Digital Project Management: 5 principles to follow

Digitalization continues to be the great challenge companies are facing in 2021. From small companies with limited resources to companies with large infrastructures. The recent pandemic we have experienced has confirmed the need to go one step further and not only implement digitalization processes in our services, but also in the company’s internal operational processes.

For many years, project management was done by pencil and paper. In the 80s, the Excel tool became one of the most important tools for data management while providing time saving and efficient processes. Now, even though the Excel tool can support different teams working simultaneously, we could say it is not the most efficient tool to handle complex and global projects with large scopes.

It’s a fact that managing people is the most challenging part for a Project Manager, especially if we talk about international projects. The different personalities along with different culture backgrounds can bring conflicts or misunderstandings. Digitalization does not remove this essential task, but it helps to make it easier somehow.

In short, project management tools can help managers to control and manage costs, documentation and quality systems. Plus they can be used for project planning and time management. Hence, an inefficient and not optimized process will never generate competent results. If the digitalization process is done correctly, your organization will gain in time reduction, money and less mistakes leading to better business results.

The purpose of a good digitalization process is to maximize productivity, to reduce or eliminate not productive time and resources, unnecessary expenses, mistakes,etc. To do so, I would like to we give you some tips to achieve your goals successfully:

1. Mindset and culture change

Digitalization does not only consist in adding technology equipment or a new project management software system, but it is also about changing the business mindset at the organizational level. Digitalization provides transparency in the working process and, encouraging a digital mindset change, allows us to gain in business perspective with more opportunities and growth.

2. Project Management Software

Project management software will help you to get things done in a faster and more accurate way and use its resources to improve processes from project planning or resource management to internal and external project communication.

Mission Control is a good example of this. It is an online project management software system, native to Salesforce. This software provides you with a complete project overview, being able to collaborate with your colleagues, track billing and costs rates or mark your tasks as complete or in progress, among others.

If you are looking for an economic alternative, ClickUp has one of the best free plans in the market with unlimited users and unlimited tasks. This cloud-based collaboration tool is suitable for all sizes and industries, and it has many features such as view the project from an agile dashboard or organized by assignee, assign tasks, drag and drop files, monitor your progress or budget your expenses.

Another good software tool that I recommend is Wrike, an award-winning work management platform, easy to use and with over 400 pre-built integrations such as Microsoft, Google or Dropbox. With Wrike, you get an overview of tasks, project lifecycles, and portfolio analytics – all customizable for the way you work.

To choose the most appropriate Project Management Software for your business needs, I recommend you to consider the following aspects:

• Identify your project management challenges. This can be facing difficulties in sharing timely updates with a client, using too many tools to track different aspects of your project or spending too much time analyzing data for example.
• Check for integration opportunities and features you need.
• Use pricing as the last element in your decision, software’s capabilities are much more important.
• Take advantage of the free trial options to understand how it works.

3. Training

Learning how to use the tools and resources is essential. All employees should be trained to face the new challenges that this new Digital Era will develop so they can make efficient decisions and provide with innovative solutions.

A good training will allow the company developing the implementation in an agile way and with the least possible negative impact. To do so, I suggest you to create a detailed manual with a clear procedure that will help to reduce mistakes, and it will be a permanent source of information about the processes to follow.

4. Implementation 

It’s a fact that digitalization will make your Project Manager life better and easier, but it’s vital that everyone involved in the project follows the same steps from the beginning. Once employees have been trained it’s important to track the implementation process and analyze if it being carried in an effective way.

Therefore, the implementation process will be crucial for both the goals and optimization of each internal process.

5. Supervision

It could happen that the new digital process does not work as expected, the team does not get into it or the project management software does not work correctly for your organization. Supervising the process, asking for feedback and verifying the results will help you to obtain information and see if the results were positive or not and, therefore, what need to be changed or modified.

In conclusion, digitalization is an opportunity every organization should take into consideration to move on to the next level of project management. You will have better resources to make a success of your projects, your goals will be clearer and your team will be more efficient.