Today, the human mind cannot comprehend a world without Kanban boards and Gantt charts (no matter how much we “offline” people plead our case). But a Gantt chart with a clunky layout or a Kanban board without a setting for swimlanes, when you absolutely need swimlanes? Cue the hair-pulling.
Avoid premature hair loss and set yourself up for success by knowing your project management software requirements. That’s easier said than done, so we compiled a handy checklist to get you started. Because who has time to spend hours figuring out requirements when you have a million tasks to chase after?
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Key Requirements
When defining software requirements for a project management tool, it’s crucial to consider the specific needs of your organization and how the software will be used.
1. Project Planning and Scheduling
You can’t spell project management without project (planning and scheduling). You get the gist.
Centralize project information with Gantt charts, mind maps, list views and Kanban board views that show milestones, tasks, dates, status and resources. Create projects using in-built templates and use drag-and-drop interfaces to manage and visualize project overviews. Track progress by comparing plans to baselines and milestones and using interactive roadmaps to view dependencies and resource capacity.
Jira’s Kanban view of project tasks.Source
- Interactive Gantt Charts
- Kanban Board View
- List View
- Mind Maps
- Project Baselines
- Project Milestones
- Project Roadmap
- Project Templates
- Resource Forecasting
- Spreadsheet View
- Sprint Planning
- Workload Overview and Optimization
2. Project Tracking
If a project is felled in the proverbial forest of your company and project management software isn’t around to track its status, did it really fall? Steer clear of these philosophical questions with project tracking.
Keep your team on track with a calendar view of project activities to see each individual’s current and upcoming tasks, due dates, scheduled meetings and events, and overlaps in the schedule. Track KPIs, expenses, projected and actual costs, and issues and bug details. Put AI to work on project completion predictions using past project variables.
- AI-based Project Completion Prediction
- Calender View of Project Activities
- Expense Tracking
- Issue and Bug Tracking
- KPIs
- Planned Versus Actual Costs Tracking
- Risk Management
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3. Task Management
Part of managing a project is managing the team working to get it done. Organize and streamline your team by segregating large goals into smaller tasks and subtasks, breaking down work into manageable structures. You can also give these tasks due dates to ensure the overall project stays on schedule.
Set due dates for your tasks to stay on track. Source
Keeping a project on track requires specialized business rules. Define custom rules to ensure security and compliance from all team members. These rules can automate certain actions like changing the priority of issues and assigning tasks to users.
Another feature solutions offer is task dependencies. It allows users to assign tasks to team members that are dependent on other tasks and organize tasks based on dependency. This keeps activities organized and on track so no one is ever confused about what jobs need to be completed first in a queue.
- Assigning Task Priorities
- Auto-Assigning Ownership for Bugs or Issues
- Creating Tasks and Sub-Tasks
- Creating Tasks via Email
- File an Issue via Email
- Identifying Key Tasks in the Critical Path
- Multi-Level Structure for Task Organization
- Recurring Tasks
- Task Assignment
- Task Checklists
- Task Comments
- Task Dependencies
4. Team Collaboration
Who among us hasn’t scrolled back through task comments or a litany of chats to verify project deadlines or updates? Team collaboration tools are the backbone of every successful deliverable.>
An example of the chat view in ClickUp. Source
View a record of changes and updates made to tasks and projects via the activity feed. Streamline communication with team and workspace creation and chat rooms, comments and mentions. Don’t miss a beat with a notification center and team or project calendar.
Cache Merrill, the Founder and CTO of Zibtek, uses custom stages, in-ticket communication and checklists on ClickUp to keep everyone on the same page.
For each project, we use custom stages so that we control what steps each ticket needs to go through in order to reach a completed stage. We also collaborate right in that ticket, so many people can be involved in one piece of work, but we don’t step on each other’s toes.
In each ticket, we also write clear checklists so that QA can sign off on each item in the checklist at the end. The checklists make it much easier for everyone to work on something and have clear criteria for completion.”
