Now that you’re here, you’re probably wondering what you can do better in scheduling your team. You’ve noticed that too much time is slipping through your fingers, projects are sometimes delayed, and employees feel like chaos. Don’t worry, problems like these are part of every organization. Fortunately, there are several ways to solve them. One of them is project scheduling software or project management scheduling software – really interesting project scheduling tool.

From this article you will learn:

 

With a little help from a project scheduling software

A small introduction before we will talk about important things in using project scheduling tool. Project scheduling software, resource scheduling software, employee management software, project management scheduling tool, or schedule management software – these terms mean the same. And the main goal of each is the same. Generally speaking, without talking about many other features and functional differences, they help with scheduling, allocating resources (employees), and wide-ranging project planning.

Project scheduling tools – interesting information

50% of organizations mostly or always baseline their project schedules. Whether you’re a novice project manager or you have schedule management at your fingertips, you’ll need a system to help you pull all your processes together. It’s not that you wouldn’t be able to do it differently – many companies try to manage their work by scheduling it on a whiteboard or in Excel.

The problem is that such a strategy only works up to a certain point. And that moment comes very quickly for any company that is hungry for development and has ambitions to grow. For modern software development companies, the question “is it worth using schedule management software” no longer exists. Instead, they ask themselves “which schedule management to choose”. And here it is worth noting a few criteria.

Must-have features of the best project scheduling software

1. Intuitive interface of project scheduling tools – most likely reason why the project scheduling tool is rejected is just UX and usability. So, it’s absolutely clear, before you buy – try it, let’s try people who will use it. The tool is supposed to make your job easier, not more complicated, so make sure you are comfortable navigating the panel.

2. Time tracking / Time management – effective project management is impossible when you don’t know what your team is working on and how much time it takes. Project scheduling tools can really help.

[Source: Screen from the resource management and project scheduling software]

3. Leave management / Absence Management / Team availability – employees are entitled to holidays and days off, but their absence affects the entire workflow and works planning. A good project scheduling tool will give you full insight into your team’s availability.

4. Custom reporting – every company has different priorities and different metrics will be important to them. Project scheduling software must generate the reports you need for you.

Project scope management and schedule management process depends on suitable project schedule management software

5. Scheduling in real-time – one of the most crucial things in work planning is an immediate update. Schedule changes that are made only after some time will create unnecessary chaos, so your tool must update them right away, so it is worth interesting project schedules tools.

6. Workload management – For the schedule to work you need to know who has time to take care of a particular task. The ideal tool will show you the capacity of your employees.

Time to get down to business – which project scheduling software is often selected by project managers?

Well, we’ve already told you why you need project management software, known as project scheduling tools and what to look for when choosing the one and only.

Now it’s time for a few examples.

Team collaboration, task management are as an air to effectively manage project schedules

Project scheduling tool Teamdeck – Resource Management and Project Scheduling Software

“Resource planning software developed by software house for their own needs, therefore, best suits the needs of the industry.” – one of really interesting project scheduling tools.

Teamdeck.io is project scheduling software that help with finishing complex projects

Teamdeck is resource and project scheduling software with time tracking and availability management features

Price (standard package): $3.60 / team member / monthly

Pros:

Cons

Project scheduling tool nTask – Collaboration and Project Scheduling Software

“nTask is one of project scheduling tools designed as a collaboration tool for businesses that is a full project management solution.” – G2

Price (standard package): $3 / team member / monthly 

Pros:

Cons:

Project scheduling tool ResourceGuru – Resource Planning and Project Management Scheduling Software

“Resource Guru is specifically designed to reduce excessive workloads, improve team morale, lower employee churn, and help you do your best work.”

ResourceGuru as many project management tools help with complex project scheduling process

Project calendars help to identify and visualize tasks throughout the project.

Price (standard package): $4.16 / team member / monthly

Pros:

Cons:

Project scheduling tool Float – Resource Management Platform with Project Scheduling Software Features

“Add your projects and team and you’re ready to go! Click and drag anywhere on the schedule to start assigning tasks.”

Float project scheduling software with task lists on the same page

Float also helps with project tasks and set task dependencies.

Price (standard package): $ 10 / team member / monthly

Pros:

Cons:

Project scheduling tool Mavenlink – Well-Known Project Management Platform and Project Scheduling Software

“Purpose-built technology for clarity, control, and confidence.”

Mavenlink among project scheduling software tools helps with managing projects

Mavenlink is also in our project scheduling tools comparison that helps finish the project successfully

Price (standard package): Individual pricing

Pros:

Cons:

Project scheduling tool Wrike – Project Management Software

“Customize Wrike to best suit your organization. From custom dashboards and workflows to team-specific automation to streamline processes.”

