MARKETING
Best Project Management Software to Streamline Your Workflow in 2022
Project management is the alpha and omega of your business development. The better you can set up your workflow, the more you’ll succeed at the outcome. But the truth is, unless you’re a solopreneur, the project doesn’t revolve around you only. You’re just one element in a more complex chain that consists of other team members, executives, and clients.
It’s not enough to keep things in order for yourself and call it a day. As a project manager, you must streamline the processes for everyone else on your team.
Are your teammates stuck in the maze of countless tasks, with new stuff showing up every single day? Are they moving in the opposite direction because project updates don’t reach them in time? Is there no decent communication on your team, which causes a lot of misunderstandings and slows down the process? To handle these and other setbacks, you need project management software.
You’ve probably heard the names like Trello, Asana, and Wrike or even used some of these tools. But there’s actually a much wider choice on the market. At the moment, Capterra has 1,375 items in the category of project management software and employee time tracking. And imagine how many other developers haven’t added their products to this business directory yet…
If you’re open to trying a new tool with its own sophisticated features and flexible pricing plans, you’re in the right place. Check out the best project management software that will help you become a better PM in 2022.
Geekbot
Geekbot is a go-to tool that enables easy, effective, and transparent collaboration with all of its tricks and turns. The main goal of Geekbot is to automate routine tasks like running standups, conducting surveys, polls, reporting, and everything in between. It takes like a minute to add it to Slack or MS Teams but can save hours every day.
Having to complete a few tasks here and re-do a few more there, you can easily forget about something important on your agenda. That’s why Geekbot lets you set friendly reminders for yourself and your teammates. Due to the support of local time zones, they’ll receive such reminders during working hours, not past midnight.
You never know what’s on your teammate’s mind until it’s too late and they send you a leave notice. Powered by AI algorithms, Geekbot can give you more insights than your intuition does. It analyzes natural language responses to keep you up on everything happening on your project – people’s mood, topics discussed, achievements, blockers, timeframes, anything. For convenience, this information is illustrated on a Team Happiness graph, Sankey diagrams, and Gantt charts.
To track engagement on your team, you can check a participation overview. It reveals who’s involved the most, based on their reporting activity, and who’s procrastinating. The bot also prompts the latter to catch up with the others by submitting their reports.
Float
Float is a resource management software for taking a people-first approach to project planning. It brings together your team members, projects, and all of their variables like availability, skills tracking, budgets, billable rates, and more, so that you have one single source of truth to plan and assign your work.
While project management tools are great for organizing and collaborating on tasks, resource management software like Float ensures that you schedule workloads based on your team’s actual capacity.
Float can give you a centralized view of your team’s time so that everyone knows who’s working on what, when, and from where. With real-time project tracking, you’ll get live insights that will help to assign the best person for the job (based on their skill set and capacity), balance shared workloads, monitor utilization rates across your team, and forecast your capacity for future projects and hiring needs.
Plan ahead with project planning features like phases, milestones, and linked tasks. Manage everyone’s availability in one place with work hours, time off, and synced calendar events. Customize workflows that fit your team with flexible permissions to specify who can see, edit, and approve what. Add time tracking to monitor your budget spend (billable hours worked) in real time and to plan your future projects for optimal profitability.
The team at Float provides 24 hour support, with an impressive average response time of under 30 minutes.
Office Timeline Pro+
Office Timeline Pro+ is the right software for reporting on your project management efforts to teammates, executives, or clients. It is an intuitive PowerPoint add-in that will quickly turn any complicated project data into visually appealing and easy-to-understand timeline slides.
Just import your project or program plan from your favorite PM tool (Microsoft Project, Excel, Smartsheet, or Wrike), and the add-in will automatically transform it into a PowerPoint timeline, roadmap, or multi-level swimlane. Whenever the data in your source file changes, you can refresh your slide at the click of a button to reflect the most relevant progress. To visualize schedules of long-term projects, you can add up to three timescales to a single timeline.
As for functionality, Office Timeline Pro+ comes with a rich set of features to add, edit, duplicate, or even hide swimlanes and sub-swimlanes. The higher-ups are usually too busy to go through loads of data, so you’ll have an opportunity to show them what matters only. Thanks to a drag-and-drop functionality, it’ll be easy to do all the rearrangements and updates across your projects.
To make sure the look and feel of your slides match your brand identity, the tool provides a bunch of styling options. With their help, you’ll be able to set colors, fonts, and shapes in line with your corporate style.
SwiftEnterprise
SwiftEnterprise is an Agile project/work management platform based on a visual, multi-board hierarchy of programs and projects. It runs a user-friendly STaRT system to help you handle all your tasks. You can plan, schedule, reschedule, and automate repetitive tasks, making all the necessary updates along the way.
SwiftEnterprise provides timesheets in two views: one for logging time against work items and another for approving or rejecting timesheets submitted. The document management module can take good care of all the data in your workspace. Everyone on your team will have access to the latest versions of your docs and easily manage them with review, sharing, and approval options.
