PM Experience Talks About the 5 Essential Features of Project Management Tools

【51CTO.com Quick Translation】 Project management and software development are always difficult to coordinate. There are so many things to plan, control, and manage that managers can easily get lost in the process. Fortunately, there are a variety of project management tools on the market. It is very important to choose the right tools for you, but it also takes some time to screen. Why do you need to spend time? Because a large number of project management tools are not very effective, difficult to use, or over-hyped. Therefore, managers must clearly understand the characteristics of project management software, and each tool should have the characteristics required for efficient software development.

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Is choosing the right software important?
The answer is yes. When a project manager wants a convenient and efficient management method, first he should be ready to perfect his plan, which includes many points. It is true that in any case, managers need to define the purpose of the project plan, stakeholders, determine the goals of the project, define the scope of the project, the roles and responsibilities of team members, and they need to arrange all this in an effective project management tool. In addition to the basic mandatory functions (such as task allocation, progress tracking, etc.), there are some other functions, without which your software development project is likely to fail. Because of the development needs, let's find out the top 5 characteristics that effective software should have.

1. Risk Management <br /> There is no project without risks. Unforeseen circumstances always occur at every stage of development and, of course, they have different effects on the plan. Usually, unforeseen developments have a negative impact. But sometimes the opposite is true. In any case, unforeseen circumstances and risks affect the duration of the task, schedule, deadlines, budget, participants, etc.

This feature is a must if you are working on a long and complex project. Therefore, any manager should calculate all risks in advance to avoid unforeseen expenses, projects taking too long, and reduced performance quality. This feature is a must-have for your project management tool.

* Recommended tool: Mindjet

2. Resource Management

Resource management is an integral part of software development projects. What are resources? They can be physical (such as equipment), labor (your team), and expenses (the cost of each resource). Therefore, it is very convenient and useful when a project management tool provides resource management capabilities. The value of this feature lies in the ability to help project managers assign tasks and calculate expenses.

Every project manager will consider the cost issue when setting resources. He will be aware of the cost of the entire project and whether the resources occupied by each part are too much or too little. Therefore, it is very necessary to use the resource management function of tool software in the software development process.

* Recommended tool: Wrike

3. Task related/important events

Have you ever worked on a completely separate development project? I'm sure you never have. For example, from Task 1 to Task 10. It's impossible to separate the tasks from each other. That's why all good tools provide task association. Most of them allow you to do this with a few clicks and drag and drop.

The milestone feature is used to mark important or other specific points in a project along the timeline. If a milestone project (important event) is approaching, then achieving this milestone will keep your project moving in the right direction. There are many milestone events in software development, such as completing the development of a new feature, the first expert external review, the thousandth registered user, etc.

*Recommended tools: MSProject

4. Teamwork

You must know how important it is to communicate and coordinate with your team in one tool without switching between different software and screens. Timely and smooth communication is a must in the development process. This is a great idea and will make your product more perfect.

So, what do project management tools offer? First, they provide communication capabilities, such as commenting on tasks or attaching files - no one wants to lose important information in an external tool. There are also other collaborative features, such as exporting your project progress as a chart. Anyone involved in the project needs sharing capabilities to gain instant access to viewing and editing permissions. If you make some mistakes in the development plan, some tools also provide a history of changes, which can undo some steps and restore previous versions.

* Recommended tool: GanttPRO

5. Benchmark Assessment

The benchmarking function can provide project managers with an assessment and analysis of the progress of planned work and the actual progress of work. Some project management tools have such a function, but this assessment is not automatically calculated. So the project manager must complete this operation manually. Choosing a project development tool with a benchmarking function will have a supervisory effect on you.

* Recommended tools: MSProject

By Andrew Stepanov
Original link: https://dzone.com/articles/5-must-have-features-of-project-management-tools-
Translated by Liu Nina

[Translated by 51CTO. Please indicate the original translator and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]