10 Essential Project Management Software Features That Matter
With all of the available project management software tools on the market, it's more challenging than ever to figure out which tool is right for you and your team. Which features will actually help you reach the finish line, and which just sound great in marketing campaigns but don’t actually add any real value?
In this post, I’ll explore what project management software is by discussing some of the features that are essential to supporting team collaboration, keeping work on track, and delivering projects successfully.
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Essential Features To Look For
The project management software you choose must:
- help you plan and monitor progress of tasks within a project and across each of the projects in your portfolio
- track performance metrics and key performance indicators (e.g. time spent, dollars incurred) so you can compare and analyze data across projects
- offer basic project scheduling and reporting features, such as Gantt charts
With the right tool, you'll get benefits from your project management software like the ability to track ongoing performance against key performance indicators, increase the likelihood of project success, and make sure nothing slips through the net unnoticed.
The features you have access to will depend on the plan you choose. Here are some of the key features to look for when choosing software (these should be part of your requirements checklist for project management software).
1. Project Planning
Project planning is one of the core project management software features. The planning phase is when you’re figuring out what needs to get done.
Project planning features allow you to set project goals, milestones, and objectives, and outline key tasks, due dates, and dependencies. Project planning visualization tools such as Gantt charts, schedules, or calendars, show you how the pieces of your project fit together so you can keep work on track as the project evolves.
2. Task Management
At the heart of project management is making it happen—knowing who’s doing what, by when. Tasks are the building blocks of projects.
The right task management system features allow you to break up project work into manageable pieces, assign tasks and subtasks to different team members, and set deadlines so everyone’s clear on who’s responsible for what by when.
Read more about the differences between task management and project management here.
3. Automation
Most project management tools also allow you to automate mundane tasks like requests for status updates and team utilization or routine progress reporting. With some tools, you can even automate feedback and proofing workflows, which means shorter feedback cycles and faster approval times.
Automating these repetitive to-do list items allows you to focus on higher value tasks. It also makes it much quicker and easier to keep track of multiple projects simultaneously so you can concentrate on your top priorities.
Read more about the differences between workflow automation software and project management software here.
4. Communication
Your project management app should also allow multiple team members to collaborate remotely and asynchronously on a project. Collaboration features like in-app messaging help facilitate real-time and asynchronous conversation about project progress.
Communication tools also give the project team clarity about where work stands and allows you to comment directly on a task, @-mention teammates to explain what needs to be done, and receive notifications about recent activity.
5. Resource Management
Resource management features help you and your project team understand who is working on what, when, and for how long.
It can help with resource planning visualization, meaning you'll be able to deploy the right people and resources at the right time, to expedite your project. The right resource management software can help achieve this balance and make sure projects are properly staffed.
6. Time and Budget Tracking
Time tracking software features allow your project team to track time and costs spent on the project. This can be done at the task or subtask level to promote accountability.
You can then view hours spent at the project or portfolio level to determine optimal resource utilization, support invoicing, and make sure project budgets are on track.
If you're looking for software that can handle resourcing, time tracking, and invoicing resource management software with invoicing might be what you're after.
7. Project Dashboards
Project dashboard features allow you to visualize the progress of each project task. Most software tools should offer customizable dashboards that will display how much time your team is spending on a project and where they’re spending it as they track their time and progress on tasks. This gives you an overview of how much work has been done on each part of the project.
You'll know if you’re ahead of schedule (or behind) and can adjust deadlines, time allocations, and resources accordingly. Several project dashboard software features can offer a more granular view to help with decision-making and highlight which individual tasks are overdue or about to be late.
Most project management tools include dashboards that contain real-time data regarding project stage, costs incurred, and how many team members support the project.
8. Project Views
Most project management software allows you to view project data in different ways—whether that’s a Kanban board, a task list, a timeline, or calendar view.
You can customize which views you show to which audiences. For example, you can share project timelines with executives so they can understand the big picture, whereas the Kanban board view might be better suited to collaboration with your software development team.
9. Documents and Other Project Files
As part of the communication functionality or as a standalone feature, project management software lets you share documents, images, spreadsheets, and other files, and then organize this information in a central repository so it’s easy to find. Some tools will also offer collaborative editing on these files.
