Project Management Tools - What You're Missing is Less Than What You HavePosted by Slater Tucker on April 24th, 2021 For anyone available of managing projects, the question of what type of project management tools to utilize looms large. You want to make sure you use the tools that reflect how your business works, nevertheless, you also don't want to end up building your project around the tools you selected. At the same time, you don't want to end up getting tools that don't embrace the full scope of your work. Picking the proper project management tools is tough, but there's no reason to think it isn't doable. In Additional hints , project management tools are simple enough to understand, in ways: you don't need to pay much focus on features when you can look at philosophy. Basically, you can find three schools of thought: Do the right thing for just one particular group: so you've got a giant construction project? Oracle Primavera could be the only choice you can opt for. Sure, it's ugly, it's clunky, it's slow, and it's pricey, nevertheless, you need project management tools that get the job done, and it's going to at least do that. Tools like this are a last resort. Do everything, for everyone: creating a house? Drafting a law? Building an e-commerce website? Some people think you ought to use the same project management tools for each and every one of those tasks. And somebody has given those individuals what they need. Broad, maximalist project management tools can simply give you all you want, but they're also likely to bog you down. You don't want to spend all your time mired in someone else's software bureaucracy, because they spent almost all their time adding features and none of their time making sure those features added up. Execute a simple thing well: here we go! Avoid the project management tools which are built for one particular industry (if you don't have to): they'll just make you turn out cookie-cutter projects. Don't use project management software created for nobody in particular; you'll just spend all your time wrangling them into doing what you wanted in the first place. Instead, use project management tools that one thing, and take action really, really well. How can you tell that simple project management tools are best? The answer is, well, simple: each and every time you focus on a project, you have to spend a certain amount of time taking into consideration the project's long-term goals, your personnel issues, etc. So you have to spend some time running the project -- doing the day-to-day allocation of tasks and people. It's the day-to-day work items that tools for project management are supposed to make easier, but they often fall flat. Every new feature means additional time users spend scratching their heads, or integrating disparate tools, rather than actually doing their work. And that time quickly results in project delays, cost overruns, and worse. The first step in any project would be to avoid getting swamped -- and the best way to do that is to focus on the right tools.Like it? Share it! More by this author |