Wrike is a project schedule management tool that solves problems with project progress tracking

Task management with Wrike is a project scheduling software.

Price (standard package): $ 9.80 / team member / monthly

Pros:

Cons:

Project scheduling tool Smartsheet – Work Collaboration Software With Project Planning Features

“Align global teams, build and scale business-driven solutions, and enable IT to manage risk and maintain compliance on the platform for dynamic work.”

Smartsheet Gantt chart is crucial part in many project scheduling software

Gantt charts are helpful to develop the project schedule and visualize task dependencies

Price (standard package): $24.80 / team member / monthly

Pros:

Cons:

Project scheduling tool Forecast – Resource and Project Scheduling Software

“Unite your projects, resources, and financials in one AI-native platform.”

Forecast project scheduling tool to track project progress

To effectively manage a project scheduling process Forecast is irreplaceable for many managers

Price (standard package): $30 / team member / monthly

Pros:

Cons:

What to look for when choosing a project management scheduling software? Why is it worth choosing one of the project scheduling tool s?

1. Project schedules and security measures

In the digital world, data security is everything, especially when you work with so much confidential information. The ideal project management scheduling software should guarantee the security of your databases. In addition, it must comply with GDPR – the European data protection law in force since 2018. It contains very strict regulations regarding the collection, processing, and use of such information, so the right system takes it into account.

2. Onboarding materials in project schedules

Why would need software that you don’t know how to use? Even the most revolutionary functionality will be trouble, not help if you cannot use its potential. A good project schedule planner takes care of its customers not only when it comes to persuading them to buy it, but also throughout the entire cooperation process – good project scheduling tools are impotant. Make sure that the business partner you choose provides you with a proper onboarding process so that you can take advantage of the full range of capabilities you are paying for.

3. Scalability with project management

It’s only natural that your business will grow...and project scheduling software shouldn’t slow this process down. Or at least that’s certainly one of your business goals. The question is whether the project schedule planner you choose will be able to keep up with you. When choosing the ideal tool, think ahead, not only about your current needs but also about what you will need in the future.

Make sure the software will meet your current and upcoming requirements. It is also very important to check how the pricing of the service will change – it may turn out that some tool will be the best solution for a small company, while completely unprofitable for a medium or large software house. Take into account the direction of development of your organization to make your choice the most optimal one.

The best project scheduling tools have to be flexible in terms of progress tracking

4. Flexibility in task management

Imagine a small company in which everyone works from the office full-time and which handles a maximum of 3 projects simultaneously. Now imagine a second company, a multinational corporation that employs people all over the world. Most of them work remotely in different time zones. Some have full-time jobs, some work part-time, and some are freelancers. Up to several dozen projects are handled simultaneously.

As you can probably imagine, the workflow of these two companies will be completely different, but that doesn’t at all mean they have to use different project scheduling tools. The ideal project management scheduling software is flexible enough to adapt to each company’s expectations.

Pay attention to whether the software allows you to easily add, delete and edit data, make custom settings, enable and disable the time-tracker as needed, add data about each employee and personalize availability, for example, if someone is working part-time or on holiday. The system should also allow you to give individual roles and permissions to individual employees, for example, who can accept leave requests, assign tasks to individuals, set milestones, accept schedules, etc.

5. Project schedule tools in reporting

You can’t improve your work without data on what works and what doesn’t, which is why one of the key functionalities of project scheduling software is reporting. Make sure that the system generates basic reports providing you with the most essential data and that the reports can be customized according to your individual needs.

6. Integrations in project scheduling

Yes, we know, that the long list of integrations on the system page is always impressive. However, when choosing software don’t just look at the number of custom logos, but also how quickly the tool can introduce new integrations.

Ok, let’s say at this point the software has integrations with all the major applications you use, but what when a new one comes on the market? Will the tool be able to implement the new integration in a few days, weeks, or months? Speed and agility of integration are very important criteria when choosing a system.

7. Free trial od project scheduling tools

Every company will be trying to convince you that their solution is the best and will turn your thinking about work planning upside down. The truth is, however, that until you test it yourself – you won’t know for sure. Companies confident in the quality of their service will not be afraid to offer you a free trial period.

They don’t want you to buy their product blind, they just say “See, this is our system, check if it works for you and if it does – we invite you to cooperate.” A free trial period is the most effective way to verify if a solution suits you, so don’t hesitate to use it and look for companies that offer it.

The role of project scheduling in the project management process

Digging through the Internet in search of information on schedule management and project schedulig tools, you have surely come across terms such as project planning, project tracking, and project management. They all seem similar, appear in the same context – software house optimization, and bring similar benefits to your company. We know, it is easy to get lost in it, so before we go further we will shed some light on this confusing terminology.

