Addressing the “Cult” of Project Management Tools
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, most companies have at least 5 or 6 and some as many as 13 project management tools spread across multiple departments. And these tools have a cult-like following among the departments that use them.
Unfortunately for senior leadership, that means they have no visibility across the organization on all the projects.
Everybody likes doing things their own way. The good news? There’s never been so many great choices for project and work management tools. The bad news? It’s hard to keep track of all that work – and how it all ladders-up to and aligns with one over-arching strategy. Companies are looking to streamline costs and develop deeper expertise in their systems, but it is proving harder than they thought to get everyone on the same project management bandwagon.
The State of Project Management Today
Ideally, everyone across your organizations uses the same tools and approaches to manage all work and get things done. But we don’t live in an ideal world. In most companies, project software is procured by department. Take Company X for example. Jill and the finance team like Smartsheet. Mike and his IT team only use the Microsoft work management stack. Dianne and the operations team love Jira, except that one group, who recently all recently fell in love with Monday.com. Their CEO Jim doesn’t really care how they get things done, but he’s having a hard time getting a clear sense of how all that work aligns with his core strategic objectives.
Jim can’t just force everyone to adopt one tool or one set of processes without a full-scale mutiny. So how can he get the insight and visibility he currently lacks – that missing one source of truth – while still allowing folks to work the way they want? He needs OnePlan.
The Future of Project Management
The WSJ article talks about the “sub-sects and cults” around particular tools. Some tools do things very well for certain departments, and their teams don’t want to give away that functionality. Taking all those project management platforms team won’t part with and integrating them to create a single strategic view of all work, across all departments solves multiple problems. Teams get to keep the software they love while the C-Suite gets deeper insights and can prioritize the most important work with OnePlan. OnePlan is an AI-enabled strategic portfolio, financial, resource and work management solutions that fits the needs of every organization. OnePlan helps organizations improve how they deliver strategic initiatives and empower their teams to excel on the work that matters most. And just like the over 500 companies around the world who already rely on OnePlan as a trusted partner, Jim and his team can leverage OnePlan’s powerful solution to revolutionize the way they plan and manage their entire portfolio of initiatives.
OnePlan quickly and easily connects with Microsoft Project, Project for the web, Microsoft 365 Planner, Azure DevOps, Jira, Smartsheet, monday.com and dozens more, to provide a complete view into all work across the enterprise. And since OnePlan is recognized by Gartner, Forrester and Infotech – along with being named Global Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management Partner of the Year award and finalist for 5 straight years – Jim knows the OnePlan team can deliver both the innovative technology and the best practices experience he needs to help him finally align all those initiatives with strategy. Best of all, he can get all of that without disrupting how his folks get things done.
We’d call that a win-win, and it’s exactly why we started OnePlan in the first place – to help every customer execute their strategies with agility, make better-informed decisions, and achieve outstanding business outcomes. No matter how they want to do it!
