Great ideas only bloom if you have the people and processes to help them grow. That can be an enormous challenge.

Effectively managing the demands of multiple projects is essential to an organization’s competitiveness, efficiency, and bottom line, though it presents a tricky balancing act that chews up time and resources, and creates stress. In the middle of an important project, teams too often feel understaffed, overworked, and out of time.

It's a recipe for disaster. “Teams often think that deadlines create stress even though more often than not, they are the ones who set them. In reality, it’s the way you get to these deadlines that makes a project successful or a disaster. The process is the difference between good or bad project management,” said Praerit Garg, Chief Product Officer at Smartsheet.

A combination of factors can lead to inefficient project execution, including shortfalls in personnel. With increasing demands and tightening schedules, many organizations use a stopgap measure—the “citizen project manager.” These are often undertrained junior staff, moving in to fill an unmet need but often without the proper experience or training. The recent “Future of Work Management Report” from Smartsheet revealed that 65% of citizen project managers are there out of necessity, stepping up to do a job nobody else was doing or taking over a spot left by staffing changes. Few citizen project managers (21%) have formal training in this area, potentially leaving them without key learnings that could make this new role easier to manage.

It is, however, unreasonable to expect that these citizen project managers can all receive training before they step into these roles. This is where the right project management software becomes essential. The right project management software for teams that don't have professionally trained project managers is designed to harness the collaboration and skillset of the entire team working on the project, not just the citizen project manager. The project management software market is so integral to success that it represents nearly 35% of sales in the overall business process management market, according to Future Markets Insights, and is expected to gain considerable traction in the coming years.

For citizen project managers, in particular, the right project management software helps prioritize work, communicate changes, track progress, and delegate tasks. It also offers a central locations to store, track, manage, and collaborate—no more bouncing around between applications. Communication among stakeholders is also simplified. This helps eliminate the “messy middle” where projects can bog down and momentum slows. “The middle work—or the work that happens as teams march towards a deadline—is what makes or breaks projects,” said Garg of Smartsheet. “Organizations must put more focus on the day-to-day work that brings a project to life.”

The right project management software also builds for the future. It helps teams apply learnings from past projects and eliminate knowledge silos in order to create scalable, repeatable processes that keep the entire organization running effectively. In this way,  project management software helps transform one-off projects into a coordinated, continuous chain of efficiency. 

And when projects are managed effectively, there are benefits beyond the company walls. For employees using formal project management software, 78% feel their company’s approach to project management helps their work/life balance, far higher than those managing projects without any software.  

Building critical people skills

Many factors can undermine a project’s success, including:  too many demands competing for the same resource pool; poorly defined project scope and objectives; and a lack of training on project management best practices.

The highest level of return happens when project management tools supplement effective people skills. Research from the Project Management Institute (PMI) reveals the most critical people skills are communication, problem-solving, collaborative leadership, and strategic thinking.

Teams possess these skills—humans are wired to communicate, collaborate, and solve problems—but complex projects overload our capacity. The people involved can't keep all the information in their heads all the time. 

The best project management tool provides them the ability to capture all the work, track it and talk about it. That inherently brings visibility into what's going on, what problems need to be solved, and where the gaps are. Organizations with managers adept at so-called interpersonal “power skills”—attributes such as empathy, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and communication—can better handle complex project challenges, market changes, technological adoptions, and socioeconomic pressures.

A PMI survey found that organizations placing a high priority on power skills perform better in multiple key drivers of success—72%of their projects met business goals, while only 28%of their projects experienced scope creep, and they experienced less budget loss (17%) when a project failed.

These talent skills, when coupled with the right project management software, can make a huge difference in a company’s ability to get things done. “The impact of project management is far reaching—whether good or bad, it can either positively or negatively impact a company’s bottom line as well as employee satisfaction,” said Garg of Smartsheet. “Supporting your team with the right project management software is critical to everyone’s overall success.”

This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Smartsheet.