scheduling, document sharing, plus instant dashboards and reports, creating all-in-one project solutions that amaze clients, ease the workloads of your team, and inform management of the bigger picture without calling the project manager every day for an update. All of this is possible for amazingly inexpensive prices, but does come with some caveats.
The bad news is (and its not all that bad), that at last count on a popular software directory, there are over 420+ listings for web-enabled project management software. That is quite a few vendors to evaluate. How can you cut through all noise to find the solutions that are right for your particular situation? There are some good ways to do just that, and we will get to them shortly in the tips section.
Many of the most common project management software solutions are usually lacking in functionality for any organization with more than 3 projects or teams working simultaneously.
If you are using something even less adequate for project management, such as a spreadsheet program like MS Excel, or if you are managing your projects with a giant white board full of sticky notes and half-erased Gantt chart in dry-erase marker, then you are definitely using the wrong tool and therefore wasting tons of time on unnecessary tasks and worse yet, making bad decisions on incomplete data points.
These unnecessary and inefficient tasks take time and cost your organization money. The problem is, these costs are usually hidden to upper management, while the cost of PM software is more upfront. To show that new Project Management Software has a very positive ROI for your organization, simply determine the time that you could save with the new software, multiply by the average rate per hour of the positions that do those tasks, and show potentially savings in dollar amounts. Even a cursory review of PM software features can show a very positive ROI for software that costs at most a couple hundred dollars a month for the fully hosted solutions. Read our review of the best Project Management software.
The right tool is for the job depends on your organization, processes, and situation, so we will breakdown the major categories of PM software, the benefits of each, and some of my tips and tricks to help you along your way.
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