How Project Management Tools Support Your Team in the time of Covid-19
In the past few years, I've had the opportunity to work with many teams across several industries. Every team, whether a solopreneur or a large corporation has the same basic needs. Effective management tops that list.
Project management (PM) tools are the backbone of not only effective but efficient delegation and communication. This is especially true these days. With distributed work, more than ever before, teamwork requires a single source of truth that tracks what needs to be done, who is tasked with doing it, and where everyone can find what they need to complete their tasks successfully.
Project Management tools reduce the time spent communicating.
Do yourself and your team a favor and review how many virtual calls you have had over the past two weeks. If frequent calls have been your go-to lately I’ve got news for you: you're bleeding out all of your energy on coordinating what needs to be done, instead of doing it.
a report from Wundamail research reveals video conferencing is so "excessive," that those meetings cost more than $1,250 per employee, per month in wasted time.
Read more at Tech Republic
A PM tool can turn some efficiencies of face-to-face collaboration, such as topical side conversations or direct referencing key decision makers, into location-agnostic practices and organizational strengths
Efficient teams increase the value of other teams
Investing in project management, even for just your team, is worth it. In a technical article about how PM tools support distributed marketers as they work with other teams, the chief marketing officer of NewsCred shared:
“Managing vendors and other non-employees remotely was less of a challenge compared to their peers that don’t use these tools… of course, discovering and purposing marketing assets was also less of a challenge.”
Good Project Management Practices Matter As Much As The Tool
The best thing you can do for yourself is to adopt some project management best practices. Software, no matter how perfect it is for your team, will not solve all your problems. A good tool works best when it is used to implement good practices.
“One of the worst nightmares for remote team collaboration is to get lost in the information loop…"
To manage a project well, every person needs to have access to information and resources. It doesn’t stop there. Then they need to space to go and do what needs to be done. The good folks at Quire share some best practices for project management while you’re remote.
If you and your team members have a tool that you use to stay organized tweet me and tell me how you like it.
