As a project manager, it’s crucial to introduce and implement new tools to the project team because that may be advantageous to the project’s outcome. You will be able to get different experiences in a lot of forms throughout your project’s life cycle. On the other hand, you can quickly navigate to the necessary changes in your project. Because of this, project managers usually use various tools to manage unexpected changes. But if your project team is unfamiliar with new tools when introducing them, that will negatively impact your project. Before introducing a new tool to your project team, you should ensure that decision will help the project’s success.
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Tips for Introducing New Tools to the Project Team
The following are the top 5 tips for successfully introducing new tools to the project team.
Discuss the Tools Early and Often Before Introducing Them
As a project manager, before introducing new tools to your project team, it’s better to discuss with them and collect their feedback if possible. If the reason, the team may feel uncomfortable with the new changes. As such, that will negatively impact the project. On the other hand, you need to ensure your project team knows the change is coming as early as possible. That will help prepare for an introduction or migration to the new tool.
Ask for Feedback from Key Stakeholders
That is the prime key to creating an opportunity for stakeholders to provide feedback. As well as allow you to incorporate their response into the next level.
Involve the Key Stakeholders in Getting the Final Decision on the Project Tracking Tool
It‘s crucial to ensure that the tool is actually going to meet the mark and provide a meaningful change for the project. On the other hand, this will allow the team to get on board with your plans or discuss their concerns beforehand.
Ensure the New Tool Is Fully Functional Before Introducing It to the Project Team
Keep off from introducing the tool if it still has any issues. As a project manager, you should ensure that the project tool is accessible for all users. Because of that, if there are any issues, it will negatively impact the project’s outcome.
If Needed, Set Up Training for the New Project Tool Before You Ask the Team to Use It
As a project manager, when introducing new project tools to the project team member, you should understand that everyone has diverse levels of adapting with different tools. As well as you should ensure that each team member’s needs are addressed. Keep this in mind💡 It is your job.
If it is difficult to adapt with the new tools, it is better to provide a training program that also helps create positive progress. On the other hand, it will lead to higher productivity and quicker.
Types of Project Management Tools
As a project manager, before introducing new tools to the project team, you should have a good understanding and knowledge about how to manage them.
The following are the tools of project management.
- Scheduling and Work Management software tools
- Productivity tools
- collaboration tools
Scheduling and Work Management software tools
As a project manager, if you are using these tools, it will help assign tasks to multiple teammates and for tracking progress on that work. On the other hand, it can also help you visualize your team’s progress.
There are lots of different types of work management software on the market. It includes popular tools like JIRA , Asana, and Trello.
Asana is a work management platform that helps project managers to build project plans, assign tasks, track progress, automate workflows, and coordinate their project team members. Asana provides a living system and a source of truth when everyone’s work lives. With the Asana work management platform, everyone can see, discuss and manage team priorities giving teams clarity on who is doing what and by when.
Asana is a work management platform that helps plan and coordinate the project work. The following are the benefits of the Asana platform.
- Building project plans
- Assigning project tasks
- Automating workflows
- Tracking project progress and communicating with stakeholders
- All project tasks are visible and organized
- Sharing status updates and other communication with people outside the company
- Designed for transparency and connection with all tasks
For instance, if you use work management software to assign and track tasks, you can notice if your team completes 20 tasks one week and just four tasks the following week. That’s a clear sign that you need to check into see if there is any problem.
If you don’t track your team members’ multiple tasks and progress, it is difficult to identify problems arising from project tasks. That’s part of the reason why work management software is so helpful. It provides an overall overview of how the project is going. Thus, you know what you need to check in with your teams to get tasks back on task.
Work management software and project scheduling tools are better for complex projects to manage project tasks and teams effectively and efficiently. As a project manager, if you need to introduce new tools like the above, you should make sure your team members are ready to work with them or not.
Productivity Tools
As a project manager, productivity tools are crucial for managing your project team members and overall project progress. That includes work processing tools such as Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel.
With Word doc, you can create and share project documents with the team, such as project charter, meeting agenda, etc. The spreadsheet is another crucial productivity tool. It will help create and share documents, like project budgets, schedules, ROAM analyses, RACI charts, and project status reports.
The following are the benefits of spreadsheets.
- Versatile
- To create various tasks – timelines, managing budget, and tracking tasks
- To adding and viewing project information
- To filter project tasks and see the things you are responsible for
- To highlight project tasks
- To transform, visualize and manipulate information
With presentation tools like Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides can be a great way to visually present information in your project. Using these productivity tools project managers can build effective collaboration with team members and ensure the project’s success.
Collaboration Tools
By using collaboration tools, you can work closely with your team members. These include tools like email and chat. These tools help you quickly and efficiently check, take action and communicate with each other about questions, comments, and other topics related to the project.
According to that, collaboration tools like emails and chats. It will help to continue project performance effectively and efficiently and coordinate team members.
As a project manager, if your company doesn’t have a standard software tool, you can select the right one for project needs. On the other hand, project tools are a great way to add value to your team at the beginning of the project.
Benefits of Project Management Tools
The following are the benefits of project management tools.
- Enhance planning and scheduling of the project
- Help for the remote working
- Better collaboration with project teams and stakeholders
- Effective task delegation of project
- Easier file access and sharing across the project team members
- Quickly navigation of new project team members
- Effective budget management
- Effective risk mitigation of the project
- Improved productivity of the project
As a project manager, if you need to introduce new project management tools to your project team members like the above, it is also crucial to understand the benefits you can get from them.
Conclusions
As a project manager, it’s crucial to introduce new tools for the project team to manage the project effectively and efficiently. There are a lot of tools available in the market. But when selecting them, project managers should have a good understanding and knowledge for selecting suitable project tools for their team.