- Activity Feed
- Adding Watchers or Followers to Tasks
- Chat Rooms or Team Conversations
- Coauthoring with Live Editor
- Creating Teams and Workspaces
- Like a Comment or Task
- @Mentions
- Notification Center or Inbox
- Private Messaging
- Team or Project Calendar
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5. Time Tracking and Management
Setting realistic deadlines and timelines is every project manager’s dream. But, much like AI, it doesn’t work without accurate data.
Lock timesheets automatically or manually after a preset period to avoid any post-work finagling of project hours and view a time rollup of tasks and subtasks. Estimate and assign work hours to individuals for tasks, view tracked time grouped by user, tasks and timeline, and use timers to log time.
An example of ClickUp’s estimated and actual time tracking.
- Estimation of Work Hours for Tasks
- Locking Timesheets
- Manual Time Tracking
- Summary View of Tracked Time
- Time Logging Using Timers
- Time Rollup Based on All the Tasks and Subtasks in a Project
6. Dashboards and Reporting
You can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you came from. Access a range of analytics and reporting options including burnup and burndown charts, custom reports and pre-built reports. The user homepage operates as a de facto dashboard with a customizable summary view of important projects, tasks and files.
An interactive reporting dashboard from Zoho Projects. Source
Generate pre-built reports from templates that include standard KPIs like tasks completed, time tracked and time estimated. If pre-built report templates aren’t enough, you can create custom reports. These can be filtered by project status, milestones completed, priority, owner and a range of other parameters within the queue.
A particularly useful data visualization offered by software is a resource utilization chart. This interactive visual helps users monitor work allocation amongst team members, ensuring that each person only gets the work they can handle and that work is distributed fairly.
- Burnup and Burndown Charts
- Charts and Visualisations
- Custom Reports
- Pre-Built Reports
- User Homepage
7. Workflows
In addition to Kanban task views, user groups and task creation features, PM solutions allow users to create customized workflows. You can either follow pre-built suggested workflows with standardized task tracking or build their own. By defining how issues transition from one status to the next, users can stay organized and on-task.
Create custom workflows and event-triggered next steps. Source
- Creating Workflow Rules
- Customizable Event Triggered Events
- Form Branching with Conditional Logic
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8. Integrations
No solution is an island. That’s why integration is as essential as Taylor Swift’s private jet(s). Does your organization use CRM software? If so, ensuring your software can successfully integrate with it is crucial. Integration can sync contacts directly between the systems, reducing data entry tasks and the risk of data duplication, as well as give users a direct connection with clients for customer support tasks.
Another important integration is email and communication. Whether it’s Gmail or Outlook or Slack, users can sign up for email alerts on tasks to ensure team members are alerted when a new task is moved into their court or a dependent task is completed. This boosts productivity and streamlines communication across channels.
A final key integration capability of PM software is integration with file storage systems like Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, etc. This includes seamless conversion of document types as they are transferred, direct access to the file storage system within the user portal of the software and file attachment capabilities.
Check for open APIs and custom integrations for more niche solutions. If all else fails, its webhooks to the rescue. Webhooks are basically an alert system between applications. Whenever something happens on a server, a webhook will ping the host server with a notification. They’re executable commands sent from one app to another over HTTP rather than the command line of your computer.
How this manifests in project management is the ability to set push notifications for completed tasks, moved tasks, issues, etc. These automated alerts help keep managers up to date and team members accountable.
- Accounting Software Integration
- BI Integration
- CMS Integration
- CRM Integration
- Custom Integrations Using APIs
- Data Export
- Data Import
- Enterprise Communication Tools Integration
- Google Workspace Integration
- iPaaS or Middleware Softwarre Integration
- Microsoft 365 Integration
- Source Code Repositories Integration
- Webhooks
9. File Management
A central storage location for data, files and code makes it easy for team members to access up-to-date information. It’s also used for version control functions, which store various versions of files, helps prevent crucial data from being lost and can keep a project on track in the event of accidental deletion or computer crashes.
Systems offer included source code repositories to store multiple versions of files, but there are also third-party hosting options if you want even more control.
- Document Storage
- File Attachments
- File Sharing
- File Versioning
10. User Roles and Security
Because many projects involve sensitive information, role-based access to the project is critical. Solutions offer guest account access, which lets users invite clients, vendors, freelancers and other participants to access the project to limited degrees. This helps ensure data security and proper hierarchies of responsibility.