The aspects distinguishing project management from a just management

Maybe you don’t know yet, but project scheduling, and resource management, are the pieces of the project management life cycle or – to say it is much easier to adopt – project management process. But before more about that, let’s begin with fundamentals. How do project managers understand project management and why they use project scheduling tools?

Paraphrasing the Project Management Institute (PMI) definition, project management is about using (specific) knowledge, competencies, skills, devices, tools, methods, techniques, and whatever it takes to deliver “value to people”. Leaving aside the ambiguity of the phrase “value to people”, one can say that project management is about using one’s resources (both tangible and intangible) to create and implement something – let’s say – useful (not necessarily to everyone).

As we see, the above-mentioned understanding is pretty large. From the PMI perspective a result of project management – it seems to – can aby anything. Anything which is useful for people. Of course, to make it more complicated, we could ask whether at least two people who have created something (tangible or intangible) and have a use for it are project managers, and their work is a project? Or, how many of them must have benefited from a given creation for it to be called a project?

Skipping questions like those, need to be said that the definition above doesn’t say anything about absolutely fundamental. It could be said, the fundamentals of any project, include planning and scheduling. And the fundamentals that differ between project management and management. We can’t also forget about task management. 

Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge, and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. Project management has final deliverables that are constrained to a finite timescale and budget. Project scheduling software can be helpful with it.

Project schedule – important aspects

Here are 3 project management aspects that don’t appear in the PMI’s definition. The first one is “project acceptance criteria”, the second – is time, and the third one – is budget.

Let’s use collaboration with a client as an example. As we know, projects are commissioned, internally or externally – by someone from your company or from outside, by a client. She/He makes a business order. She/he has expectations related to products and how they will help it help she/he current business or the new one. And – what’s the most important – she/he didn’t get an unlimited amount of time in life and Warren Buffet’s wallet.

Or, on another hand, he would like to get the result of his order fast and cheap. Saying directly – the quality of the products, the time she/he finally got it, and – the most important – the cost determines business decisions of potential and current clients. If the client’s acceptance criteria don’t meet with the results of work, here it starts another, much worse problem...

As the APM suggests, the difference between just ‘management’ and project management is about the time when the project is ready to implement or already implemented. While management is an ongoing process, project management has its final result provided in a finite time span. In this place we have a few comments because we ain’t sure does the “finite time span” it’s the greatest way to divide project management and just management.

For example, let’s use the marketing department or just a PPC specialist. Both are responsible for lead generation activities – that’s the project goal, gathering leads. The goal includes campaign optimizations, landing page optimizations, content creation, etc – that are the tasks. It has its budget dedicated to it. If the number of leads gathered each month is not enough, the business starts to have a big problem. From this point, if the project manager in the person of a PPC specialist doesn’t achieve the goal within the expected time and budget, the project fails. Thus, as we see, sometimes it’s not about the time span, but the budget – because that last one is the stronger aspect of a project that decides its profitability of it. Project scheduling tool can be really helpful.

Having this comment in mind, let’s go with a few other lessons.

Project management life cycle – all you have to know about project scheduling software

So, project management is – as the APM suggests – an application of methods and processes. On the internet, anyone will find the project management process broken down into phases. Sometimes it’s 3 phases, sometimes 4, 5, 6, or even 7. We use the most popular one that contains 5 phases.

From a narrower perspective, project management is responsible for HOW to achieve the individual project objectives with all the details. It is the execution part of managing work and is aimed at getting the team to achieve the goals. Is about leading a project from start to finish, taking into account all the individual stages, all the tasks within the framework of a defined budget, and quality objectives. It is responsible for how the scope will be delivered. Elements of project management, among others, include:

Where is project scheduling in the project management life cycle?

Now it’s for terminological issues because project planning, project scheduling, and sometimes even project tracking are interchangeable treated terms.

As the graphic below suggests, project scheduling is the one of pieces of the project management life cycle. It is one of the groups of tasks that belong to the project planning phase and execution as well.

To effectively plan schedule management of the entire project, project scheduling techniques mostly aren't enough

Cutting-edge project scheduling software participates in almost every stage of the project management life cycle

Project planning is the part of the project management process that answers the question WHAT IS TO BE DONE in a project. It describes the vision and the key steps required to complete the project. Its purpose is to define the activities and methodology that will allow your team to meet its objectives. It is a horizontal view of a project that is not yet very detailed. The planning phase consists of elements such as:

The goal of project planning is to prepare a formal, approved document that is used to guide both project execution and control. Thus the goal of the project schedule – according to the PMIs PMBOK Guide, is to show “the planned dates for performing activities and the planned dates for meeting milestones”. As we read on the Project Cubicle website:

project schedules show the activities, durations, dependencies, milestones, start and finish dates, calendars, and the critical path in a diagram.

