3 tips to help you pick a digital project management tool

ways-of-working

I’ve worked in a few businesses who were looking to scale.

Their reasons for having a Project Management Tool in place have varied from

bizarre …

  • wanting to see that their employees are getting through work and not spending all day on Facebook
  • thinking that by implementing timesheets this will increase profitability
  • eluding that a project management tool is all that is needed to allow them to make decisions on hiring more staff  

To

brilliant …

  • how can a PM Tool help us communicate more effectively for project success?
  • how do we tie customer satisfaction into our tool of choice?
  • how can our staff be less overwhelmed when juggling lots of balls across lots of projects?

Before you go down the rabbit hole of picking your Project Management Tool (there are loads out there), here are three pointers:

1.      Simplicity is the new sophistication

I love this quote by Da Vinci! I’ve seen companies spend months implementing a work flow management tool with some serious bells and whistles when it comes to integrations. Sadly they often get binned because of the over complication. Start really simple and build on when the need arises.

2.      A PM Tool won’t solve a bad egg problem

If you have a bad egg in your team, no matter what fancy task tool is in place its unlikely your bad egg is going to turn into a fresh egg. The yolk who says every day they will deliver to a slice of the pie but doesn’t, dismisses help from anybody else in the team, sends long emails even though as a team you’ve agreed on phone calls. This stench is not going to go away unless you take action. 1 x bad egg in a cake and the whole cake is a flop even if you have that beautiful Smeg mixing bowl in place.

3.      When the product is right, you don’t have to be a great marketer

Trello, TeamWork, Asana, Monday, Active Collab are just a few Project Management Tools available. They are all great in their own right. They deliver to lots of features. How you can win at implementing a Project Management Tool? By letting the team choose it! Run a workshop. Get all departments involved. Get some paper prototyping going on features they want to see. After this look at the cloud based tools and pick 3 that answer to the majority of the feature wish list. Get teams to trial and select their favourite.

Having a team choose their work flow fuels an empowered & self organized business, one that is more market-ready. 

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