In this article, we provide a list of Project Management Tools that can be used by any startup company to develop a highly productive organization.

Starting a new company or working for a Startup is exciting and nerve-wracking in equal parts. Budgets are often tight in a startup environment and the traditional processes that keep companies going are often lacking. Such a productive work atmosphere can be punished for even the most experienced employees because there will always be new problems to tackle and insufficient resources to tackle them.

Most how-to books will tell you that it takes a combination of hard work, good employees, and enough funding for a startup to succeed. But most of these books do not address the project Management tools that the best entrepreneurs in the world use to organize and manage their companies. That is why we have gathered this list of project management tools that can be used by any startup company to develop a highly productive organization.

1. Work Management / Task Management Software

In reference to collaboration, there is one proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This is particularly true in the start-up world, where having a strong collaborative culture is a key to success.

To achieve success as a team, all employees need to move in the same direction and work towards the same goals. Smart entrepreneurs have figured out that using a collaborative work management tool is the way to achieve this.

Work Management Software

“Work management” is a relatively new form of software designed to provide a central place for teams to digitally collaborate and work together. Work management software combines project management, task management, document management, and communication into one place to get all employees on the same track.

Restyaboard has a task list view, which displays all of the tasks related to a project, along with key metrics.

Benefits of Using Work Management Software

• Keep things From Getting Lost in the Shuffle: Startups are fast-paced and dynamic, so there’s always something new that needs attention. Without a central collaboration tool, employees find their own ways to keep track of their to-do lists, which may lead to tasks not being completed and general frustration. This problem is resolved by a central collaboration platform.

• Get More Visibility: Startup employees are always busy taking care of their work and do not always have time to communicate with management and keep them in the loop. When all work is managed and tracked in one place, managers can see everything that their employee is working on, eliminating the need for constant check-ins.

• Improve Accountability: A central work management platform ensures that all employees are accountable for their work. When management can quickly see what all team members are working on, underperforming employees cannot fly under the radar. Conversely, this provides another way for management to recognize their best and most efficient employees.

2. Kanban Boards for Building Workflows

It is necessary to establish visual processes in a start-up environment that serve as guidelines for employees to follow to be successful. The use of Kanban board software is one of the best ways of creating these processes.

Kanban board software is a simple startup project management tool that’s used to visualize and track all of the different tasks happening within a company or team. Each task is created as a “card” that can be dragged-and-dropped into different areas of the screen to indicate the status of the task.

The kanban board shows anyone looking at it what work needs to happen next, what work is in progress, and what work has been recently completed.

Kanban boards are an incredibly useful visual tool for managing workflow. Make your kanban board with Restyaboard today!

The simplest way to use a kanban board is to have three columns: to-do, doing and done. When a new task needs to be added, it goes into the to-do column. Then, when someone is ready to work on that task, they drag the kanban card into “doing” so that everyone on the team can see the task-in-progress.

However, kanban boards can also be used to build more complex processes in the form of custom workflows. This is done by creating custom columns for each stage of the work process.

Kanban Workflow Example

For example, let’s assume your startup does marketing for clients, and you need a good way to manage all of the work requests that clients send in. You could create a kanban board with the following columns:

• New Work Requests
• Information Gathering
• Doing
• Client Approval
• Done

Each column represents a step in the workflow or process.

• When a new work request comes in from a client, the employee who received the request creates a task in the “New Work Requests” column and assigns it to an account manager.

• When the account manager is ready, they move the task into “Information Gathering” and contact the client to get all of the information needed to start work. They then re-assign the task to the marketing team and move it to “Doing.”

• The marketing team now works on the client request. When finished, they move the task to “Client Approval” and re-assign the task to the account manager.

• With a new task in “Client Approval”, the account manager now knows the work is ready to send to the client for final approval.

• Once the client gives their approval, the task is finally moved into “Done” to indicate the process is finished.

As you can see, the kanban board is used to build a step-by-step process for work requests. As the whole team has access to the board, everyone knows the status of all of the work that is happening. Kanban boards are a great way to eliminate problems and confusion by giving the team a blueprint for how work should flow through the team.

3. Project Management Dashboards

As discussed previously, visibility into your employee’s work is important to successfully manage your company. This is why savvy entrepreneurs choose to implement key performance indicators (KPIs) across their companies.

Read 8 Powerful Tools to Make Your Startup Smarter in 2020

The motto of “measure everything” is useful in startup companies because data allows the company to pivot quickly when things aren’t working—and to double down on things that are. There are many different types of dashboards a startup company can implement across the business, but the most important one is the project management dashboard.

Project management dashboards passively collect data from your project management platform, turning the information into helpful charts and graphs. The dashboard will update in real-time, giving you all of the information you need to make decisions across the company.

Project management dashboards can quickly show you information about several project metrics.

• Workload: see which employees and teams are over or underworked
• Project Progress: see how specific projects are progressing
• Time Tracking: monitor where and how employee time is being spent
• Budgets: learn the real cost of employee time and resources to make smarter budgeting decisions

Implementing Project Management Tools for Startup Companies

Startup companies are dynamic, exciting, and always growing. And as a company grows, it needs to change over time. However, establishing the right project management tools and processes early on will give your startup a solid foundation to build upon.

This is why we recommend that every startup company implement a work management platform, Kanban boards for building workflows, and dashboards for measuring everything across the business, all as soon as possible.

Implementation of these startup project management tools might seem like a lot of work, but it’s well worth it. Additionally, there are plenty of software suites that give you all of the tools we’ve discussed with zero codings or training needed.