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3 min read

Collaborative work management: much more than project management?

Work management vs project management

Busier working days, reduced resources and smaller teams mean you’re inevitably looking for new ways to manage and do more with less. Work management solutions could be the answer.

Your working day is becoming more varied, and the need for better organisation and oversight comes with that.

Typically, you manage your tasks in multiple places and keep track with a mixture of reminders in your email and tasks scheduled in your calendar. Often, they’ll shift in favour of something urgent. You’re using different plans on spreadsheets, documents, or presentation files, maybe even some handwritten notes on a pad. Does this sound familiar? If it does, you're likely feeling frustrated, slightly out of control and inefficient. Managing a team means keeping track of team members' workloads alongside yours and ensuring that delegated tasks are completed effectively and on time.

You've decided that it's a project management tool that you need and have looked at some software solutions. However, you have become overwhelmed by choice, need help comparing options, and need more time to properly investigate how to get started with a tool that suits your team's processes and best practices. So, it's dropped to the bottom of that list to come back to later. In fact, it's collaborative work management that you need.

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Just a new name for project management?

It’s easy to conflate the two, but project management is simply one aspect of work management. The two practices share common principles, but it's in their application that they differ. So, what are the key differences, and why do you need to think about work management?

Work management is for you if you’re: 

  1. Managing multiple projects and taking a wholesale approach to organising, planning and executing various projects and ad hoc tasks.
  2. Focused on long-term goals, business efficiency and success rather than short-term goals related to one project.
  3. Working with an evolving, flexible structure rather than set timescales and budgets
  4. Collaborating with multiple stakeholders across teams and the business rather than project team members on a specific project.
  5. Supporting business goals rather than meeting specific project objectives.
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Take the case of a marketing manager. You will have multiple and potentially interlinking projects– from content creation and creative requests to web projects and events–combined into plans to track and report all campaign activity, budget, and ROI. 

Your tasks will involve multiple stakeholders and include workflow, with some dependent on the completion of others. They might involve requests that need to be captured and planned. In addition, there will be budgets, timelines and critical tasks across projects that require oversight. 

You might also have a marketing team and its resources to manage and collaborate with directly. With so many options, how do you know which solution will fit you best, and how do you get started?

Work management software is a flexible tool that allows you to plan, run and track processes, multiple projects, and workload. You can set it up to suit any team: marketing, finance, sales, or HR. 

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Choosing a collaborative work management platform

If you're thinking about work management, link up with an expert partner to help choose the right system for you, support you with its implementation, and build success from the outset. Expert consultants guide you through set-up and take the uncertainty out of a project. With help, you can assess your processes, set up and define new workflows, redefine existing workflows, integrate your work management platform with your broader technology stack, and build customisations to fit your team. 

Are you inspired to get started on your work management journey? Get in touch with Adaptavist’s expert team for a free introductory chat.

To learn more about the changing workplace, read our "Digital Etiquette: Reinventing Work Report."

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