Three Reasons Creative Teams Should Rely on Project Management Tools

David Miller
specially for The Misfits Lair

Project managers recognize five essential phases that every successful project has to develop through planning, initiation, realization, monitoring, and completion. Still, they are only the roadmap for a team, hence it is important to follow them when the project is commissioned. Long before this, the manager should establish a structure for individual team members to work and collaborate as a one before they can stay sustainable with a reliable project management tool.
Here’s why all creative teams should rely on PM software systems to provide both the basic framework and the advanced features needed for successful project completion.
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1. Task Management Made Easy 

Projects are full of insecurity, and there’s so much one can do to prevent failures. Regardless of the scope involved, managers need to find the best ways to deal with all the aspects of individual projects, from resources, budget, and timeline to actual organization of people and work.
This is where task management comes into play, when it enables a proper work breakdown structure on one side, and contributes in determining the fruitful allocation of roles on other side. Both are indispensable parts of the project management tools that are usually provided with the features like to-do lists and task dependencies.

l  To-Do Lists
Once the project breaks down into a number of manageable units typically like milestones. Then, these blocks of deliverables can be anatomized even further. The result is a daily to-do list that includes multiple tasks, each prepared to be delegated and assigned to individual team members.
Though it’s only a basic feature of project management tools. It is highly unlikely to know that teams would not be able to do their job efficiently without it. A to-do list is much more than a helpful reminder. It allows teams and individuals to prioritize and coordinate tasks without losing anything from sight.
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l  Task Dependencies
If two birds can be killed with one stone then efficiency is hundred percent guaranteed in that case. That’s why most project management tools offer a task dependencies feature and a convenient overview of consecutive to-do lists that give an insight of similar and co-dependent tasks. With one glance, teams can determine subtasks which they can work on at the same time and other sub tasks that require previous tasks to be finished first.

l  Assigning and Delegating Tasks
Let us return to the beginning and remind ourselves of the huge importance of proper role allocation in any project. It is the manager’s job to weigh the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individual members of the team before making the final decision on which tasks will be delegated to whom. A simple project management software allows you to do this with only a few clicks.
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2. Optimized Workflow Management

Task management features help teams to establish the workload, while automation, time management, and tracking enable them to determine their pace and manage their workflow. These features are considered to be true efficiency boosters, which is something that project production teams are always in great need of.

l  Automation
With so many tasks that need to be completed on a daily basis, creative teams get benefits from every kind of automation that comes with project management tools. Besides project templates and easy reporting, recurring tasks are arguably the most time-effective functionality within a PM kit. They allow you to schedule repetitive work for every day, week, or month and put it on autopilot so you can focus on creative and more challenging tasks instead.

l  Time Management
The project management arena is no place for procrastination. And to help teams uproot unproductive habits and remain focused on work, there are most PM tools available that include a time tracking feature to make work easier and convenient for people. The purpose is to motivate team members to be more efficient, measurable about their performance, and know gauge time needed for completing certain types of tasks.

l  Tracking and Control
A lack of control is one of the frequent reasons for project failure until and unless you employ a suitable project tracking software. It comes with all kinds of PM solutions that introduce transparency throughout the process. You will be able to stay on the top of the bigger picture and its individual aspects, overviewing the project status and progress in each step of the way.
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3. Real-Time Collaboration

​Why limit your team to a block of cubicles when you can equip them with a passcode for worldwide connectivity? Besides transparency and group calendars, immediate communication and unhampered knowledge exchange are crucial for creative teams and are both easy to acquire with collaborative capabilities of project management tools.  

l  24/7 Access
Your team members can be scattered all over the world and still participate in project production in real time. It is just one of many perks of modern-day cloud computing that enable teams to access PM tool regardless of wherever they are at the moment. They can receive instructions and proceed on with assignments for the day as if they were back in the office with the rest of the team. Project management tools are now mobile responsive with user-friendly features as well, which promises beneficial collaboration even on one go.

l  Immediate Communication
The same applies to all those sparks of inspiration that hit in the spur of the moment, compelling creative employees to share and discuss the newly formed idea with their teammates. Usually, this calls for a long email thread or an urgent meeting which can distract minds of the employees from their tasks and waste their valuable time. PM tools prevent this with instant messengers and team dashboards, both enabling productive real-time communication for everyone involved in the brainstorming process.
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l  Knowledge Exchange
The way, PM tools are becoming centralized platforms that can record and store the team’s collective know-how is quite impressive. File sharing is yet another convenient collaborative feature that allows immediate idea sharing and knowledge exchange, but not only to this extent. Since, cloud-based project management tools enable teammates to work on the same document at the same time, whether it needs to be created or edited. All updates are automatically saved, which gives teams a chance to make changes as they occur.
 
As project success rates continue to drop, creative teams need to think of new and more optimized ways for maintaining control over their daily tasks and continuous performance. Thanks to their task management features, workflow optimization, and collaborative capabilities, project management tools provide both the structure and the roadmap needed for a certain success. 

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​Author Bio : David is a technical writer currently associated with ProProfs Project. Owing to his keen insight, he enjoys writing about emerging trends and associated learning in project management domain. He lives in Detroit, Michigan with his wife. In his spare time, David loves exploring the city, listening to Metal music and riding.