Imagine how streamlined your operations and teams can be if you plan and execute your projects well but fail to do the same with your work. The terms project and work management are often confused and used interchangeably. But the fact is that they denote different actions that are applicable to varied situations. This is where choosing efficient enterprise project management systems comes into the picture. Such tools can not only enable teams to resolve likely challenges and roadblocks but also help to reach a pre-determined goal. Though both project and work management software intend efficient task and project completion, they are diverse in their scope and focus.
Project Management: Definition
Project management is a strategy or methodology to manage and execute projects of all types and sizes. To begin with, you need to define the final deliverables and key phases of the project that need to be achieved within an established schedule. A project management software can enable you to plan and then achieve a specific objective and project in the pre-determined time frame. This helps to design an outline or plan of various tasks that must be completed to deliver the final output to the client on time. Thus, project management refers to a technique of accomplishing a project’s main targets by applying various processes, knowledge, and certain skills.
Work Management: Definition
On the other hand, work management refers to designing optimal workflows and distribution of workloads to improve your team’s collaboration and capability to meet timelines and achieve your key goals. It essentially involves streamlining your key business processes and integrating fundamental practices for structured work scheduling. This helps to ensure client satisfaction, optimal resource utilization, and accurate performance tracking. A work management software automates all the mundane tasks, roles, and deliverables, thus offering clear visibility of the status of the current work. This helps the team to structure their work more efficiently and attain their goals easily.
Project and Work Management: Key Differences
Understanding the differences between project and work management is important for streamlining your operational processes. Both project and work management play an important role in ensuring all the tasks and various projects are performed successfully; however, their scope, focus, and applications are quite different. Read on to learn some key differences.
- Kind of work
Enterprise project management systems aid individuals and project managers in monitoring their joint contributions to the project. Usually, projects have defined objectives, timelines, and tasks assigned to each team member. Projects also require professionals from various roles and departments to collaborate and work together to complete a deliverable. Whereas work management targets to put a system in place to achieve all the routine work that happens in an organization every day to reach its target. This may include simple, mundane, and specific tasks that are to be done day in and day out; for example, emails, meetings, maintaining the status of projects, etc.
- Scope and main focus
Work management basically deals with the routine tasks and activities that contribute to the current business operations. It includes the broader scope of day-to-day accountabilities and focuses on optimizing efficiency in usual workflows. The focus is on getting productive work done at a stable pace. Whereas project management has a narrower focus and deals with project planning, implementation, completion, and delivery of projects with established objectives. It is typically more useful to achieve a clear goal that has a distinct beginning and end.
- Measurement or analysis of output
In terms of project management, a project team usually follows a schedule to complete their tasks and deliver the finished output in a timely manner. However, in project management, every project has a different timeline, but all schedules are usually very strict, and hence efficient project management is very crucial to do each task in a planned way. Some project managers evaluate the efficiency of their team members by analysing the output’s quality or utilization. However, that is difficult to achieve in work management.
- Objectives and deliverables
The key objectives of work management are usually continuous improvement, gaining higher productivity, and seamless operational activities on a daily basis. The deliverables are mostly constant and contribute to the general efficiency of the organization. However, in project management, the key objectives typically are SMART or specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. The focus here is typically on delivering a final output, product, or service within the established constraints of budget, time, and scope.
- Tasks
Finally, how all the tasks are connected and blended together in a series of milestones is in the scope of project management. Therefore, project managers aim to create detailed project plans and monitor the success and status of each task till the end. Another example of different approaches in work and project management is client relationships. Though project managers collect client information and accordingly determine suitable solutions for them, they also take on a project approach, record their requests, and monitor how their proposed solutions would influence the customer experience.
Choose eResource Scheduler Cloud – A Top-Rated Employee Management Software
So, how can you make a well-informed choice about employee management software? You must prioritize the best features and functionalities that cater to your existing requirements and also consider the scalability to accommodate your organization’s future growth plans. The right employee management software empowers teams to foster detailed resource and project planning, seamless collaboration, better workflows, and augment productivity levels. Enbraun’s commended tool, eResource Scheduler, is a top-rated resource management software that acts as your central online repository to store all your critical data while ensuring quick and easy accessibility anytime and from anywhere. What’s more? It offers clear visibility to employees and highlights possible loopholes and challenges.
Moreover, it provides clear insights into capacity planning, resource allocation, scheduling, and utilization. Want to experience the advantages that this tool can offer? Get a free trial before investing and once you decide to go with it, you will also gain personalized support to configure the system to align with your organizational requirements. So, streamline your project, resource, and work management with the best-in-class tool, eResource Scheduler, to unlock greater resource utilization and profitability.