Having this content accessible across the project team and other stakeholders eliminates hours spent tracking down files and fosters collaboration across team members.
10. Integrations
While not strictly a feature, native and third party integrations allow you to get more out of your project management software by making it easier to track your work in one place across multiple tools.
Most online project management systems integrate with other programs, which helps improve communications and reduce the need to log into separate software.
Some common project management software integrations include Slack, email, customer relationship management platforms (CRMs), financial applications for accounting, and document management systems, like Dropbox or Google Drive.
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How To Determine Useful Features For Your Own Projects
When choosing project management software, consider your business model, project workflow, and target outcomes to help you choose the features you need. Understanding the operational context for the tool is as important as identifying the gaps in your current toolkit and feature set.
Here are a few things to consider as you make your choice:
Your Business Model
- Do you run multiple projects at a time or only a few?
- Do you manage complex projects with many tasks and interdependencies? Or do they have fewer, discrete tasks?
- How do you make money? Milestone billing tied to deliverables? Time and materials contracts based on reported hours? Fixed fee or value-based pricing? Capacity?
Your Project Workflow
- Is there a lot of variation between your projects, or are they relatively consistent?
- Do you always use the same project management methodology (e.g. agile, waterfall)? Or is flexibility important?
- Do tasks and deliverables need layers of review and approval and a clear paper trail?
Your Target Outcomes
- What capability or features do you want to gain?
- What do you want to improve?
- How will you measure success?
Your Test Plan
- Are you willing to use the software on a real project with real integrations?
- Do you have a test project prepared at a fidelity that you could “war game” it with your team?
- Do you have specific use cases that you need to try?
Look into industry-specific tools or tools specific to your business size. If you work in construction or own a small business, for example, there are plenty of construction workflow tools and project management software for small businesses on the market for you to consider.
Finally, evaluate your organization’s project management processes to understand if it’s beneficial to invest in a new system and how you will implement the software on your projects. You can also test out free project management software if you're not ready to commit to a specific tool.
Pitfalls to Avoid When Choosing Software
Here are four common mistakes to avoid that can make using project management software more difficult in the long run:
1. Choosing Arbitrary Functionality To Please Everyone
Some types of project management systems are designed specifically for small companies with few specific needs. Others have more complex functionality for larger organizations.
Whatever your project management system needs are, find a solution that matches them as closely as possible—not something with forty ways of doing the same thing just because it sounds cool.
What’s most important is choosing the right set of capabilities for your specific use case. If you don’t know where to start, take a look at some of the most popular products in your category and see which ones have the features that match your requirements.
2. Ignoring Integrations
Although it might seem exciting to spend time working with new software, integrations are something you want to get right the first time around. If there are too many steps involved or if the integration isn’t smooth enough, then you’re going to have problems implementing everything properly in practice.
Unfortunately, you often can’t evaluate this properly until after you’ve installed the program and started using it on real projects. Integrations between third-party programs aren’t necessarily standardized. Each vendor may accomplish the same goal in a different way, and you might find that your project management system doesn’t play nicely with other platforms.
Before making any commitments, make sure that the vendor can draw up an action plan that will guide you through the entire process. Otherwise, they won’t be able to make sure that everything will work as it should. Make sure that the integrations you need are included in the plan you want—extra integrations can increase the overall cost of project management software.
3. Disregarding Demos Or Trials
If you don’t get enough opportunities to try out a particular platform before purchase, then it’s going to be difficult for you to get a grasp of what it can do.
There are bound to be features that are going to be completely wasted on your organization. As much as possible, try to get involved in the demo process so that you know exactly what you’re getting into. Or, check out video demos of different project management software to get a better feel for the tool.
4. Failing To Allocate Enough Time For Implementation
It’s easy to become fixated on trying out a new project management system when you see it. Don’t make any rash decisions until it feels like the right one for your organization.
Once that’s been determined, then it might be worth giving serious consideration to how long project planning will take from start to finish, especially if you have multiple projects.
It can be hard to predict how long something will take, and it can be even more difficult to account for every eventuality. Keep in mind that you’ll also invariably run into some kind of snag at some point along the way.
If your project management software isn’t set up within a reasonable amount of time, then it’s not doing its job. Make sure that this part gets enough attention before making any final commitments.
What’s Next?
Start evaluating the right project management software for your team.
