Top Reasons Why Educational Institutes Need Project Management Software

Are you tired of juggling between emails, managing missed deadlines on scattered channels, and not being able to communicate effectively within your educational institutions? If yes, it’s time to streamline all your activities on a single platform with project management software for educational institutes.

What is the Need for Project Management Software in the Education Sector?

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In the education sector, the students manage multiple projects; faculties and admins also have multiple projects at hand that they need to manage using custom workflows. This is why students and staff in an educational institute need project management software to manage various University workflows.

The projects in an educational institute vary in size which require unique approaches to complete.

Apart from projects related to academics such as syllabus completion to conducting examinations, the educational institute also carries out many other projects to grow their educational institutes.

These University projects include activities such as constructing a new facility, procuring new equipment, introducing new technology, rolling out a new curriculum, etc; these activities also need cloud project management software to ensure hassle-free completion of the project.

How Project Management Tools Help Educational Institutes Improve Productivity

• Break-down larger projects into smaller tasks and actions
• Map key milestones and timelines to the individual project milestones
• Assign ownership and restrict users to each aspect of the project across the organization.
• Capture each piece of information in a consistent format enabling easier tracking of tasks.
• Add multiple layers of governance to ensure each project’s milestones are met.
• Facilitate documents and project approvals for senior stakeholders.
• Enable task managers and project leaders to map budget plans, track estimates, and get budget approvals, as well as log expenditures and costs.
• Track resources and time spent on various aspects of the project thereby enabling admin staff to plan projects and tasks accordingly.
• Log purchase orders, generate invoices, and manage expenditures throughout the project lifecycle with data and time stamps.
• Link project management activities through application programming interfaces or APIs thereby enabling project activities to align with projects and organizational objectives.

Top Advantages of Integrating Project Management Software in the Education Sector

• Increased Collaboration and Communication: Project management software improves collaboration and communication in both inter-department and intra-department staff, be it students, teachers, or admin staff. By providing a central platform for all project-related information a cloud project collaboration tool like Orangescrum can make it easier for everyone in the team to be on the same page.
• Improved Efficiency: Project management software can increase efficiency by streamlining tasks and processes. Automate various repetitive tasks by providing templates and workflows for each task which can immensely save time and effort.
• Better Organization of Projects: Project management software can help teams to organize and streamline activities by keeping track of all project-related information in a single place. Project information such as files, notes, conversations, deadlines, tasks, projects, etc can be stored and maintained in a centralized system which can make it easier to locate and access what you need and when you need it.
• Higher flexibility: Project management software offers higher flexibility since it can be accessed from anywhere at any time. This is especially true and helpful for educational institutions that have a remote online learning component.
• Better accountability: With project management software, there is increased accountability since all tasks and teams are tracked in a single platform. This transparency can help improve the sense of accountability among team members for their tasks.
• Better Project Planning and Execution: Project management software can help educators to plan and execute projects more effectively. Cloud project planning applications can help admins and faculties to create a detailed project plan, create tasks, track task progress as well as monitor deadlines.
• Better decision-making: Cloud task management application provides the admin team the data they need to make informed decisions about completing and delivering their project tasks. These features along with data visualization and reporting enable educators to gain insights on how their team is performing, how the project development is performing as well as identify areas for improvement.

Key Factors to Consider When Selecting the Right Project Management Software

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• First, you need to consider the specific needs of your educational institute. Each institute or university has different needs and has its own unique set of challenges. This suggests that not all cloud project management software will meet your needs.
• Choose a cloud project collaboration tool that is easy to use. Any software solution you opt for should be easy-to-use with interactive and intuitive user interface. New users should be able to onboard faster and can start using the software solution without needing elaborate training.
• You will also need to consider the price of the cloud task management software as well as its features list such as task tracking, time tracking, cloud storage, and third-party integration features that can accommodate all the tasks and functions in your educational institution.

Some academia-specific features to look for in the cloud project collaboration tool are an interactive whiteboard, parent/teacher update tool, homework reminder, team collaboration tools, file upload, and file storage features, etc.

Best Practices for Using Cloud Project Management Software in Education

When it comes to project management software there are a few best practices that educational institutes should follow to get the best out of their software.

• Create a clear and concise project plan and break down the project into smaller tasks. Create schedules and deadlines to keep track of the task’s progress.
• Use collaboration tools to keep everyone in the loop and keep updating everyone on the latest project developments. This also facilitates teams to address any issues faster.
• Use the reporting features to generate insights on the project’s development cycle. This will enable you to strategize your tasks and project plans better so that you get the most out of using project management software.

Top Collaboration Tools to Look for in Your Cloud Project Management Software

• Manage virtual sessions: When choosing for a cloud project management software you need the tool to have built-in video features so that students and teachers can collaborate remotely. Many project collaboration tool such as Orangescrum provides Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet integration.
• Task Management Tools: Task management tool enables you to prioritize tasks, assign tasks, assign roles, and manage and track task progress from planning to completion.
• Assign custom roles: Admin can assign roles to teachers, assistants, HODs, directors, and important faculties of various departments as well as grant or restrict access to application features to keep a high level of security and streamline management of tasks and overseeing of projects.
• Document management tools: You can manage your documents, attach files to tasks, and upload assignments, notes, and other documents related to office management and academia directly onto the application’s cloud storage. You can also access the documents remotely from any device and any location.

Conclusion

Cloud project management software for educational institutions can improve collaboration and communication among staff, faculties, students, and parents.

It lets you streamline various tasks and operations using the tools and features available on the project collaboration tool.

Educational institutes carry out multiple functions of varying importance every day and each task needs careful attention to mark its completion.

This makes it essential for the institutes to integrate a cloud project management software such as Orangescrum to manage various workflows and tasks with ease.

Orangescrum has various functionalities that enable teams to manage tasks from various departments from a single platform.

Are you an educational institute looking for all-in-one project management software? – Try Orangescrum