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I manage more than 50 projects a year in my business. And I could not do it without project management software.

That being said, it’s not right for everyone. Some people do just fine managing projects with things like Google Docs, OneNote notebooks, and Excel spreadsheets. I did that myself for a long time. Those tools are all perfectly adequate when you have a limited number of projects and a limited number of needs.

But if you’re watching this video (or reading this article!), I’m guessing that you’re past that limit. And you’re wondering if a dedicated project management software system might help you get control of all of the elements of all of your projects.

Well, I’m here to tell you that YES, a new Project Management app MIGHT be the perfect solution. There are a lot of benefits to these kinds of tools. But they also come with some very real and fairly significant drawbacks.

So, before you make the investment, you definitely want to do your research – and that’s why you’re here.

In this video (and article), I’ll share the main reasons I personally love project management software. I’ll also share the most common complaints I hear about it and some things you can do to overcome them. I’ll also give you some tips for choosing the software that’s right for you, because there are a LOT of options out there. And be sure to stay until the end because I’ll share how you can get a free downloadable worksheet to help you evaluate your needs and options.

GET THE DOWNLOADABLE WORKSHEET HERE >>

Before we dive deep into the world of project management software, if this is our first time meeting, hi, I’m Chrissy Scivicque, I’m a professional development trainer and the founder of Eat Your Career dot com helping you create a nourishing professional life. I train on a wide variety of topics including project management, process improvement and change management—basically all the stuff professionals need to do more and do better.

Now, fair warning here: I am a big old nerd when it comes to topics like this. I’ve tried many, many project management software systems over the years – partly because it’s my job. I train on project management, so I have to know what’s out there. But I also try different systems because I honestly enjoy it. I do it just for fun.

Asana is my preferred project management tool and it has been for more than 7 years now. But prior to that, I used Basecamp, Teamwork, Smartsheet and Todoist. Not all at the same time but over a number of years. I’ve also tried out Click Up and Monday.com. And I even used Trello to plan my wedding, so I’ll probably always have a soft spot for it…

And this is an easy tip whenever you’re considering a new project system: Most of them do have free limited-use trials – and some have very generous limits. So it’s worth it to sign up and just play around. Pick a personal project to put in there and see how it feels. You’ll learn so much by just using a system.

I should also say that I’m very much system agnostic. I love Asana but it’s not right for everyone. There are so many good options out there and most of them have a very similar set of features. The biggest difference is the user-experience—meaning how it looks and how it functions. But overall, they mostly let you DO the same things. You can set up projects, define tasks, assign tasks to other people on the team, set deadlines, create interconnections between your tasks, and that’s really just the beginning. Different systems might use different names for these things, and they all have different ways of doing them, but they’re still relatively similar.

Plus, if you’re using a cloud-based system, it’s accessible from anywhere and from any device. So, you don’t have the risk of leaving your project notebook at home and then needing it at the office. (I’m not saying there isn’t a place for paper in your project management system, but if you’re working with other people who need visibility into the project and if you’re working from different locations, a digital cloud-based system is the way to go.)

Benefits of PM Software

Let’s talk benefits…

One Task List Across Projects

As I said, I manage roughly 50 to 70 projects a year between clients, conferences, public workshops, webinars, and so on. I’ve identified 9 categories of projects in my business. Within each category, I have multiple projects, and each project has multiple tasks. Obviously that can be a lot to wrangle. But Asana makes it easy because it creates one consolidated task list that pulls ALL tasks that have been assigned to me across all of projects in all categories. So I don’t have to click through EACH of my projects individually to see what I need to do. I just need to look at that single consolidated task list.

This is one of those common features you’ll find in almost all project management software and to me, it is truly the ultimate time saver.

Deadline Management

With any project management system you can define tasks and deadlines really far out into the future, which means you don’t have to think about them until it’s TIME to think about them.

For example, I have training programs scheduled for December. It’s currently the beginning of August and I’m not thinking about them. But all the tasks for those programs are already loaded into the system. So, sometime around late October, those things will pop up on my task list and remind me to start working on them.

Recurring Tasks

I also have a lot of recurring tasks in my business—things I need to do every quarter or every January 20th for example. So I load those things in, I make them recurring, and I know I’ll be reminded at the right time in the future.

One thing to note here – the due date in the system is the deadline Asana is going to monitor and that’s when I WANT to have it done by. But, for my own awareness, I also put the actual CONCRETE due date in all caps in the task description.

Templates & Automations

You will save a tremendous amount of time by using templates and automations inside your project management software. If you do a lot of routine projects that require the same or a similar set of tasks each time, this is a game-changer.

