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What features to look for in a project management tool?


Jan 10, 2023

To ensure maximum efficiency, certain must-have features should be considered when selecting a project management tool. These features provide the necessary support and collaboration tools needed to manage complex projects and collaborate across multiple teams and locations. With the right project management tool, teams can focus on their project goals and make the most of their time and resources.

project management tool

Image courtesy: Cherrydeck (Unsplash)

Project and Task Management

Starting with the basics, a project management tool must be great at helping you manage your projects and tasks. This would typically include organizing tasks, assigning them to your teams, and managing your work in minutes. It should provide a good and easy-to-use interface to add or modify projects, tasks, action items and other shared work product easily and optimize your workflow as needed. Providing rich views, supported by rich search features, to obtain the status at a glance and identify areas of further development are some important things to look for while selecting a project management system.

Resource Management

Resource management allows project managers to assign team members to specific tasks, track time spent on them, and manage payroll data associated with these team members. Effective resource management is essential for the successful completion of projects and the achievement of organizational goals. It helps to ensure that resources are used efficiently, that projects are completed on time and within budget, and that the quality of the final product or service is high.

Real-Time Collaboration

The ability to work together and share files and documents is a crucial collaboration tool. It allows team members to stay in sync, and work efficiently and effectively towards the common goal of project completion. With many organizations working in hybrid or remote environments, collaboration becomes even more critical. A good project management tool should include features to enable the team to share information and collaborate on documents in real-time without needing to be in the same location. Real-time collaboration allows efficient execution of business processes in a distributed context.

Effective Communication

A good project management tool must include a unified communication platform that enables professional and effective team communication. A good project management system must have an interface to help communicate with team members through chats, meetings and video calls, while providing a space to share information and files in real-time. This helps in increased productivity while dodging delays and miscommunication. Real-time interaction is necessary for the team to stay updated and work together, especially in distributed environements where the teams may be working in multiple timezones.

Document Management

Documents and files are important assets of any project. A good project management solution should provide an efficient way to create, share and collaborate on project documents in real-time.

Device Support

To work efficiently and to stay on top of your tasks, the project management system must be available at your fingertips at all times. Working from home, office, or on the go, you should be able to manage your projects and tasks and collaborate to work with your team from anywhere at any time. Hence, the availability of the project management system on all devices is a must-have.

Security

Security of your project and its resources is of prime importance in today’s world. Before employing a project management tool, ensure that it uses safe and secure ways to store and manage your project data with appropriate backup and recovery facilities. The tools deployed on reputed cloud-based servers are generally the most secure, providing 24x7 availability and support.