Anna Balyuk 
When a company becomes bigger and gets more and more projects to complete, manual management or tools tailored for single-project management turn out to be inefficient. Both situations can result in your projects’ failure and lead to the loss of clients. The statistics proves this with the following figures: 34.4% of the projects are never finished on time, and 40% of projects go beyond the budget. Proper project management can save a lot of money for a company. Therefore, each mid-size or large-scale company should adopt project management solutions for managing multiple projects effectively. But how do you choose the tools to manage multiple projects? To figure it out, let’s first dive into the specifics of multi-project environments and the tools for managing multiple projects.
Multi-Project Management Software Features
So what makes multi project management software powerful? And what’s the difference between single and multiple project management tools?
To answer these questions, let’s comprehend the heart of a multi-project environment. Multi-tasking makes multi-project management so different and difficult as compared to the traditional PM. And it’s not a problem in itself, but the prioritization is. Besides, in such an environment, adequate communication and necessary data kept in one place become a must. When you have a bunch of interrelated issues, it’s hard to predict the way they’ll be tackled and the final result. That’s why proper risk management and thorough analysis of project decisions come to the foreground. Summing up, multi project management solutions should have the following features:
- real-time progress tracking
- task prioritization
- resource allocation
- outcomes prediction
- risk management
Best Software for Managing Multiple Projects
So, what is the best software for managing multiple projects? We’ve compiled a collection of managing multiple projects software for you to keep an eye on in 2020.
Epicflow
Mobile App: iOS and Android
Epicflow is a JOSCAR-certified project planning software solution that acts as a virtual project manager to administer multiple projects and is the best tool to track multiple projects and limited resources. It has been designed to work in a multi-project environment. A lot of companies operating in different business segments such as defence, automotive, construction, engineering, healthcare industry, and software development teams successfully apply this tool to allocate resources; prioritize tasks; track and forecast resource workload; analyze project management decisions and predict their consequences, manage task assignments, automatically create task lists for every resource, and get real-time updates on their task and project statuses. Among its wide range of powerful features, there’s DataGuard tool which lets us provide cloud services while keeping your data on premises; AI assistant Epica; as well as project portfolio management features: AI project staggering, pipeline leveling, and What-if analysis. Besides, there are the ability to divide your resource pool into agile teams, with automatic capacity adjustment; dividing projects into sprints, releases, and phases, which is also a must-have feature for agile teams. Epicflow is also a powerful collaboration tool that keeps everyone in a company on the same page, including remote teams. It integrates with Jira, MS Excel, MS Project, and Primavera. Besides, you can order integration with any other tool if needed.
Asana
Mobile App: iOS and Android
Asana is a multi-project management tool with a great number of functions for various business areas, from fashion to manufacturing. Its main features are task visualization with boards, scheduling with timeline, real-time workflow tracking with portfolios, features for time tracking, prevention or elimination of bottlenecks with the automation function, and resource management as well. It can be integrated with 130 applications including Jira, Slack, Twist, Newton, Google forms.
Backlog
Mobile App: iOS and Android
Backlog is a software solution utilized to manage several projects at the same time. Its functions involve task and project prioritization and management; team and client communication and collaboration, including remote teams; features to track tasks, bug, and progress, as well as features to check the status of tasks; integration with many standard programs (Jira, Redmine, Slack, Cacoo, Jenkins, etc.). The tool is tailored to satisfy the demands of many industries: IT, Electronics, Transportation and Logistics, and retailing needs.
ClickUp
Mobile App: iOS and Android
ClickUp is a process, task, and time management program that helps you to run your multiple projects successfully. Its features and functions involve the ability of team collaboration, task management and time tracking, resource allocation, templates selection, task prioritization, different variations of the workflow display, bulk rescheduling, and others. Integrations: Google Calendar, Slack, Gitlab, API Docs, Hubspot, Webhooks, and many other tools.
