4 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Should Use Project Management Software

Entrepreneurs are always booming with ideas. They always seem to have an endless source of creative juices and energy to make that dent on the universe. Ideas need a lot of nurturing, analysis, planning and organized execution to turn them into reality.

A lot is at stake here and not all ideas see the light of the day. Why so?

Implementation of ideas need to be protected from internal & external factors that lead to chaos, delays, miscommunication and execution paralysis.

But such failures can be avoided and business projects & plans can be better organized and executed through more sophisticated solutions that help in early issue detection problems and allow for timely and effective resolution.

From a study, it has found that around 64% of projects have completed successfully last year. With the help of project management and project management tools, project completion has done better.

Here’s a report on the project completed in the last year;

(Source- https://financesonline.com/project-management-software-useful-benefits-importance-features/)

In this post, I’ll focus on what is project management and why project management tool is important for entrepreneurs. Let’s dive in!

Project Management refers to the process of planning, organizing and managing a budget, scope, and time for a particular project. It uses the application of project management tools and resources, skills, techniques, and knowledge for facilitating project-related activities.

A project entails 4 critical success factors that must be well defined, agreed & work seamlessly to ensure success.

 Scope: It is the very basis of your idea that is going to drive your endeavour. Scope is where you give wings and shape to your idea. It’s your chance to be as specific and definite as you can be as to what is it that you aspire to achieve!

Resources: People, Process & Technology. You cannot deliver a project without resources.  Resources include everything you need to deliver a project i.e. people, equipment, money, regulatory clearances, and approvals, etc. Hence plan well and ensure your resource plan is a direct fit for your scope.

Time: Schedule and Time management are very critical to stay productive and profitable. Time tracking also allows for understanding the nature of the activities involved, the effort required and helps you in timely course correction and fixing the cracks in your plan.

Budget: Well, nothing moves without money! And being judicious with the project budget is the most critical part of your project. A major deviation on the higher side will kill the entire initiative along with loss of face and the expected competitive advantage. Hence, anticipate and cover the required budget along with a relevant contingency fund.

The main focus of project management software is to help your team with proper project planning and monitoring resources. But a poor PM tool can cost you a lot.

According to a resource, “$122 million is wasted for every $1 billion invested in the US caused by a mediocre project performance”.

Reasons why you should use project management software:

Businesses that are not using PM software yet are likely to do more work while gaining less profit. It happens because most of their time is wasted juggling tasks, not having visibility to real-time project, task and resource progress. And these productive times are taken away from your core operations.

So here are the reasons why a PM tool is important;

Collaboration:

Collaboration is the cornerstone of your project success. Given the diverse workforce with globally dispersed teams, things tend to go haywire if all are not brought to a single collaborative platform. Your teams benefit from real-time ideation, brain-storming, and reviews that save time, help improve team morale and boosts team spirit.

And at a tactical level, you optimize sharing of documents, timelines, and status updates and helps in identifying what is accomplished and what is pending completion.

Scheduling and Planning:

Having a robust execution plan with timelines is very important. It helps keep your team on course and sets the speed of project execution. With clarity around what needs to be completed when and by whom, you’re teams and the project stand to gain a lot.

Teams tend to be disciplined and as a business, you also have solid metrics and parameters to enforce transparency and a clear vision for the team. There is better alignment to the overall project goal and focus on the most important activities first.

Resource Management:

Resources eat away a major portion of your project budget and hence they need to be managed optimally. Project Management tools help you with accurate resource levelling, allocation and utilization to maintain optimal project health.

Overloaded resources are one of the major challenges for project managers the world over. Over utilization leads to demotivation and lack of trust within teams. You should also take into account the holiday schedule of the company and the resources involved to avoid unwanted delays.

Note that, when teams aren’t inspired enough, innovation, execution and timely delivery is directly impacted.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of Project management tools that focus on key features such as tracking and organizing the project management processes. Knowing the features you need for your own business is essential in choosing a product to implement for your daily business operations.

You must look for an all-in-one project management tool that organizes projects, sprints, tasks, manage resources and tracks time effortlessly. Basically, one that enables your team to focus on their core business functions and not have them waste time on unproductive and non-billable activities.

So have you tried one such tool? Not yet?

Then just go for a one-month free trial and see how it works!