“I’m not sure what that does.”

That’s what she said (multiple times) as we walked through her project management system. It’s not uncommon though.

In fact, most companies only use about 25% of the functionality in their technology. All of these feature bloated systems and they only use the tip of what they can be useful for.

Did you know that —

• you can track goal metrics in Clickup?
• you can create multi-sequence workflow automations in Airtable?
• you can create intake forms in Asana?
• you can send emails to create tasks in Marvin (did you even know there was a Marvin)?

Yep. And that’s just the surface of what these apps can do.

But the point of a project management system isn’t to confuse you and get you bogged down with things you don’t need. Which is why it’s important to know why you need one and how you will use it. And one of the biggest mistakes business owners make is not understanding what their tools are capable of.

You spend too much time bouncing around between tools because you don’t realize you already have something with that feature or you have a tool that automatically does those things.

Your project management could look like a number of different things — pen and paper, a whiteboard, software — you just need to be able to use it.

• Track projects you need to complete
• Track delegated work
• Keep people accountable
• 3 things to collect (who owns the task, what are they delivering (action word), when is it due)
• A place to keep it public

• How many projects can it manage?
• What do I need to track? Time? Tasks? Assignments? Communication? Progress?
• How many are using it and who needs access? Who’s inputting? Who’s monitoring? Who’s managing? Decision makers?
• How do they access? Computer? Phone?
• When/how often? Continuous conversation? Daily updates? Weekly updates? Monthly? etc.?
• Budget?

Finally, when you decide on your system, take the time to get to know what it does. There’s no point in investing in these tools that are supposed to help you be more productive if you don’t use most of the functionality.

It will take a little trial and error to find the right system for you, but if you want a jump start to help narrow down some of the most popular project management systems for your business, I created a quick quiz for ya: What project management app is right for your small business.