“We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third” – Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation.
If you, like Leslie, have a hard time prioritizing all of the important things on your plate, it might be time to look into project management tools and how they can help you efficiently manage your team (and your own time).
Project management tools are, well, exactly what they sound like: they help managers be more methodical and organized when it comes to planning, scheduling, tracking progress, maintaining documentation, managing budget, allocating resources, and controlling risks and changes in every project.
But, managing a project isn’t as easy as it may seem. According to Innovative Management Solutions, effective project management has six key elements for success: strong leadership, organizational maturity, business-driven approach, executive backing, user adoption, and visibility.
I know, handling all of this sounds impossible. However, with new technology, some of this stress can be alleviated just by using simple, readily available software. Heck, if these tools had been around in 208 BC then maybe it wouldn’t have taken twenty years to build the Great Wall of China. Alright, that might not be true, but they can still help you manage your projects and team.
Here are the five best project management tools and why your team needs to use them!
Asana helps you coordinate your team’s work­–obviously–so you know what needs to be done, who’s doing it, and when it’s due. It also helps you get organized by setting priorities and deadlines while also allowing you to share details with your team and assign different tasks all in one place. Asana makes it easy to stay on track, follow projects through every stage, and create visual plans to help you see how each step is mapped out over the duration of the project.
As one of the most comprehensive project management tools, Trello allows you to design boards as frameworks for any kind of process. To help keep you sane, Trello transfers as much information as possible out of spreadsheets and emails to a visual format that makes task management attractive and easy, which is a win-win for all of us!
Trusted by more than 35 million users globally, Zoho helps you streamline your upcoming work and tasks with just one click. Zoho can provide you and your team with effective file management, Gantt charts to oversee project progress, and one simple tool for your team to create, collaborate, and communicate.
Are you and your team Apple people? That’s a silly question because who isn’t? All jokes aside, Omniplan is definitely the tool for you! Easy to use, and look at, Omniplan keeps all of your “need to know” information in one place–which explains the use of the word “omni.” It allows you to create, modify, and track projects, create and group tasks, organize workflow, and establish hierarchy all within a simple app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. IThinkYas.
Whether you’re managing your first project or you’re an expert when it comes to getting projects done, Todoist is the perfect tool for you. With its easy-to-use and easy-to-learn platform, Todoist allows you and your team to communicate, collaborate, and manage your tasks so you can meet all of your client’s needs on time.
Now that you have all of this new project management tool knowledge, it’s time to stop struggling to manage projects and start owning them like a queen. No matter which tool you pick, you and your team will be on your way to getting your projects done efficiently, easily, and most importantly, on time. So, make it an easy project or not, the choice is yours.