Organizations and businesses resort to project management so that they can deliver the exact scope of their requirements on time, within budget, and with the right quality. Project management applies all the needed knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to activities that result in a successful project delivery. How successful or unsuccessful these activities are performed depend heavily on the project teams.
The Top 3 Project Management Solutions for Remote Teams
Project Management for In-house Teams vs. Project Management for Remote Teams
A project team is more than a group of individuals as much as a project is more than a list of tasks. A project team is a group of interdependent members—with the right set of skills—cooperating and collaborating to achieve a specific and measurable goal. In the process of working towards the same goal, they also help one another grow and become more effective as a team. However, changes in global economy, business landscape, and technology have produced different configurations of a project team, including both in-house and remote teams.
In-house project team
An in-house or co-located team is the traditional setup of a project team. It is a team all located in a single site or in the same physical location. Everyone is within a few steps of each other, more often within the same project team room. Project management for in-house teams allows managers to build their project plan quickly as they can meet each team member as needed. They can track and monitor the progress of tasks anytime. Team members can also communicate and collaborate easily by walking to a team member’s desk to clarify tasks.
Although planning, tracking, and collaborating on the project with the team are easier, resourcing can prove challenging. A co-located project team consists of individual members who physically go to the site to work. That limits the selection of team members having the right skills. Those who are qualified but do not reside locally must relocate. Organizations adopting agile methodology often encourage a greater degree of co-location, preferring their teams to be all in-house.
Recommended PM products for in-house teams
- Smartsheet is an enterprise project management tool. The software provides an easy to use spreadsheet interface for planning and several different views like Gantt charts, progress dashboards, and task-based team portals that help teams track projects efficiently. The Smartsheet platform also includes automation tools and integrations to improve team workflows.
- Asana is a work, project, and task management software for teams. It especially helps project teams get organized, stay on track, and hit deadlines. In-house teams who usually have no problem communicating with each other can focus more on their goals, projects, and tasks. Many in-house marketing and creative teams prefer its solution for streamlining creative production.
- Jira Software is an issue and project tracking solution used by many agile teams. In particular, development teams use it to plan, track, and release software. Teams that use paired extreme programming or those that hold daily Scrum meetings find the software improve their visibility, automation, and integration with other tools.
Remote project teams
A remote project team can have many different setups. In complete contrast to an in-house team, a remote project team can be individual team members working separately from home or separate offices around the world. Aside from distance, each one can also be working on a different time zone. Or teams might work together but still meet remotely from the main office site. Project management for remote teams requires managers to rely on communication tools to complete their project plan. Tracking progress, monitoring tasks, and collaboration are accomplished with the help of cloud-based project management software and other business apps.
Although project management may seem more difficult with remote, virtual, or distributed teams, this team alignment commonly found in global companies. As an upside, organizations are not restricted by geography to hire the best team members with the right skills. Also, work can be continuous: as one office ends its day, another one starts to pick up where the previous left it. Managing remote project teams, however, face the challenge of team member availability, since they are significantly distant. Onboarding new members is also more difficult remotely. So companies have to invest in additional infrastructure, collaboration tools, security, training, and clear communication of policies.
Best PM products for remote teams
- Wrike is an online project management software with strong collaboration features especially valuable to remote project teams. It is a platform that enables teams to deliver projects with speed and efficiency regardless of distance and team setup. The software is also customizable so remote teams can be more flexible in their workflow.
- Monday.com is a task management tool used by project managers, sales and marketing teams, and many other business users. The main perk of Monday.com is its flexibility. Use the app to track project tasks, view the overall progress, progress by team member, collaborate in a centralized location. The tool adapts to several project management methodologies including scrum, Kanban, lean, and waterfall.
- GanttPRO is an online Gantt chart software for project planning. Managing project plans with a remote team is more challenging, so getting help from a software built for project planning makes it easier. Automatic scheduling and progress tracking in one central application removes the complexity of using multiple solutions. It also has resource planning and management, commenting, and document sharing to manage availability and to support collaboration.
Project management for all teams
Every business is unique, and so are its business requirements. Some companies need to have their teams in-house to be more effective, while others have increased their productivity with remote teams. Project management is applicable whether you have an in-house team or a remote team. It is more important to know your specific requirements so you can choose the right PM tools and methods that is effective for your team.
