Project Management Tool Vs Task Management Tool

Posted by Dhan Wagholikar
1
Jan 12, 2016
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Introduction

Project as PMI® defines is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. It is like a canvas, whereas task is constituent element within that canvas. Broadly speaking, task is a small activity within a project that has definite start and end date. Project is broken down into set of smaller activities called tasks. Tasks are typically such that individuals can work on it, whereas typical projects are collective effort of a team. If you are going to be a solo person working on a project, which has handful of tasks; a very basic task management tool may suffice.

As number of tasks increases, as number of team members working on those tasks in a given project; using a basic tool will be chaotic. Such chaos can cost company badly. As business managers start looking for better ways to manage projects, they need to understand the differences between project management tool and task tracking tool.

Basic Difference

Task management tool: It is about managing fewer project tasks. Simple!

Project management tool: Goes beyond project tasks, let users track time, cost, resources, issues risks, changes, meetings and so on. Great for planning and coordination.

Team Size

If your project team size is going to be small say less than five (5) people, then task management tool can be a suitable tool. Since with lesser people involved we can expect the complexity of project in terms of project planning and management to be minimum.

However if team size grow beyond that and project involves more than hundred tasks, basic task management tool will make your life harder. A robust project management tool will be a good choice for such projects, wherein you can scale up team size or add hundreds of tasks, without worrying planning, tracking complexities or communication issues involved.

Task interdependency

Task management tool works best when project activities are independent and they are in lesser number. It means such software are more suitable when the start or due date of one task does not depend on the start or due date ofother task.

Project management tool, on the other hand, enables you to set up task interdependency, along with lead or lag time between tasks.

Gantt Chart

Gantt chart depicts the project delivery timeline and also shows interdependencies visually among project tasks. It is considered to be one of the simpler ways for project stakeholders to understand the project timeline, without looking at minute details. Typically higher management or customers are not interested in minute details of the project delivery schedule. They would like to know when important milestones will be achieved. During project execution, looking at milestone list, management can also track whether we are on track to deliver project on time or not.


Using Gantt chart, project management tool one can easily check project delivery schedule in. On the other hand task management tools, generally do not offer Gantt functionality or task interdependence.

Managing Project Cost

Most task management apps do not provide budget, cost, expenses and billing management. Any project in reality has some cost, expenses associated with it. Using task management tool, you will not be able to track project cost or estimate billing.

On the other hand, project management tool, enables you to set project budget, estimate project cost in advance and track ongoing cost and billing amount.

Tracking financials can be important for organizations, since financial performance decides viability of the business in long run.

Assigning Resource, Resource Optimization

SMBs have to optimize available resources, since they have limited resources in hand, I am talking about human resources in particular. If your organization is particular about optimally utilizing resources, task management tools will not help much.

Project management tool can clearly show you available resources, allocated resources, resources capacity, you can perform what-if analysis, manage resource demand vs availability.

Important Project Management Aspects

For decision making, if project stakeholders are relying on project management aspects like project financials, project issues, project risks, critical activities in project schedule, tracking productive time managing stakeholder communication; then a good project management software is the most logical choice of tool to use. One will not get such overview of project using task management tools.

Summing UP

Scale of your business and scope of the project determine the software that could work best. Short duration projects with fewer number of tasks with fewer resources involved, you can manage project with task management software or To Do list application. These tools do not cost much and deliver faster performance because of limited functionality.

As team size increases, complexity of project delivery timeline increases (task interdependence, baseline, critical path, multiple-resource assignment, etc), a robust project management tool is must for your business. With good project management tool, you can scale up your team size, number of projects at a reasonable cost.

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