Choosing a Project Management Software: Flow chart

The best way to know if your company needs project management (PM) software is to answer the following key questions:

  1. Does my organization manage work plans with short and long terms tasks and deadlines?
  2. Do we share resources across the organization or implement matrix management?
  3. Do we need project budgeting and control?

If you answered “Yes” to these questions, then there is no doubt that you need software that will help you in controlling the planning and tracking of projects.

Most of the basic PM systems will have basic functionality such as task planning and completion tracking and basic resource allocation but if your company is very project oriented then the following functionality is required:

  • Portfolio Management – this is required if your company runs multiple projects that should be grouped, managed, and reported collectively (e.g. by-products or accounts). This will allow birds-eye management and views
  • Budgeting – planning and tracking project labor and equipment costs, expenses, dashboards, and alerts
  • Resource Management – allocate and schedule resources, specific skills needs, tracking of under and overutilization, and resource sharing

Now there is another thing that you should take into consideration and it is whether your project information should be accessed either from multiple remote sites or by external users. In this case, consult with your IT experts, and assuming there are no major information security risks, you should definitely look into web-based and cloud systems (SaaS). It will make your life much easier in terms of access management and SW infrastructure and support.

Two last things to check before the final decision – both of them are related to the need for document management capabilities as a part of the project management software:

  1. If your company does not have a document management system that employees use to upload and manage the lifecycle of official company documents, then make sure that your PM software does that – it is critical for the success of the projects. If you do have one, use the help of your IT experts to make sure that you can link the two together
  2. Engineering projects (e.g. construction projects) may have specific document management requirements for supporting various document types – look closely into that if this is the case.

For more tips and guides in selecting a project management software, get in touch with us or you may check out the Project Management blog here!

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