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MANAGING DIGITAL PROJECTS: Project management system tools

2 mins read

Gantt charts, automation, dashboards - projects teams love having nifty features on-hand to help manage a full team's workload much easier. Like any kid wishes to find under the tree on Christmas morning, projects teams would also love to have a magical tool that implements all the tasks they need in one feature set as part of a powerful project management tool.

That's exactly what Tom and Heather from the Digital 22 projects team discuss in episode two of the Managing Digital Projects podcast. They run through project management functionality, the features they value the most - and would love to see in the future - along with the best tools to use at a digital agency.

If you're in the project management world and need inspiration on features to make you and your teams' lives easier, make sure to hit the play button below to get their insights.

 

Automation

Automation unlocks a lot of opportunities and benefits for project management teams. This also has a knock-on effect on internal teams and ultimately the client work we deliver.

Automation is valuable to Tom and Heather as the functionality supports a remote working environment; something we all had to get used to in 2020. It also allows for more time to do more value-added stuff to support clients, allowing for more on-time delivery and increased comms between teams and clients.

Scheduling tools

Tom and Heather also value scheduling tool. It visualises all of the work in our project management system and shows every team member's capacity based on meetings, work and annual leave. This makes it so much easier to book work in, push work out or decide whether other individuals can help.

What's great about the scheduling tool we use is it's super visual, so Tom and Heather get an early heads up on any blockers or low capacities, plus they can view it at a business level or team level, view percentages of capacities and hours or see it from a daily, weekly or monthly level.

What they'd love to see, though, is automated alerts to save a lot of time.


Gantt charts

Gantt charts are usually quite static. It's something that's implemented at the start of a project and normally refreshed a few times. In a digital agency like ours, however, you need it in real-time and some agencies have this capability.

It needs to be automated based on work status and dependencies, while also showing ley dates for high-level work with dropdown options with more details. What Tom and Heather would really love to see here is automated Gantt charts in project management that are the Gantt of all Gantts. 

What else?

Tom and Heather also run through dependencies and the role they play, along with acceleration and the pros and cons of both. There's a lot of useful insights in this episode that you don't want to miss if you're looking to up your project management game.

To hear about each topic in more depth, make sure to watch the video using the first button or listen on-the-go using the SoundCloud link.

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