Missed deadlines. Budget overruns. Scope creep. That’s what losing track of major projects looks like — and it happens all too easily.
In dynamic teams, priorities and workflows evolve daily. And while you’re pursuing the best outputs and outcomes, scope changes happen. With the right tools and strategies to keep track, those aren’t issues; they’re natural elements of achieving results.
Below, Oliver Stedman, Product Consultant here at Provident CRM, shares his take on why those well-chosen tools and strategies are essential.
Whether we look at individuals or teams, these blockers tend to rear their heads:
Poor communication and visibility
We all have our preferred (or learned-but-hated) working methods: emails, spreadsheets, WhatsApp. The issue with those is they’re silo-makers: if one person’s on leave, everyone else is in the dark. And if one team member is stuck on a task, there’s no way for colleagues to spot it, offer fixes and move things along.
Reputational risk and time mismanagement
Siloes and opacity can delay — or entirely derail — projects. Worst case, that means lost business and reputational damage within your sector. Not ideal.
Subpar resource allocation
If multiple projects are strung out across messy software webs, it’s impossible to gauge true workloads. Remote working has exacerbated the need for clarity on everyone’s capacity, so priorities are properly actioned.
Overlooked wellbeing
Resource allocation is vital for efficiency and, just as importantly, clear overviews ensure your people aren’t overworked. That safeguards wellbeing, reduces burnout risk and leads to better work overall.
With the right structures implemented, there’s no need for large projects to become overwhelming and complex. Traceability, consistency and organisation simplify managing multiple tasks, dependencies and stakeholders:
Traceability gives you a retrospective view of your projects. What made the differences that got you into better positions? And what went awry, so you can continuously improve? By tracing the specifics, you’re also set to give personal feedback to your team on what they did well, and how they can personally develop.
Consistency is essential to maintain your projects’ integrity, and ensure your people and clients are on the same page. When tasks are executed consistently, the chance of miscommunications and errors shrinks. Plus, you’ve got a ready-made project audit log. That contributes to quick, easy solutions if aspects are called into question, avoiding scope creep and clarifying accountability. These project blueprints also enable you to onboard both new clients and new hires efficiently, sharing a consistent process that clarifies expectations.
Organisation systematically structures your processes, tasks, resources and documentation so everything is easily accessible. While this is vital for every industry and team, it’s especially important for technology/product/development teams. With agile work approaches, clarity matters for progress, phase completion and handovers.
1. Manage task dependencies with the right processes and workflows
Major projects need parallel, varied work processes. And smart people take the initiative to work however suits them best. Combine those factors, and you’ve got productivity. But without the right overviews, it’ll backfire. Collaboration depends on open communication and a sophisticated, fluid dependency management system. You need the completer of task A to notify the leader for task B; auto-reminders for key deliverables and rolling requirements; swift timeline resets if dates change. Map the processes and workflows your teams need. Spot bottlenecks. Free them up.
2. Create procedures to control changes
If you’ve got procedures and processes set out within your system, your people know which lanes they need to work in. Crucially, while maintaining the flexibility and grounding to adapt to evolving internal and external requirements. No need to reinvent the wheel for each new client, project or internal hire: use the retrospectives and learnings you’ve gained from past project tracking and move forward, faster.
3. Leverage the right project management software
A project manager’s nightmare: someone says “I need to look at this whole project process, where we lost time, where we were delayed on tasks, and where things didn’t go quite to plan. Can you share ASAP?” If you’ve got to trawl through spreadsheets and chase people for client emails, it’s just a headache. But with tailored project management software, that detail will have been automatically fed into a centralised repository during the project. It’ll be ready in a few clicks.
monday.com Work OS is an open platform where you can create and shape the tools you need to run every aspect of your work. It’s a brilliant one-stop shop for project management:
Dashboards and reports
monday.com’s dashboards offer real-time reporting in a few clicks: high-level to granular, shareable and formatted for readability. Externally, easily show clients project status and time allocation. Internally, drill down into efficiency: time to complete tasks, any hold-ups, budget tracking, resource allocation, deadline management. With these central repositories for your project information, everyone can access the overviews they need (including adjustable access permissions). Visibility and collaboration boosted. Workloads reduced.
Workflows
A quick example: a new email comes in from a client. It doesn’t languish in someone’s inbox (who may or may not be on leave, or overloaded, that day). Instead, monday.com auto-creates a task on the relevant team’s board, and key people get notified of fresh input. No more spreadsheets and email chains — you’ll easily update tasks’ status to move processes fluidly along, with project deadlines/timelines in view.
Documentation
monday.com displays live data, so there’s no danger of working with an outdated data set, document or design, or the calamities that can cause. Its Activity Log stores prior data so you can also trace back work stages, document versions, budget spends, etc.
Integrations
There are 40+ native integrations within monday.com, plus tools to enable integrating any (bespoke, in-house) business tool with your project management. Flexibly unite multiple departments, multiple programs, multiple people.
Key benefits of using monday.com to manage large projects:
✓ Visibility on progress and bottlenecks
✓ Centralise all project elements for better communication and version control
✓ Flexibility and adaptability to tailor the platform to specific needs and changing conditions
✓ Streamlined processes and decision-making with easy, quick access to project information
monday.com is a significant investment, just like any quality project management software. To give you the best return on that investment, onboarding your people is crucial.
Properly onboarded, they’ll know exactly how monday.com works to make their work easier. How to use it to save headaches and time; to customise it to suit their work priorities and style. With refresher training and continuous improvement, they’ll keep getting more out of monday.com. That’s a proper return on your spend.
Yes, the crux of monday.com is that it’s a powerful tool that’s truly easy to use and adapt to your business needs. Fundamentally, it’s designed to be intuitive. But…
When you’re introducing any new tool to a business, expertly calibrating it is essential for it to work out. If it’s not set up for your people and their daily workloads, it’s just another item in the old ‘to do but not right now’ mental archive. And it’s all well and good bringing in a tool that can do everything. But if it’s not user-friendly — and by that, we mean specifically built for your colleagues, in your firm — it’s not going to fly. Plus, the very reason you’re looking to introduce project management software is your people are overloaded with project tracking — or dealing with the fall-out of losing track. Right now, they don’t have the time, energy, headspace or motivation to roll out and self-teach monday.com.
The Provident CRM team exists to solve that!
We learn how you work to tailor monday.com to you (we don’t shoehorn your needs into a pre-set offering). We put in the hours and effort to ensure the software will speed you towards your business goals. And you’ll have it customised and rolled out by a specialist team that knows the tool’s capabilities inside out, from years of hands-on experience. You’ll hit the ground running, and start saving your people time and stress right away.
monday.com is your powerful, flexible one-stop shop for project management. And that’s just the start: you can easily add CRM, marketing, HR, recruitment, onboarding and client management use cases. Options are endless!
Working with Provident CRM, you’ll know you’re making sound choices for your firm’s short-term and long-term needs. We’ll tailor monday.com to make your life easier now, with a pathway to your business expanding and evolving. Secure yet forward-thinking foundations, to ensure your software investment pays off as it should.
