How to Choose the Best Project Platform for My Team?

The way that you organize the workflow in your team will have a big impact on how successful you are in running your projects. There are many different ways of doing this, with numerous tools capable of improving the communication and collaboration levels across the team. So, how can you choose the right project platform to use?

Avoid Workarounds on Tools That Aren’t Designed for Project Management

One of the most common errors made in this respect is that of using tools that aren’t designed for project teams. This means using the likes of word processing documents or spreadsheets to try and control your work in a way that they simply weren’t designed for. 

This might not be too troublesome in a small project where only a few of you are physically together in the same building. But it usually leads to issues in any other type of situation. In fact, one of the reasons why this has become such a big issue is that so many project teams now work on a remote basis and only speak to their colleagues virtually.

This way of working has led to a greater level of demand for online suites such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. However, in an effort to keep everything in one place people will then look to use one of the suite’s tools for their project management needs, even when there is nothing there that is right for this task. 

The Reason Why Project Management Software Makes Sense

Choosing the right kind of project management software makes it far easier to keep your team on the right track and working together effectively. These tools can be used throughout the full term of the project, from setting up a plan to managing the resources and communicating with everyone else.     

This provides a transparent, easy to manage process for running projects. It will give your team, senior management, and stakeholders a high degree of confidence in what you are doing. It also means that you have repeatable processes in place, giving you a clear way forward for future projects.

By picking a solid piece of project management software, you can manage all of the work more easily, even if your team members are scattered all over the globe. 

What Type of Project Platform Software is Right for Your Team?

Once you realize the using a tool like this is the right thing to do, the next step is to think about which project platform you should use. There are a few points to bear in mind here to ensure that you choose the perfect tool.

1. Think about what you need. Consider the size of your team and the location of the people who work in it. Do you get involved in lengthy, complex projects or are they usually shorter and simpler? You should also bear in mind the type of project methodology you need to use it with.
2. Consider what is missing just now. If you currently use some sort of tool to manage your projects, what is missing from it that would make it ideal? Maybe you struggle to track tasks through the workflow process or perhaps finding a way for everyone to work together is a major issue. Every team will have its own priority areas to resolve.
3. Think about the users. Do you need a slick, professional tool that external clients will be impressed by? Or is it purely for internal use, meaning that functionality is more important than anything else? Another point to consider here is whether you need to be able to set up users with different authority levels.  
4. Look at the level of security and integration needed. How sensitive is the data that you use and what other tools do you need your project software to integrate with? This can vary greatly according to your industry and the way that the business works.  
5. What are the key features you need? Take a moment to think about the features you must have and the others that it would be nice to have. This will largely depend upon the outcome of the previous points we have looked at. Are planning features your most pressing concern or are you more worried about being able to track the time spent on each task, for example?  

Find Out What Your Options Are

By this stage, you should have a clear view of what you need. This means that you can start to look at the possible solutions that will give you the right way to run your projects from now on. Take a look at recommendations to see what other people with similar needs to your own have found most useful.  

You can create a list of those pieces of software that appear to meet your needs and fall within your budget. The next step is to try a demo or trial period with the tool that looks best suited to your needs. This lets you see how the new project platform fits in with your team and the other tools that you use.  

Another important point to consider is the amount of training that is needed to get everyone up and running with the new tool. You don’t want something that is going to involve weeks of intensive training to introduce to the team. Instead, you will be looking for an intuitive layout that anyone can use right away with no fuss.

Why Choose Kanbanchi?

The Kanbanchi tool gives you all of the tools that you need to get started smoothly on a powerful project platform. It integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace too, meaning that it is the simplest way to track tasks and projects using this online suite of tools.

With an intuitive user interface and a Kanban-style layout that provides a simple, visual representation of the team’s workflow, this is a recommended way of making sure that your team can begin working more effectively than ever before.

Related article: Benefits of Project Boards and Why You Need One Now