What do we think of when we think of project management? I for one thought of hand written lists and manual follow-ups with coworkers to ensure a project was completed on time. But why waste time and paper when there is a more efficient way of doing this? Once our company started using Jira we eliminated an incredible chain of back and fourths and useless meetings because every tool we may have needed was on Jira. Jira holds all information and descriptors of a task, and has intuitive tools for deadlines and assigning the task to someone. It can also track the timing of tasks and give insights on how many tasks someone has completed. Not only can it be used to for that, but it can also show a company what kind of tasks are being requested most, and see where additional help may be requested on a project.

Not to mention, it is a perfect way to cross department lines and help communication across interdepartmental lines. For example, before we started using Jira, the entirety of the marketing department at my company simply had an email address for people to use. If someone outside of the marketing department wanted us to work on a project, they would have to email the parameters of the project to an address that would go to everyone in the marketing department. We would then all have to sift through the email and decide who would be responsible for such a task (what area of marketing does the request call for). After doing so, we would then respond and set up meetings to better understand what was needed from the project owner. Now, with Jira we can have anyone throughout the entirety of the company submit a ticket that gets, vetted, filed, and completed with everything one may need for a task. Everything from the task itself, to dates, to participants, to filtering what the project is gets taken care of through Jira’s service desk tool. Now anyone can submit a ticket, fill out all of the information, decide what type of deliverable is needed, where a marketing team member will then be notified accordingly without constantly wasting anyone’s time with having to sift through countless emails.

This project management tool has absolutely saved my company time, money and headaches, and there is no telling for what it could do for yours either!

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Questions:

1.) What issues do you think a project management tool could fix?

2.) Do you think project management tools are necessary?

3.) Does your company use Project Management tools?

4.) If so, which ones do you use?

5.) Do you like using project management tools?