Are Your Project Management Tools Holding You Back?

Project management tools can make or break your whole operation. 

Yes, you could have top-notch strategies, teams, and goals. But without the right tools to help you manage those moving parts, you risk wasting valuable time and money on manual updates. And you miss opportunities to optimize workflows and increase productivity.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

At the latest Project Summit Business Analyst World, the largest conference for project managers and business analysts in North America, we surveyed PMs about the biggest challenges they’re facing today. We also asked about the tools they’re using to reach their goals, and what they’re still looking for in a project management platform.

Here’s what they had to say.

Lack of visibility is the #1 challenge

When asked about their biggest challenge, 70% of project managers pointed to one thing: lack of visibility into what others in the project workstream are doing.

It makes sense, of course. Without full visibility into their workstreams, project managers have to follow up with each participant individually. And they have to use external tools like email and messaging platforms to keep people up-to-date on each task or project.

It’s no surprise then, that an overwhelming majority of project managers said it would be important (rating it a 5+ out of 10) to have access to real-time project visualizations.

That’s why Proggio offers a ProjectMap™ to provide full visibility into your entire portfolio — across projects and teams. So you can track progress at a glance and keep collaborations connected, all from one platform.

Too many tools bog down people and processes

We know the market is flooded with tools that can help facilitate different aspects of project management. But when you put them all together, how many applications are people actually using to manage their day-to-day operations? According to our survey, 77% of project managers use 3-7 tools and over 15% use a whopping 8-15 tools.

On top of that, 77% of respondents said they feel overwhelmed or overworked by the amount of projects they’re managing. In fact, only a small portion — roughly 8% — said they’re not overwhelmed or overworked at all.

So, what’s happened to this industry to make almost 80% of managers overwhelmed by their jobs? (Let’s not forget about the quiet quitting trend and proliferation of burnout!) The short answer is that these managers aren’t using tools that will make their lives easier. If anything, they’re relying on platforms that make their lives harder by adding manual tasks and complicating workflows.

As our follow-up question found, over 75% of work environments and tools are largely to blame for managers feeling overwhelmed and overworked.

Manual data entry eats up precious time

Speaking of manual tasks, let’s take a closer look at how much time they really take up each week:

As our survey found, most project managers spend 4-7 hours per week on manual data entry, while 19% spend 8-11 hours per week. That’s valuable time that managers could be devoting to higher-level organization, ideation, and strategizing to reach key business goals.

This all illustrates just how important it is for project managers to be equipped with a comprehensive tool that automates processes and adapts to their needs. So they can stop managing tech stacks and start managing portfolios.

Ready to streamline your project management with a platform that works for you? Book a demo with Proggio.