How to Ensure Cross Team Coordination to Complete Projects on Time
Remember what it was like before project management tools entered the picture? Providing deliverables on time to clients was one of the biggest challenges organizations faced. Technically, it is true even today. But why so? Why did completing planning to execution phases became cumbersome for project teams?
Were tasks not divided correctly among teams? Did lack of communication delay the execution of the project? Or did teams failed to collaborate effectively? Each question may sound bitter. But all these stand true. They are giveaways why projects got delayed.
What outcomes did they entail? There were many. Some include:
- Delay in providing project deliverables. According to Statista, more than a quarter of projects failed to be delivered on time.
- According to a study, only 33% of the organizations meet the original goals and objectives while completing the project. This happens because teams are not clear about project objectives or lack of business focus. It also leads to project failure.
- Relations between the project team and stakeholders were severed. This can result in a bad market reputation and lead to achieving fewer projects for an organization.
The above outcomes can be averted if an organization integrates project management tools into its workspace. No more will they be tangled in the process of sending emails. They can easily overcome the “schedule a meeting” phase and quickly get all the members involved with a project to get on the same page.
Before the tool was devised, project teams also faced communication issues. This is because they didn’t have the means for real-time communication. It often affected team collaboration and project outcomes negatively, especially in the case of remote employees.
Today, with various online project management tools available, the scenario has changed, and so has a cross-team coordination process. Let’s take a look at how an easy project management tool can help teams to collaborate and complete all their projects on time.
Centralized Workspace
With project management software, creating an online centralized workspace is a piece of cake. It gives your team members easy access at any given time. All the information they need will be stored and organized in a single location. This is made available to them 24/7, regardless of the devices they use.
Other than that, all project-related files and documents become accessible across teams. This, in turn, helps:
- Both team members and stakeholders the opportunity to complete their respective tasks without glitches.
- Project teams significantly save time and the chance to improve team productivity and ROI.
All this is beneficial for cross-functional teams that are spread across different departments. But this has also helped remote team managers. No more do their location and time difference impact the project collaboration process negatively. With a few clicks, their work gets centralized easily.
Better Collaboration
Another feature that makes project management tools a useful integration to the workspace is their built-in collaboration feature. Cross-team coordination has reached a whole new level, thanks to the PM tool. Multiple teams collaborate by sharing files and commenting on every stage. Besides, they can simply view various checklists and reports necessary for successful project completion.
The best thing about utilizing project management software: Every team member gets to see all the updates made to the documents instantly. Without the tool, they could have wasted much time. How? Collecting multiple copies of documents and notes becomes an unmanageable task if done through mails.
However, with the integration of the tool, keeping up with all the changes and completing tasks effectively has become relatively easier. Also, team members are not required to attend numerous meetings to stay updated or on track with relevant changes made by the client.
Effective Communication
According to recent project management statistics, 57% of projects fail due to a breakdown in communication. Bad communication can also make your clients feel frustrated. Luckily, project management tools are here to save the day.
Quite similar to collaboration, project management tools have real-time communication features. This enables different teams to communicate in real-time. In short, it helps cross-functional teams to improve their efforts and make useful contributions to projects and overall organizational success.
Before PM tools came into the picture, email was the number one communication platform. But it never guaranteed whether all stakeholders will receive the necessary information in time or not. This changed with the coming of project management software. Everyone receives relevant information on time. The notification feature plays an important role. It alerts team members about the recently assigned tasks.
Moreover, the tool can be integrated with live chat. This further assists teams to communicate with one another without the need for meetings, phone calls, or video conferences.
Full Transparency
It is said that transparency is crucial to make every project successful. It is true in cases where team members are spread across the globe or different departments in a company. Project management software helps to create a single, centralized and shared workspace. This helps every team member to see all the tasks, along with task dependencies, thereby clearly understanding what needs to be done to reach positive outcomes.
With complete transparency during the planning and execution phase, everyone exactly knows what they are responsible for, and when tasks have to be completed. They can clearly view all the key information, every schedule, objective, deadline, and track the progress hassle-free.
This, especially task dependencies, can save a considerable amount of time and increase the success rate of a project. Besides, it helps cross-functional teams to determine every milestone and the big picture that many fail to see.
Complete transparency is also responsible for helping team members track the impact everyone’s effort has on the project besides their own. This helps to add more suggestions from different teams to further improve the productivity of fellow members.
Real-Time Project Monitoring
Another aspect that makes the relevance of simple project management software important is monitoring the project. Earlier, to monitor the progress of a project, clients had to call in regular meets with the project team. Not only this wasted their time but also further delayed the task completion progress.
However, PM tool integration has made the task easier to manage. It is capable of improving the project monitoring process and that too in real-time. In fact, 21% of the organizations claim that real-time status dashboards have become one of the popular methods to monitor the progress of a project.
With this tool, you can monitor your projects in real-time and clearly see the entire progress as a project unfolds. You can see the status of projects, the time it takes to complete particular tasks and milestones, and how long it takes every team member to finish their work.
That way, you can jump in whenever you feel that you can contribute. Get a full picture of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. You can determine who should be rewarded for their efforts, as well as who may need additional training in order to improve and grow, thereby helping your organization grow.
In the End
Helping your organization to grow and prosper is an important goal to achieve. This is possible when your team completes projects on time and budget. How to achieve this goal? Try improving cross-team coordination tactics. However, you may lose track of every tactic and come back to square one, if done without integrating an effective tool.
To avoid this outcome, it is essential to implement the use of simple project management software to improve cross-team collaboration. This not only helps to communicate better and save more time but also assists in improving workflow and providing deliverables on time.
So why wait for your competitors to overtake your position in the market? By using the tool, your business can reach a whole new level of success.