Resource availability reports can help you distribute the workload among your team equally. Due to the integrated database of skills, you’ll identify the right person for a certain task and have realistic expectations of your team in total.
When the workflow starts, a lot of issues usually show up out of the blue. For effective project execution, SwiftEnterprise can let you manage issues and report on their status, due date, and resolution method to other teammates or stakeholders. The same goes for risks. You’ll be able to identify, assess, and mitigate them before they affect your work progress.
Striven
Striven is a cloud-based, all-in-one business management software system that will set you free from the chaos of jumping between many different apps. Its full-featured dashboard can cover all your needs in one place:
- set a project budget, deadlines, and keypoints;
- create tasks with detailed descriptions, doc attachments or links;
- collect e-signatures on important documents
- categorize tasks with smart labels;
- manage the task flow with a drag-and-drop functionality;
- enable alerts for new tasks and those with close deadlines;
- set private access to some tasks and share permission with pertinent employees only
- turn emails into tasks automatically
It can be a challenge to organize team meetings, especially if you have remote workers from different parts of the world. Striven’s built-in calendar will help you identify and solve conflicting timeframes to arrange a meeting when everyone is available.
Special focus is put on assessing project profitability. With detailed reports, you’ll be able to analyze what brings profit and how that aligns with the time invested. When it comes to the project showcase, there’s a wide choice of Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and other ways that your project data can be viewed. Besides viewing the entire project, you can also zero in on any specific part by date, task type, or by assigned employee.
Effective collaboration between you and your clients is another strong point of Striven. It lets you share project access with them so that they can keep an eye on the progress and status of every task and assignment. By making your work transparent, the trust your client has placed in your business will increase, and in turn will help leave them more satisfied than ever.
Whenever there’s any kind of status update on a project or task, your clients will be notified to make sure everyone is on the same page. If you aren’t, they can send a change order for you to update project milestones and costs according to their requirements.
Bottom Line
As you can see, each project management software listed here provides its own gimmicks to play with and see how they can help you streamline your processes.
No matter which tool you’re going to try, you’ll have an opportunity to set your workspace in order, improve communication on your team, boost profits, and save a lot of time. With data visualization, you’ll also find it easy-breezy to track each project aspect and never miss a thing.
With such a wide choice, most likely you’ll find the best project management software for your specific needs. If you know about any other cool tools for PMs, feel free to drop a comment under this post.
MARKETING
How To Develop a Great Creative Brief and Get On-Target Content
Every editor knows what it feels like to sit exasperated in front of the computer, screaming internally, “It would have been easier if I’d done it myself.”
If your role involves commissioning and approving content, you know that sinking feeling: Ten seconds into reviewing a piece, it’s obvious the creator hasn’t understood (or never bothered to listen to) a damn thing you told them. As you go deeper, your fingertips switch gears from polite tapping to a digital Riverdance as your annoyance spews onto the keyboard. We’ve all been there. It’s why we drink. Or do yoga. Or practice voodoo.
In truth, even your best writer, designer, or audiovisual content creator can turn in a bad job. Maybe they had an off day. Perhaps they rushed to meet a deadline. Or maybe they just didn’t understand the brief.
The first two excuses go to the content creator’s professionalism. You’re allowed to get grumpy about that. But if your content creator didn’t understand the brief, then you, as the editor, are at least partly to blame.
Taking the time to create a thorough but concise brief is the single greatest investment you can make in your work efficiency and sanity. The contrast in emotions when a perfectly constructed piece of content lands in your inbox could not be starker. It’s like the sun has burst through the clouds, someone has released a dozen white doves, and that orchestra that follows you around has started playing the lovely bit from Madame Butterfly — all at once.
Here’s what a good brief does:
- It clearly and concisely sets out your expectations (so be specific).
- It focuses the content creator’s mind on the areas of most importance.
- It encourages the content creator to do a thorough job rather than an “it’ll-do” job.
- It results in more accurate and more effective content (content that hits the mark).
- It saves hours of unnecessary labor and stress in the editing process.
- It can make all the difference between profit and loss.
Arming content creators with a thorough brief gives them the best possible chance of at least creating something fit for purpose — even if it’s not quite how you would have done it. Give them too little information, and there’s almost no hope they’ll deliver what you need.
On the flip side, overloading your content creators with more information than they need can be counterproductive. I know a writer who was given a 65-page sales deck to read as background for a 500-word blog post. Do that, and you risk several things happening:
- It’s not worth the content creator’s time reading it, so they don’t.
- Even if they do read it, you risk them missing out on the key points.
- They’ll charge you a fortune because they’re losing money doing that amount of preparation.
- They’re never going to work with you again.
There’s a balance to strike.
There’s a balance to be struck.
Knowing how to give useful and concise briefs is something I’ve learned the hard way over 20 years as a journalist and editor. What follows is some of what I’ve found works well. Some of this might read like I’m teaching grandma to suck eggs, but I’m surprised how many of these points often get forgotten.