Monday.com
Mobile App: iOS and Android
Monday.com is a business process, task, team, and project management software solution that can be applied in various fields of business such as advertising, production, consulting companies and more. Monday.com makes it possible to manage your projects using either Kanban, calendar, timeline, or table view. It has shareable boards where your clients can track the status of projects, check the status of tasks, and more. You can use different templates available in Monday.com for client projects, customer tickets, and sales pipeline. It integrates with Slack, Outlook, Zendesk, Jira, Trello, Asana, and many other tools.
Runrun.It
Mobile App: iOS and Android
Runrun.It is a project, task, and team management instrument. It is enriched with the following features: time tracking, making reports, team collaboration, task management, calculating costs, real-time data tracking with the help of Dashboard, and the ability to use project templates. Predicting is performed by the Predictive Burnup chart and RR-Board. It’s perfect for IT and consultancy companies, digital marketing and advertising needs. Runrun.It can be integrated with 750 tools.
Scoro
Mobile App: iOS and Android
Scoro is a software solution that can help create a basic plan, schedule project execution, manage resources’ time and allocate them, manage clients, and control business outcomes. Among its features, the ability to manage all projects-related data just on a single page is very convenient. With task management features, you can get a general overview of your total progress and things your team is working on at a certain moment of time, examine the status of tasks and project timelines. Users also have an opportunity to compare the estimated and real budgets, resolve invoicing issues, track tasks, get an overview of the sales funnel, and get detailed automatic reports on current results. It integrates with a lot of programs including Jira, Asana, Trello, Harvest, Xero Accounting, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and many others.
All the managing multiple projects tools described above are worth your attention and have their own peculiarities. So, to choose the right one for yourself, carefully analyze your business needs taking every detail into account. If you want to know more about Epicflow or want to get a free trial, you can book a demonstration.
How to Choose the Best Multi-Project Management Software
When choosing the right multi-project management tool for your organization, it’s important to give answers to the following questions:
- How many resources do we have and what is the software solution’s scalability?
In fact, some of Epicflow’s clients’ headcount exceeds 15,000 users, and its scalability has proven to have no limits. This means that you can add unlimited projects, unlimited tasks, and unlimited users to the system and get the desired outcomes as a result of intelligent multi-project resource management. WIth Epicflow, you can manage large complex projects with less stress and effort.
- Is a tool user-friendly? There’s no doubt that your management and teams are overwhelmed with important work and it would be better to avoid distracting them with complex procedures and clumsy interfaces.
Did you know that Epicflow experts provide training sessions for their clients and 99% claim that our interface is user-friendly?
- Does a solution have AI features? When managing multiple projects with a shared pool of resources, predictive capabilities are a must.
Epicflow is one of the very first multi project management tools that have implemented AI into its functionality. With its help, you can intelligently allocate resources, predict bottlenecks, and make informed project management decisions.
- Does the solution have integrations with other tools and platforms?
Epicflow has seamless integration with Jira, Oracle Primavera, and MS Project, and can be integrated with any other tool upon request.
- What project management methodologies are in the core of the software solution?
Epicflow is based on a unique methodology, which has been developed by researchers with 25+ years of experience in multi-project management.
FAQ
What are the best tools for managing multiple projects?
The most powerful tools for managing multiple projects are those that have the following capabilities:
- Creating a project schedule
- Resource planning
- Priority calculation
- Project progress tracking
- Features for time tracking
- Workload management functionality
- Task management
- Reporting capabilities
- Budget management
- Resource allocation
- Workflow automation
- Resource performance tracking
- Predictive capabilities
- Automation capabilities to help with repetitive tasks
What is a good tool for managing multiple projects and resources at the same time?
Multi-project resource management software is an ideal tool for managing projects and resources at the same time. Because in a multi-project environment, resources are limited and shared across multiple projects, task dependencies between projects become tight. This is why a software solution should not only have features to plan projects and track their progress but also help to manage project teams and resources within them, including resource planning, automatic resource allocation, and workload management. It’s also essential to keep in mind the importance of task management for intelligent resource allocation. Therefore, a muti project management solution should also serve as task management software, which allows users track tasks and helps with task assignments. Features for time tracking will help project teams stay within time and budget constraints.
To learn more about the peculiarities of multi-project management and how online project management software Epicflow can help you deliver more projects with less costs and time, book a call with our experts.
