When we talk about project management and all the complexity in the execution of this activity, we need to emphasize the importance of choosing a project manager support tool so that it can have access to information quickly and clearly, so that it can make the best decisions or even report the progress of projects to stakeholders at all hierarchical levels of the company.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of choosing and using a support tool for the project manager and how it can speed up the project manager's work and improve communication during the project.
Currently, one of the main problems of the companies is related to communication failures, on the other hand, one of the main roles of the project manager is to transmit the information efficiently, either to act as a team facilitator by removing obstacles, guiding activities or even as responsible for reporting information to the executives.
Regardless of what the project manager's focus is, it is essential that the information can flow either through the team of projects, executives or even through the company so that everyone knows about the existence or progress of a given project.
It is essential for the project manager that he has updated information and that it can be analyzed without the need to call meetings or even update documents so that he can attend a meeting.
Various tool options to meet your need
To facilitate project management and control, there are several market tools such as Artia, Jira, Primavera, Trello, Microsoft Project among others.
During the process to choose the appropriate tool for your company, it is normal to have some questions and we list below some simple but important items that should be taken into account when choosing a project manager support tool.
To choose the most suitable tool for your company, you will need to evaluate some items such as:
- Company size: It may seem obvious, but the choice of the tool should consider the size of your company and consequently the budget available for purchasing the tool. It would not make sense, for example, for a small company to choose the Spring software because of its higher cost and being more used by large corporations.
- Area of operation: Some softwares have characteristics that may be more important for a particular segment of performance. For example, if your company works with software development, it may be more appropriate to use software that has specific functions that meet this need.
- Navigation: The tool should be easy to navigate allowing the team to have agility in the use of the tool. In addition, it should be evaluated whether the tool is online and also allows access via mobile devices.
- Technical Support: One of the fundamental points for any system is the structure offered by technical support, as well as the response time of the services. If possible, check with the company for further information on the operation of technical support.
- Easy Integration with other Systems: As much as the tool meets the business, most of the time, companies need to customize some item or report that the system does not have in a native way. It is recommended that the tool allows integration or customization with other systems to meet the needs of the company.
There are other items that could be evaluated before choosing the tool, and before purchasing the software we recommend that the IT team do a thorough analysis of your company's need and adherence to the main market tools to meet these needs.
And how does integration with other systems stand?
Once the tool has been chosen, it is up to the IT area to evaluate the integration or customization needs of the tool to meet the particularities of the business.
Although the tools, for the most part, meet the business needs, there are cases where the project manager wants to have a different view through reports or graphics such as: Dashboarding Projects, Projects per phase, date of last update of projects, projects per department, projects by priority, milestone control or cost information.
Another very common situation in companies is the need to visualize the information in audit reports, where it is possible to verify for example: projects without baseline, outdated projects for more than 10 days, projects behind schedule or with budget deviation.
Market tools do not meet this demand and, because of this, companies need to customize their reports and graphics.
Incredibly, even today we find situations where companies choose project management tools and when using them end up exporting data to Excel to manually cross-reference information and generate reports and graphics that may be outdated and also require an extra activity for the project manager to generate and consolidate information.
And how to solve this problem?
MLPro operates in the implementation, parameterization and customization of Microsoft Project Online and Project Server and has a solution that includes from Project Dashboard reports, Portfolio DashBoard, Portfolio Quality Assurance (QA) and Projects as well as project information in the format “One Page Report”.
These reports optimize the project manager's work by providing management information on the progress of the projects and the company's project portfolio. With this, the project manager is able to view the project information more quickly and efficiently, improving communication and optimizing work in project management.
Integration with Microsoft Project occurs in a simple and fast way because MLPro has more than 15 years of experience in implementing PPM solutions. In addition, MLPro is certified by Microsoft with Gold competency, which is the highest level of competence association that a company can obtain within Microsoft's partnership program.
To learn more about MLPro solutions, PPM implementations or custom reports please contact us.
Original content from the MLPro editorial library, fully preserved and translated for the English website.