Project scheduling (or resource scheduling or schedule management) is a procedure for assigning tasks and allocating resources so that the project can be completed within a specified time and budget.

This process consists in estimating the available capacity and additional resources needed at each stage of the project and planning at what time particular tasks and project phases must be completed to meet the declared deadline. Elements of schedule management are:

In the end, we need to point out project tracking because this term also is considered as something similar to project scheduling.

Project tracking is the process of monitoring the progress of a project (it is a monitoring phase in the project management life cycle). Project tracking is connected to or even the same as task tracking – it’s focused on task progress which is of course element of the entire project.

This is not the same as employee time tracking, which is monitoring what tasks employees spend their working time on. When all the work is planned, objectives are set and resources are allocated, it is time to check whether the project execution is going as it should, the schedule is being implemented correctly, there are no unresolved problems and bottlenecks are not blocking the progress of work.

Project tracking is a very important process for project managers and clients because it allows them to check whether everything is going smoothly and whether the original plans are working or need to be modified, for example by expanding the team or adding new tasks.

A rigid division of the above-mentioned terms is very difficult, as they all interact with each other and are parts of project management. Sometimes a different person is assigned to each stage, sometimes the whole process rests on the shoulders of a project manager. The more complicated the project, the bigger the organization, the more elements will contribute to work optimization.

That is why modern software companies do not even start working on a project without proper tools. Of course, there are systems dedicated to individual stages, but it will be much easier for you to work using one software that will meet all your needs and help you create a project plan, set a schedule, manage resources, monitor work time, and progress, and assign tasks. Below we have some suggestions for you on effective tools for managing work in your organization.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

― Benjamin Franklin

Why can’t you live without project management scheduling software as a project manager?

Ok, you already know that you need a project scheduling tool and how to choose one... But are you aware of why you really need it? We know that everyone talks about how necessary it is, but what will it give you and how will it change your business for the better?

Saves time and money

Chaos costs money. It’s no secret. In the chaos, you waste time trying to figure out what is going on and what needs to be done. And in a software house time is money…. a lot of it. After all, your services have a price for a reason. If you want to use your company’s money for something, it’s for development, innovation, and marketing, not wasting resources. Project scheduling tools can help.

Know what you are aiming at and what you need

This may seem trivial – after all, everyone working on a project knows what the goal is and what is needed, right? Well, not really. Often a seemingly simple task has many more parts than it appeared. And each of those components takes more time than it looks.

A well-prepared schedule always gives you a clear picture of what you need to do and when you need to do it to meet your goals. This ensures you don’t miss anything and avoids delays. This is why you should choose good project scheduling software.

Everyone knows what is required of them

Schedule management is very important from the perspective of teamwork because each team member knows what their responsibilities are and that the work of others depends on their work. This helps to build shared responsibility and solidarity among your employees, which has a positive impact on productivity.

To not go over the assumed project budget everyone's need to know detailed project plans and project deadlines

Optimizing efficiency and resource use

Some projects start smoothly and require minimal resources needed, and then suddenly it turns out that this was just the tip of the iceberg, and each subsequent stage is more and more difficult. If you have prepared a project schedule, you have certainly anticipated this situation and secured the time of staff who can be deployed to support the project. If you haven’t, well, good luck.

Higher project quality

You know that situation when you start working on a project and everything is perfect, you give 110% and the quality of workmanship is the highest possible? Unfortunately, the longer you work, the less time you have, and eventually it turns out that you won’t be able to finish the project while maintaining the initial level.

And even worse, you’ll have to significantly lower your standard quality to meet the deadline at all. Schedule management supported with at least good project scheduling software allows you to avoid this situation, plan your time carefully and maintain an even, high quality of work throughout the project.

Preventing problems

The project schedule shows you clearly what has to happen and when. If specific tasks suddenly start slipping, it’s a signal to you that something is going on and you need to react. This allows you to solve problems at an early level and prevent bottlenecks before they affect the entire workflow. Without a schedule, you would probably notice a crisis when it was already really serious,

To schedule projects and schedule tasks a project management tool is irreplaceable

Do you need a help with finding the best project scheduling software?

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”

Improving time management is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. Plans are an integral part of our lives. When we go on holiday, make dinner, want to get a promotion or a dream job, enter a competition, achieve anything. Since a plan is such an important part of our individual development, imagine an organization full of individuals, each with potential, competence, and a limited amount of working time.

Can you lead a company to success without schedule management and a good plan? Probably yes. But it’s just a bit like quitting your job and waiting to win the lottery. Is it worth believing in blind fate?

 

 

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