How to Size Up
IT Project Management Solutions

Understand Your Needs

Selecting the most appropriate IT project management solution begins with a forthright and honest assessment of your unique needs.

If you have an existing solution, where does it fall short?

There are many reasons that the progress of an IT project could be hindered.  In some cases, there could be unforeseen complications that might simply be unavoidable.  In others, delays and missteps may regularly occur at the same points in the workflow, or may be caused by similar inefficiencies.  Pinpointing where things start to go off track can help you hone in on an IT project management solution that can fill those gaps, and make the entire project lifecycle easier to manage.

What to target in your new solution

Take stock of what project management features your team could really benefit from, and prioritize those needs based on importance and impact on your workflow.  Planning, scheduling, customization, access controls, compliance requirements, and lack of in-house expertise, are just a few examples of key features to consider.  By taking an accurate inventory that’s reflective of everything you need in an IT project management solution, you’ll be able to quickly narrow the field of choices.  But don’t forget about:

• Methodology:
  Whether you’re utilizing Agile, Waterfall, Hybrid, Scrum, or others, make sure that your new solution can support your current, or typically-used project management methodologies.
• Your Teams:
  A new IT project management solution is going to impact different roles in different ways.  Additionally, the size of your team, and whether it includes internal team members, external, or both, can also impact your needs.
• Organization:
  Consider your organizational and structural needs for tracking task assignments, communication, due dates, priorities, files, and more.  Task detail, subtask breakdowns, and visualization needs are evaluative points to keep in mind.
• Accountability:
  Clarity of task assignment responsibilities and other project-related duties is a critical component to a healthy IT project management solution.  Your new solution should allow you to easily see tasks, assignees, dependencies, deliverables, start dates, due dates, and more.
• Reporting:
  Appropriately reporting progress to key decision-makers and stakeholders is a major part of managing IT projects.  Having the ability to easily generate useful reports with meaningful project insights to share with leadership and teammates should be a top consideration of any new IT project management solution.  Status updates, real-time progress tracking, and customized data reporting are just a few examples.
• Security:
  There should be confidence that your new IT project management solution is going to keep your critical business data safe and secure.  In addition to general security features, the solution you choose should also offer admin controls for you to manage employee and guest access when you need to, set password requirements, set privacy permissions, and set levels of authority.

Gain Centralized Collaboration Capabilities

In today’s modern business environment, effective collaboration is critically important to day-to-day operations and organizational achievement.  Without it, organizations often find themselves working from behind and consistently playing catch-up to their market competitors.  In IT project management, ineffective collaboration can ground IT projects before they start, and effectively deny the opportunities to increase productivity, optimize workflow, and advance innovations, that organizations would leverage to increase their market share.  But as important as it is, effective collaboration in IT project management can be very difficult.

One of the major reasons effective collaboration is so difficult is that IT project management teams often lack a shared workspace.  Instead, they waste time searching for related communications and feedback through email, and their goals, task assignments, files, and more, are spread across multiple tools – making for a very inefficient, and ineffective way to progress through a critical project.

With your new IT project management solution, ensure that all of your communication and collaboration can happen in one, centralized location.

• Communicate in task:
  Having the ability to communicate within a centralized tool, and on specific tasks themselves, can help streamline work, provide context and easy access to background information, as well as give every involved team member visibility of all pertinent discussions.
• Cloud-based collaboration:
  If your organization is offering more and more remote, or flexible work arrangements, you’re probably utilizing cloud-based tools (or soon will be).  If so, ensure that your new IT project management solution can be aligned with those requirements.
• Stay mobile:
  As your IT project management team becomes more remote, you’ll need to provide them with every opportunity to stay up-to-date and in touch with each other.  Solutions including tools with mobile apps can help keep your workforce focused, and your projects on track.

One collaborative workspace

Without a centralized workspace, you run the risk of having unconnected, separated team members wasting time duplicating each other’s work.  With all of the nuances, complexities, and variables that come with an IT project, this confusion and lack of synchronicity can happen very easily if team members are having to search for plans, files, and assignments in multiple places.

As you assess new IT project management solutions, consider whether or not you can:

• Easily find applicable projects, connect to them, and share them as necessary
• Manage digital assets within projects themselves
• Integrate any new tools with existing business-critical tools

Is Your New Solution Going to Be Flexible Enough?

An ideal IT project management solution is going to help your team focus on the business-critical innovations and highly-important projects that help drive future business success.  Furthermore, your new solution should provide you with enough flexibility that you can effectively manage projects of any size or scope, and quickly adapt to changing conditions.

Visualization

Different solutions are going to offer different levels of visualization options.  Some offer a wide variety, while others offer a more narrow assortment.  Depending on how your team needs to visualize your project’s reportable data and information, and what data elements you need to see, there may be some solutions that simply don’t match up with your needs.

Customization

Oftentimes, different team members go about their work in different ways.  Work styles and preferences vary, and if new tools and solutions are inflexible to meeting those variables, those new tools and solutions won’t last long.  While each organization’s specific situation is unique, generally, to ensure your new IT project management solution can meet the diverse needs of your team, it should be flexible in these areas:

• Existing Workflow Alignment:
  While some changes to your current processes might be ok, the most ideal IT project management solutions should be flexible enough to support your existing processes and workflows.
• Meaningful Status Updates:
  Task assignment titles and project status descriptions should be well-aligned with your organization’s nomenclature and classifications.
• Visibility:
  Some people are visual, while others may be more verbal.  In any case, your new solution should not force a team member to view their task assignments, required deliverables, or responsibilities in a way that’s uncomfortable for them.
• Project Structures:
  However your team members feel it makes the most sense to structure the workflow – using subfolders, portfolios, hierarchies, or others – your new solution should be supportive of those strategies.
• Varied Approval Accommodations:
  Depending on the task or action, the approval process may be different for your organization.  Additional approvals may even be necessary if there are multiple levels of authority.