There are a multitude of project management tools on the market these days, so how do you tell them apart and choose the best option for your business?
First, and foremost, your project management tool should make your workflows easier and keep your information in a single place where all required team members can access and update tasks, but beyond that, there are four other things we suggest you look for when deciding which project management tool to implement.
Capture
It’s important that the tool you choose captures two things:
- End-to-end requirements: from initial notes, through to concept, testing, iterations and final versions. Version control is particularly important, so that you can backtrack if an error occurs (and they often do).
- User activity: from logins to changes made throughout the software, you’ll want to see who has progressed a project and who the heavy lifters are in your team. This can be helpful when it comes to estimating future projects and for undertaking performance reviews.
Prioritise
Most businesses will have multiple projects on the go at any given moment and all stakeholders will believe that their project is the most important. Being able to prioritise work, across users, and with accurate timelines, will allow you to reduce or eliminate wastage.
Tools like Jira offer drag and drop, meaning prioritisation of user stories, issues and bugs can occur by manually moving boards quickly and easily in a way that makes the most sense for your business.
Track
Listing and tracking all elements of a project allows for transparency and gives the project owner full visibility across all tasks. Project meetings are easier to run, and milestones are easier to reach when proper tracking takes place and is surfaced so that everyone in the team has oversight and responsibility to reach a common goal.
Report
Analytics are important in any part of a business, but real time stats are incredibly helpful when it comes to project management. Be it a request for an impromptu meeting with a project stakeholder or regular board reporting, any project management tool you adopt should allow you to access up-to-date data immediately. Having information available to you at any time allows tighter management of projects and improved insights for all involved.
Now that you know what to look for, let’s consider some of the tools that include these features:
Part of tech behemoth Atlassian’s suite of products, Jira is incredibly popular for technologically minded teams. Pitched as the project management tool for agile teams, it has great reporting, road-mapping and scrum boards.
Customisable workflows, mobile app and automation via APIs mean that this tool is one that comes highly recommended by companies including Twitter, Cisco and Spotify.
A solution geared towards the medical industry, Orcanos ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is a planning management tool that allows users to manage meetings, related tasks, codes, test execution tests, while offering version management and one click document updates.
Risk management, requirements management and bug tracking are also valuable for users that want an end-to-end record of each project. One of the most recognisable medical brands, Johnson & Johnson, is an Orcanos customer.
The Visure suite of products includes requirements, a tool that allows users to track the lifecycle of a project, offers individual user views that can be set up my administrators to track impact analysis, validation, specifications and more.
Offering a multi-user environment, Visure requirements also integrates with third-party, commercial or proprietary tools. Visure customers come from industries including automotive and transport (Audi, Bosch and Honda), banking and finance (Santander) and medical devices (GlaxoSmithKline).