Basecamp’s user access management system. Source
John Conafay, Co-Founder and CEO at Integrate, suggests breaking down permissioning to a field or object level.
I recommend you make sure permissioning isn’t at the account level, but at the object level. This way, if you have a 9,000 line-item (or even a five line-item!) IMS (integrated master schedule) with components, requirements, deliverables, tasks, and everything in one place– when you share one item with one person, that is all that person sees of that entire program in their account. Imagine Google Sheets, but you can share just a cell or group with others. They can view or edit it without seeing the whole document. Again, it’s not to have just view-only access! You need to be able to make sure you can actually work on these individual objects (or cells, for the sake of our example) together.”
Another key feature of PM software is that it lets managers create user groups. For instance, freelancers are relegated to their designated sections of the project, but managers can see everything. This helps streamline collaboration and reduce confusion between teams.
Identity management is the name for a suite of security features that controls who has access to what data and which applications. The core of this is role-based access, which lets managers control what types of users or which individual users have access to specific systems and networks.
It’s useful for more than just mitigating the possibility of employees stealing data. If only crucial users have access to sensitive data, it also reduces the likelihood that an employee with a computer virus will accidentally compromise the security of the system.
- Audit Log
- Data Encryption at Rest
- Field-Level Permission
- Role-Based Permission
- Document Storage
- Single Sign-On and Trusted Authentication
- Two Factor Authentication
11. Ease of Use
Above all, the most essential part of your project management software requirements checklist is a straightforward system. Some complicated tools involve a steep learning curve that can take users large amounts of time to get used to. You can use free trial offers of various tools to figure out how they work before opting for a specific system.
- User-Friendly
- Multi-Language Support
- Multi-Currency Support
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Software Selection FAQs
This is one of the most fundamental questions to consider while looking for a product, and your PM software search should start with precise knowledge of your environment.
Look for a product tailored to your industry or consider the department where you want to deploy the software. You can also choose according to the size of your organization. Also, the type of projects you undertake, like financial or IT-based, client-facing or internal, can create a baseline for the search.
Explore your software options based on the needs of your teams. These platforms can be utilized by an entire team, multiple teams or multiple organizations. The product scope should be based on both user feedback and vendor demands.
Also, understanding your projects’ scope is vital to avoid unnecessary expenditure on functionalities and required capacities. Keep your organization’s future growth in mind to help gauge how scalable your new software should be.
Answering this will help you decide the desired flexibility of your PM solution. Buyers should have an idea of how they want the onboarding process to take place. Some systems don’t require technical knowledge on how to set up while others require expertise. Look for products with training tools and services if you are deploying software for the first time. If your end-users have used it before, then formal training sessions might not be necessary.
Knowing how much you can invest is undoubtedly a significant factor to consider. The prices of products may vary dramatically depending on the features provided, technical assistance and even according to separate tiers of the same product. After establishing your requirements, you can make better decisions and minimize unwanted costs.
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Next Steps
This comprehensive project management system requirements checklist should help you prepare for the process of selecting the perfect software solution for your organization. No solution is perfect for every company, so make sure you establish strict needs before you begin shortlisting vendors.
Our free requirements template can assist you in this process and help save time by providing a pre-built set of criteria based on industry standards. Good luck in your software search!
SME Contributors
Cache Merrill is the Founder and CTO of Zibtek, a custom software development company. With a rich background in strategic innovation and technology leadership, Cache specializes in delivering robust software solutions across various industries including real estate, healthcare, AI and IoT. Under his guidance, Zibtek has become recognized for its ability to provide businesses with top-tier development teams and drive substantial business value.
John Conafay is a US Air Force Veteran and the CEO and Co-Founder of Integrate, building program management software with a systems engineering approach for the world’s most ambitious machines. Previously, he was an early employee at three space unicorns – Head of BD at ABL Space Systems, was one of the first ten employees at Astranis and interned at Spire Global. He also worked at the Office of the CFO NASA Headquarters while at BryceTech.