For example, when I start a new webinar project in Asana, it automatically loads a pre-event task list for me. When I move a webinar project to the post-event section, it automatically loads the post-event task list for me. I don’t have to remember the steps each time and I don’t have to manually enter them.

You can even set dynamic deadlines in your templates and automations by attaching them to a specific trigger date or making them relative to the other dates in the project.

Depending on the system you’re using, you can do some very sophisticated things. But don’t let that overwhelm you. It’s an option that’s available not a requirement. I probably use a pretty small portion of the features available in Asana. That’s really common for most project management systems. There is a TON they CAN do, but the only thing that matters is what YOU NEED them to do. Forget everything else. All the sophisticated, advanced features may be useful at some point in the future…but they may not be. You get to choose how you want to use the software and what you want it to do for you.

Easy, Sophisticated Visuals

If you’ve ever tried to manually create a Gantt Chart or some kind of visual project roadmap, in something like Canva or even Excel, you know how painful it can be.

(Incidentally, please never create a Gannt Chart in Canva…)

Even if you’re using Excel’s chart creation functionality, it’s still a surprising number of steps.

YES, AI can now help with this kind of stuff, but even then, when things get delayed or deadlines get moved, you have to regenerate the chart or the image or whatever.

With project management software, you can view your current project data in all kinds of different ways. You don’t have to explain what you want, and you don’t have to manually adjust anything. As long as the data in the system is accurate, the visuals are accurate. And, when you change something in the visual, it changes the data behind it. Because it’s all tied together…which is a huge load off your back.

Team Visibility & Accountability

One of the biggest challenges in project management is just making sure everyone knows where things stand at any given time. Remember that a project is an interconnected series of tasks, so when one person is working on something, it can impact what another person is working on.

There’s nothing worse than when Bob (who is making no progress) says, “I’m waiting on Judy!” and Judy says, “I’ve been done for two weeks, Bob!”

Project management software makes everything visible so you’re not caught in between Bob and Judy and everyone else. They can all see what’s happening and (more importantly) you all can see where delays are happening. There’s nothing more satisfying than holding a project meeting and pulling up the software in front of everyone to see who’s holding things up. A little public shaming can really light the fire beneath people.

You can also attach documents and have conversations about the project within the project itself—that way, everything lives together in the same place. You’re not going back and forth with 125 emails and 50 slack messages and multiple project folders on multiple drives.

Archive Completed Projects

Last but not least, you can archive your completed projects so you’re not looking at them every day, but they’re still accessible if you need them. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve done a project thinking it was a one-of-a-kind type of thing, only to find later that I had another project exactly like it. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – I can just go to the archives and pull out the old project and use that as a template.

Drawbacks of PM Software

Now let’s talk about the complaints.

Project management software isn’t for everyone and it might not be for you. In my experience, the biggest complaints all fall under the same broad umbrella, which I will label generically as – “It’s a lot of work.”

This is true. There’s no denying it. Depending on the software you choose, the learning curve can be very steep. This is why you should test different systems out and see what intuitively feels the most natural for you. I’ve stuck with Asana for so long because I find it very user-friendly. But I’ve also invested a lot of time into learning it.

Don’t expect to learn everything overnight. Once you start using a system, you’ll want it to do certain things in a certain way, and you’ll have to figure out how to make that happen. That’s the learning process in action. It can be slow and tedious when you first start, but over time, it gets easier and faster.

Along the same lines, any software is only as good as its data. You’ve heard it a million times: garbage in, garbage out. So you have to make sure that anyone using the software is following best practices. I’ll do an entire separate video on that topic in the future.

But for now, the most important thing is that people ARE consistently using it. When a system gets out of date, it becomes less than useless. It actually becomes a burden because now you have to go in and clean it up and invest more time just to get it back to baseline.

And this brings me to the final complaint I hear, and that is around team compliance –how do you get people to actually use a project management software? Most people are really busy, they have established work habits, they don’t like learning new technology and they don’t necessarily want to use a new software. For all of these reasons, I typically recommend that you start by using the software yourself rather than trying to get the whole team on it all at once. Once you’re really comfortable with it and you can show people how it works and the benefits, they are much more likely to be interested.

But even then, it’s probably still gonna be a challenge. If having the software is important to you, you might have to accept the ultimate responsibility for keeping the system up-to-date. You can still refer people to the system when they have questions about the status of a project or the deadline for an assignment. That way, they get comfortable looking at the system and they know it’s a trusted resource even if they aren’t actively updating it themselves.

So that’s it for the pros and cons! If you’re still interested in exploring Project Management software, you can get my free downloadable worksheet to help you understand your needs and evaluate how well different options might match them.