Who is the client?
Provide your content creator with a half- or one-page summary of the business:
- Who it is
- What it does
- Whom it services
- What its story is
- Details about any relevant products and services
Include the elevator pitch and other key messaging so your content creator understands how the company positions itself and what kind of language to weave into the piece.
Who is the audience?
Include a paragraph or two about the intended audience. If a company has more than one audience (for example, a recruitment company might have job candidates and recruiters), then be specific. Even a sentence will do, but don’t leave your content creator guessing. They need to know who the content is for.
What needs to be known?
This is the bit where you tell your content creator what you want them to create. Be sure to include three things:
- The purpose of the piece
- The angle to lead with
- The message the audience should leave with
I find it helps to provide links to relevant background information if you have it available, particularly if the information inspired or contributed to the content idea, rather than rely on content creators to find their own. It can be frustrating when their research doesn’t match or is inferior to your own.
How does the brand communicate?
Include any information the content creators need to ensure that they’re communicating in an authentic voice of the brand.
- Tone of voice: The easiest way to provide guidance on tone of voice is to provide one or two examples that demonstrate it well. It’s much easier for your content creators to mimic a specific example they’ve seen, read, or heard than it is to interpret vague terms like “formal,” “casual,” or “informative but friendly.”
- Style guide: Giving your content creator a style guide can save you a lot of tinkering. This is essential for visuals but also important for written content if you don’t want to spend a lot of time changing “%” to “percent” or uncapitalizing job titles. Summarize the key points or most common errors.
- Examples: Examples aren’t just good for tone of voice; they’re also handy for layout and design to demonstrate how you expect a piece of content to be submitted. This is especially handy if your template includes social media posts, meta descriptions, and so on.
All the elements in a documented brief
Here are nine basic things every single brief requires:
- Title: What are we calling this thing? (A working title is fine so that everyone knows how to refer to this project.)
- Client: Who is it for, and what do they do?
- Deadline: When is the final content due?
- The brief itself: What is the angle, the message, and the editorial purpose of the content? Include here who the audience is.
- Specifications: What is the word count, format, aspect ratio, or run time?
- Submission: How and where should the content be filed? To whom?
- Contact information: Who is the commissioning editor, the client (if appropriate), and the talent?
- Resources: What blogging template, style guide, key messaging, access to image libraries, and other elements are required to create and deliver the content?
- Fee: What is the agreed price/rate? Not everyone includes this in the brief, but it should be included if appropriate.
Depending on your business or the kind of content involved, you might have other important information to include here, too. Put it all in a template and make it the front page of your brief.
Prepare your briefs early
It’s entirely possible you’re reading this, screaming internally, “By the time I’ve done all that, I could have written the damn thing myself.”
But much of this information doesn’t change. Well in advance, you can document the background about a company, its audience, and how it speaks doesn’t change. You can pull all those resources into a one- or two-page document, add some high-quality previous examples, throw in the templates they’ll need, and bam! You’ve created a short, useful briefing package you can provide to any new content creator whenever it is needed. You can do this well ahead of time.
I expect these tips will save you a lot of internal screaming in the future. Not to mention drink, yoga, and voodoo.
This is an update of a January 2019 CCO article.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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Microsoft unveils a new small language model
Phi-3-Mini is the first in a family of small language models Microsoft plans to release over the coming weeks. Phi-3-Small and Phi-3-Medium are in the works. In contrast to large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, small language models are trained on much smaller datasets and are said to be much more affordable for users.
We are excited to introduce Phi-3, a family of open AI models developed by Microsoft. Phi-3 models are the most capable and cost-effective small language models (SLMs) available, outperforming models of the same size and next size up across a variety of language, reasoning, coding and math benchmarks.
What are they for? For one thing, the reduced size of this language model may make it suitable to run locally, for example as an app on a smartphone. Something the size of ChatGPT lives in the cloud and requires an internet connection for access.
While ChatGPT is said to have over a trillion parameters, Phi-3-Mini has only 3.8 billion. Sanjeev Bora, who works with genAI in the healthcare space, writes: “The number of parameters in a model usually dictates its size and complexity. Larger models with more parameters are generally more capable but come at the cost of increased computational requirements. The choice of size often depends on the specific problem being addressed.”
Phi-3-Mini was trained on a relatively small dataset of 3.3 trillion tokens — instances of human language expressed numerically. But that’s still a lot of tokens.
Why we care. While it is generally reported, and confirmed by Microsoft, that these SLMs will be much more affordable than the big LLMs, it’s hard to find exact details on the pricing. Nevertheless, taking the promise at face-value, one can imagine a democratization of genAI, making it available to very small businesses and sole proprietors.
We need to see what these models can do in practice, but it’s plausible that use cases like writing a marketing newsletter, coming up with email subject lines or drafting social media posts just don’t require the gigantic power of a LLM.
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