Finding the ideal task software from the soaring number of project management tools can prove to be confusing and time-consuming.
There are no set criteria for selecting the tool but it all depends on the type of organization, their needs, requirement, and work processes.
A range of features such as ease of use, security, expenses, and reliability can significantly affect your choice when selecting the appropriate tool.
So how do you go about investing in the right tool that can facilitate you with task management?
Here are 13 features that make great task management software, and you should be on the lookout for them while searching for the tool.
So let’s get started!
1. Task Scheduling
The central idea of task management is to streamline the work, be it professional or personal on a daily basis to make it look more organized.
A good task management software should allow you to create and manage schedules as per your convenience.
When tasks are properly planned on monthly, weekly or even on a daily basis it not only becomes easier to work on, but the chances of them being missed out are also minimized.
Proper organization of tasks also helps in monitoring their accurate progress.
Task software should also provide you with a feature of notifications and reminders in order to make task scheduling better.
Notifications and reminders, help you stay vigilant and help save time, by preventing you from overspending on one single task.
2. Task Tracking
With several tasks scheduled simultaneously and that too in teams, it is a struggle to keep a track on their completion.
To ease things you should opt for a task software that allows you to trace the current standings of the activities in execution.
They should be able to highlight every stage the task is residing in for instance in progress and completed.
Your task software should ideally be able to define the task in terms of team members they are assigned to, under what project they can be categorized in, and the level of priority all these benefits provide you with an added advantage of searching and filtering them using the criteria you feel is most suitable.
This all contributes to project and task planning less cumbersome; slash down the unnecessary need for recreation of tasks and time spent on them.
Using a tool like WeekPlan can help you stay organized by managing all your tasks via a single dashboard.
3. Collaboration
We believe that task management and task collaboration go hand in hand, this why efficient task software should be able to design to improve team collaboration.
Selecting a task management tool that is complicated and inefficient can greatly affect your team task management negatively.
An intelligent task organizer application should provide you with an efficient collaboration channel.
The teams should be at the liberty to exchange needed information related to task sharing and task updates.
It should also give with the luxury of convenience so that teams can exchange information quickly.
Be it file attachments or elaboration on tasks assigned, the teams should not come across any sorts of hindrances.
Are you looking for a team collaboration tool? Try Week Plan.
4. Task Planning
You should know that effective task management starts with apt planning.
This all depends upon the budget you have, the resources at your disposal, and lastly the scope and timeline of your project.
The efficient planning of tasks requires that you break down tasks into small milestones using a structured approach.
A good task software must allow you to break down your work into smaller digestible tasks so that they can be easily managed.
Moreover, it should also provide you with an option to prioritize and organize tasks as needed.
5. Resource Management
When it comes to resource management, it’s not only the time that needs to be managed, but all other resources that are associated with the project are to be tracked as well.
These might include materials used in the completion of the project and meeting rooms as well.
A great task software is the one that has a feature of managing your resources, where it highlights the planned and scheduled resources, and finally, calculate the cost of their usage.
By doing so, the chances of being over assigned and conflicts for lacking resources is eradicated.
This will help you identify when the resources are being overused so that you can set new guidelines to limit their exploitation.
All in all, a good task management software helps you manage and assign resources to specific tasks, and ensure that teams working on projects have ample resources and tools to complete them in a timely manner.
6. Reporting
In order to manage your projects successfully, you should know about its shortcomings, problems and quick fixes to sort them out.
To have a comprehensive view of the progress, your task software should provide you with at least two features, KPI dashboards, and insightful reports.
Project KPI Dashboard is the quickest way to track the performance of your project as it updates and delivers the information in real-time.
The project KPI dashboard should include important metrics such as planned and actual project value, percentage of completed tasks and schedule variances.
The best task organizer application includes reporting tools that furnish reports from the project data provided.
Reports are a convenient way to check the progress of the project and help in identifying the best performing teams.
Similarly, you can also take action against the team or individuals that are underperforming.
Using reports for your projects, you can identify the root cause of the problem and then devise a solution to tackle them.
7. Documentation
Gone are the days when excel was used for maintaining the progress of the project, and we are hoping that you have stopped this practice too.
Did you know that excel sheets can contain up to 88% of errors?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you have all the project information accessible in one place?
Ideally, information related to planned and completed tasks, past and upcoming events, customers data, expenses and bills related to clients, and project resources should be accessible in one place.
Having all data in place means that you will not have to switch between multiple sheets for data mining.
When looking for task software to manage projects look for tools that offer you the convenience to store all data in one place.
8. Time Tracking
One core element that is important for streamlining work to keep a track of time for every activity.
This helps in judging whether time spent on a task is worth it and its contribution towards the project in terms of budget and time.
Another benefit of tracking time is to gauge the maximum time needed to complete a task.
The task software you opt for should be able to calculate time spent resources on each task, which can then be used to calculate their payrolls.
9. Recurring Tasks
Another feature that most good task software has is the possibility to create a task and schedule it on multiple days for various purposes.
When it comes to projects, one task can serve multiple purposes. One simple example of this can be updating timesheets at the end of the week can be scheduled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis for various teams.
10. Calendar
A task software that is efficient can be easily integrated with the calendar, which is easy to manage and access.
Through a calendar, you can easily schedule and organize tasks and use them to plan project meetings and timelines.
A calendar is vital when it comes to following up on the progress of the projects by deadlines or when you need to schedule meetings and conferences.
11. Prioritization
It is natural to get confused about sorting out tasks on the basis of priority when you have many things to take care of.
This where an efficient task software comes into play.
It can help you with prioritizing tasks based on the level of their urgency and dependability.
A good tool provides you with a mechanism to specify priority when the tasks are made.
This helps in taking on and completing the tasks that are urgent initially and then speeding up with the implementation of acute stages of the project.
12. Pricing
The best task organizer app is the one that gives plenty of features at a good price.
As we are all aware of the fact that everything has a budget when it comes to enterprise apps.
Task management software executes the gamut from free to hundreds of dollars throughout the year.
Make sure that you don’t fall victim to such marketing campaigns and end up with something useless.
13. Project Budgeting
You would direly need a task software to track your expenses and provide you with a clear understanding of the expenses with a clear understanding of the budget performance.
The best task organizer application will give you detailed reports on project expenses and expenditures so that you will always know when your project goes over budget.
Wrap Up
You should look for project management software that has all the features important to your organization and should complement specific tools such as accounting software or time tracking solutions.
There is no perfect tool, but you can come pretty close to finding one if you thoroughly do your research.
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