Ahh yes the project manager’s plight: How do I make sure that my project is on time, on budget, and on scope? These questions can keep even the most seasoned project manager up all night. If you’re one of the many struggling with these big three questions, don’t fret because social task management tools are here to lend you a much needed hand.
Time
One of the largest and most challenging obstacles facing any project is on-time completion. If a project misses the delivery date, odds are it usually runs over budget and causes a whole heap of other unforeseen issues. This is why making sure a project sticks to its preordained schedule is so important. Social task management tools can quickly and easily tame this wild nightmare. Social task management tools allow project managers to track the time spent on any specific project task. By inputting team member assignments, project managers can easily identify possible dependencies, and project choke points. Additionally, should project managers need to send out team-wide notifications, or alerts social task management software makes this very quick and easy. Typically team members are instantaneously notified of task statuses and announcements via a project news feed. This not only makes communication easy, but stream lines it allowing team members to spend more time accomplishing their tasks rather than sending numerous emails back and forth.
Budget
If it isn’t on-time deliver you’re concerned about, then it’s probably the budget. With multiple ways to track income and expenses, online task management software helps project managers keep a handle on their budgets. Most tools have easily input-able expense fields that are mobile compatible. Now it’s impossible to forget to update those cost projections, helping provide an accurate, real-time, snapshot of how project costs are mapping out. In a post off the Intuit blog, Dawn Allcot points out that if you struggle from inaccurate billing there are other task management tools to help even with this. “If you have a lot of billing errors, you’ll never know whether your project is within budget or not, or how much money you have available. Keep track, save the company money, and stay within your budget easily with online project management software.”
Scope
The last of the big three problems facing project managers is scope. Ever been on a project where the goal keeps expanding or shifting? We all try to limit this, but sometimes it happens. By using social task management tools, individuals are forced to think about how their tasks fit into the larger project. By forcing this thought process, it becomes much more difficult to have unintentional scope expansion. It also gives team members the ability to see how their tasks fit into the larger grand picture. If you work with a lot of outside agencies this is a great way to keep track of their process to help ensure that everyone is on the same page at all times.
If you feel like you’re one of the unfortunate few who suffer from the big three, then give social task management tools a try. You will be surprised at their benefits.