Are Your Project Management Tools Keeping Your Projects on Track?
Project Management Tools
Hannibal from the ‘A Team’ loved it when a plan came together and that’s the feeling that project managers get with the successful completion of a project. Following a project plan from its inception to its conclusion is just one of the thrills that project management as a career allows. With the thrill and the glory that a project manager experiences with a completed project, they also have about 20 other headaches during the evolution of that project. The most problematic issue and also the simplest to correct, is poor project management software. The biggest complaints being that their software is slow, non-compliant, out-dated or just non-intuitive with the scheduling tools.
Project Management Tools, Scheduling is the Core
Scheduling your projects should be at the very core of your project management tools. If your project management software can’t quickly schedule, then it can’t really be expected to do anything else with the exacting speed and proficiency that you need. However, most project managers get stuck with the project management software that their company has been using since 1998 and there’s very little wiggle room with most budgets nowadays.
New Software
Upgrading to new project management software at work doesn’t have to be super-expensive, depending on what software you choose. Some of the big named project management software can run close to two grand a year, but several of them only offer limited projects and limited storage. One project management software company is doing it right though and only charges less than six-hundred with unlimited storage, projects and users. In comparison to the other top-named project management software solutions on the market, ProTasker is a real game changer. Not only do they charge less than their competitors and offer a sixty day free trial where others only offer thirty days or none at all, but ProTasker also has excellent scheduling tools.
With small business on the upswing and about 65% of those being online businesses, project management is going to start buzzing around very quickly. With budgets being tight and startup capital being on the shoestring, cost to value ratio is absolutely vital to the health of the startup. Project management software is simply not an area in which the small business should start small. Go big, pay less and get all the features that your business will need now and as it expands. Even if that means taking money away from your marketing budget or just lowering your keyword bids with Adsense, it’s imperative to find the money to invest in quality project management software. The reason, a small company, a hungry company that is competing with giants has to have every project, every order and every delivery executed to perfection. The very reputation of a smaller business is tied to every transaction that it performs from a $1.99 sale to a $50,000 one. Without project management software, the small business can quickly spiral out of control and fail within a few months.
The thrill of the plan completed, using scheduling tools that work and paying less, these are all important issues for a small business, but also for the growing business. No business puts it in their mission statement that they are going to fail. You won’t find anything about missing shipments or sending the wrong cogs to four customers that needed spindles in a reference sheet. However, without project management software keeping track of your progress, scheduling and the day to day, the small business owner might as well tell their customers that there is a 77% chance that they won’t get what they ordered. No, no one puts that in their advertising, but once that order fails to go out and that unhappy customer gets fed up, that’s the one entity that will happily tell everyone else not to rely on your company.
Fortune 500 Software
Compare lost business, unhappy customers and the increased risk of your business failing to spending roughly $47 a month for a good web-based project management system. It is that important, ask any project manager that works for a Fortune 100,500, 1000 or 10000. Project management and the tools to accurately complete projects daily are vital to your business no matter the size, no matter the volume of sales.
Let’s take a look at some of the more popular project management software on the market:
Microsoft Project. Great piece of software and it gets the job done, but consider this; one of the major selling points for Microsoft Project is that it is familiar. Certainly, there are a lot of big corporations out there that spent a lot of money a few years back for Microsoft Project licensing and that same old software is still loaded and used today, so familiar doesn’t scream progress.
Basecamp project management system is good software, but also complacent in updating awkward features. Also a bit pricey, but it has become one of the better known in big business. The tools are almost ‘just right’ but paying for almost is never something that anyone looks back on with a good feeling.
ProTasker is an up and comer in project management software. They offer a lot of great, intuitive features and they are priced much lower than their aforementioned competitors. This software is forward-thinking, and the developers incorporate real user experiences into current and plotted features.
Any of the software mentioned here will give you the advantage of project management. Ultimately, the decision is yours, but it is a decision that needs to be made if you own or are thinking of starting a small business.