The success of any project isn’t complete until the project is successfully delivered. And to many project managers, project management software is one essential tool kit they can do away with within their arsenal. But if you have never used any project management software before, or you’re just starting out to learn how to use one, you’re most likely going to wonder why project management software is an inevitable tool in project management.
From understanding what is meant by project management software to the benefits of using project management software, and from understanding the various types of project management software to examples of project management software, there are many questions you need answers to.
In this article, we’re going to shed more light on some of the basic things you need to understand about project management software.
Meaning of Project Management Software
When we talk about project management software we mean the tools and techniques used for the successful delivery of a project. It is what helps you in creating a task in a project, assign and reassign the task, tracking the progress of the task, and control the overall activities of the task from one central location.
What Essential Features Do Project Management Software Offer?
Having an idea of what a project management software is isn’t enough if you don’t know what bucket features are essential in a good project management software. Basically, the most popular and best project management software that has helped many project managers delivered their project successfully must offer these high-level bucket features:
- Mobile App
- Access Permissions
- Team Collaboration
- Project Management
- Calendar Share
- Task Management
- Task Assignment and Scheduling
- Project Plan templates
- Schedule Management
- Gantt Charts
- File Sharing
- Project Accounting
- Real-Time Analytics
- Time and Expense Tracking
- Budgeted Projects and Tasks
- Invoicing and Online Payments
- Rate Cards
- Resource Management
- Business Intelligence
- Hard and Soft Resource Allocation
- Resource Scheduling
- Resource Shaping
- Data Export
- Expert Build Reports
- Custom Reporting
- Trend Analysis and Forecasting
- User Dashboard
Benefits of Using Project Management Software
Before you decide on whether your business will need project management software or not you need to have a good understanding of your project requirements. Project management software offers several benefits for businesses. Whether your business is a small start-out, or a medium-sized one, or even a big business with multi-millionaire projects, project management software fits into it all.
Project management software is useful for all sorts of people in a team or organization. The software is essentially ideal for executives and their team members in that it helps facilitate the workflow of the team. If you’re juggling numerous tasks and need task independence, project management software is great for synchronize tasks associated with the larger project.
The software will help you in project planning and taking into cognizance prior track records.
If you’re missing the deadlines set by your clients for delivering the project, you may be losing jobs. Project management software will help keep track of your project progress, completion, and cost involved in executing the project effectively and efficiently.
Other key areas where project management software helps include scheduling and timing, resource allocation and real-time project budget management, communication and collaboration, documentation and files management, and more.
Different Types of Project Management Software
There are basically two types of project management software available for project managers. These include desktop and online (web-based) software.
1. Desktop Software. This is the type of project management software where the software is located in the company’s server (data center) and maintained by its team of IT specialists. This is otherwise known as on-premise software. Microsoft project is a typical example here. You can use Microsoft Project to manage your entire project just like the normal software for project management. But the MS Project has some limitations when compared with the conventional project management software. For example, while running a project and during collaboration, you need to share electronic files with your team members and other stakeholders in the project, MS word isn’t ideal software for this. Also, you need to keep updating the document from time to time, and in most cases, this is being done and maintained by many people or parties, and the MS project has limitations here, too.
2. Online software (SaaS). This is web-based software for project management software that works on cloud-based technology. It gives its project managers access to the web app and allows them to read, write and change project-related activities. This type of project management software is usually popular among small and medium-sized businesses running different industries. A good example of this type of software is SaaS (software-as-a-service) by application service providers.
Additionally, project management software can also be classified based on its purpose or usage. And, in that, there are two basic categories of project management software namely, task management software and project scheduling software.
Task Management Software
Task management software is used mainly for creating tasks, assigning tasks, and setting deadlines for the task created. It’s also very helpful for collaboration. The good thing about this software is that it keeps you on track of the project due date. A good example of task management software is Trello, which is a globally adopted tool for simple and efficient task management.
Project Scheduling Software
As to the project scheduling software, it’s capable of helping you determine the deadlines you can achieve with the given team availability, working hours, and holiday schedule. It’s a tool that helps you calculate the project timeline by taking into consideration the employee availability and the task dependencies. With all this data at your disposal, you can confidently negotiate the delivery date with your clients, excluding all the guesswork. Another usefulness of project scheduling software is that when you experience a delay in your project, the tool helps you recalculates the entire project timeline and identifies how much the delay has affected your delivery date. And then it helps you get back on track to the initial schedule. A good example of traditional software for task scheduling is Microsoft Project, while GamePlan is another good example of modern scheduling software.
Examples of Project Management Software
As you’re preparing to choose a project management software for your project, you may be wondering what are examples of good project management software you can choose from. We have a list of them and in this section, you’ll find out what they are.
However, before you settle for project management software, start by analyzing what your specific requirements are. Also, consider what features for handling particular project management points? Don’t simply go for people’s recommendations but consider your needs and team to make an informed buying decision.
Here are examples of good project management software you can choose from:
Examples of 9 Best Project Management Software With To-Do-List:
Examples of 11 Best Project Management Software With Mobile Apps
Examples of Project Management Software For Multiple Company Departments
Examples of Project Management Software With Email Integration
Wrapping Up
From everything said above, we can conclude that project management software is essentially useful for the successful completion of your project. It helps you in many ways like planning the project, collaborating with your teams and other stakeholders, managing the budget, scheduling time, tracking the project progress, sharing documents, and many more.
You also understand the different types and categories of project management software and their respective uses. You know what examples of project management software are and their respective purposes.
With this understanding, you’re now in a better position to make the choice. But don’t forget to take into consideration your team and project. Remember following a recommendation alone isn’t enough. You need to understand what you need and what features your software must possess. So go ahead and put your knowledge here into practice.