With challenges arising every day, from resource limitations to coordinating remote teams, overseeing multiple projects simultaneously, and balancing tight deadlines, your project becomes vulnerable to disorganization. This, in turn, affects your ability to compete and grow.
Amidst this chaos, leveraging the right project management solutions can make all the difference for your business. However, finding the one that suits the exact needs of your startup is hard. It’s so difficult that many businesses realize that using custom project management tools, tailored to align with their objectives, is ultimately the best option.
5 Ways Project Management Tools Help in Startup Scaling
Project management tools contribute to the scalability of a startup in many ways. They not only offer a centralized platform for creating and assigning tasks to individuals, teams, and guests but allow team members to collaborate and share information in real-time.
Below, we dive deeper into the core functions of work management solutions.
1. Task Management
Running a startup effectively without a task management system is nearly impossible. Gone are the days when you could rely on your memory or a collection of paper notes and Excel spreadsheets to assign and track tasks for every person.
Prioritize a tool that enables you to create and view tasks with a few clicks, assign and customize access to specific team members, specify due dates, track time spent on a project and monitor progress in real-time, sort tasks based on urgency, and automate recurring assignments.
2. Collaboration and Communication
To complete tasks effectively, your team must be able to communicate smoothly in real-time. However, this can pose a challenge when members are located remotely or when your team is working on simultaneous projects.
Good project management apps make it easy for everyone in your organization — from stakeholders to team members and managers — to stay up-to-date on the newest developments within individual tasks and higher-level projects. They allow everyone to provide feedback and ask questions as needed through a centralized platform for exchanging ideas and information.
3. Timeline Visualization
Project timelines clarify all tasks involved and the deadlines for each, so every member of your team is aware of when individual steps will take place and when the project itself is scheduled to round up. To streamline this process, powerful project management apps offer a central platform where everyone can track the progress of tasks and view the important milestones that make up your project.
A project management tool with in-built timeline visualization features also helps to make colossal projects feel more doable. By breaking projects and tasks into tiny actionable steps, you give your team a roadmap for “putting one foot ahead of the next” and turning your current object into a success of the past.
4. Reporting
Powerful reporting tools offer valuable insights into your project’s performance. With the right software, you can generate and schedule individualized reports into all aspects of your project, from team members’ contributions to how effectively you’re allocating time and budget and how closely the project of your project mirrors your original plan. Moreover, these project reports also serve as a valuable source of learning as, with enough information, you can discover and decide to stop what isn’t working or double down on what is.
5. Resource Management
Resource management involves planning and distributing resources in the most efficient manner possible. It helps prevent team members from being overburdened with work, ensures financial resources are budgeted where they are most needed, and, perhaps, more importantly, instills confidence in your project’s stability among investors, clients, and stakeholders. In this vein, the right project management solution should allow you to quantify how much work is on each team member’s plate and visualize what percentage of a resource (time and budget) is currently being used and how much is available.
Real-World Success Stories
In this section, we’ll explore three powerful project management systems that facilitate startup scalability.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a comprehensive project management app that best suits businesses that handle task management and document collaboration. It offers several ways to view tasks, from the classic to-do list to its Trello-like board, a calendar view, and its Gantt view. However, the Gantt view requires some manual setup as you have to add due dates and dependencies to every task.
Advantages:
- Well-integrated document collaboration tools.
- Multiple features such as time tracking, task views, and proofing.
- Hundreds of customizable templates, automation, and features.
Disadvantages:
- The number of features may present a learning curve.
- Not all views are available on mobile.
- ClickUp has no billing or invoicing features.
ProofHub
True to its name, ProofHub is a work management tool that enables your organization to prepare, track, and prove the progress of projects easily.
ProofHub’s name originates from its focus on proofing tools, which few other work management apps have. These features enable your team to collaborate on visual materials such as advertisements and design mockups, from the creation state through iterations and approval. ProofHub allows you to open and interact with files right in your browser — you can open a design mockup and add comments right next to parts of the design you want to provide feedback on.
Advantages:
- Its fixed $50 fee is startup-friendly.
- ProofHub makes visual collaboration and proofing easy.
Disadvantages:
- ProofHub has no budgeting or invoicing tools.
- Some users report occasional bugs.
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Transpose
Transpose is an all-in-one solution that lets you tailor a no-code project management system to match your startup’s specific needs. The tool supports a variety of templates or data structures you can customize and save for later use. For example, if you want to track your clients, you can quickly create a dedicated template and use its handy drag-and-drop feature to categorize various details.
Its native Kanban view allows you to select a field and view it as columns, making it easy to monitor the progress of any project, i.e., sales process and project timelines. Moreover, it has a calendar view setup like Kanban and a preformatted table you can use to monitor the individual steps that make up your project.
Advantages:
- You can leverage Transpose with zero IT or coding knowledge.
- With a centralized and adaptable platform, you no longer have to use many separate project management tools.
- No need to purchase consulting services to educate your team.
Disadvantages:
- Requires some time to set up
- Deploying this tool comes with higher initial costs.
Conclusion
As a startup, the right project management solution will significantly improve your team’s ability to cooperate effectively, accomplish goals, and distribute resources efficiently. So as you search for one, remember the essential functionalities a good work management app must provide and consider how much your business can benefit from a customizable project management app.
Images provided by Eden Constantino & Jason Goodman; Unsplash; Thanks!
