Everything You Need to Know About Project Workflow Management

Project workflow management starts with a goal. This goal could be completing a one-off job for a client or completely restructuring your team's daily routine in order to work more efficiently.

Project workflow management is the process of creating a sequence of tasks that need to come to completion in order to finish your projects and achieve your project KPIs.

Scheduling tasks, working in collaboration with others, managing your workload, evaluating progress, and creating, uploading and sharing documentation with others are essential job functions at most businesses and firms today. Making sure each of these tasks is done quickly and efficiently is essential to a smooth project workflow management.

Streamlining your project workflow management could be as simple as creating a to-do list for your firm or setting up a project management plan that works with your team to complete each step towards completing your endeavors.

Take steps towards your project KPIs & goals

When you receive a project, ask yourself a set of questions:

• What do you need to get done?

• How are you going to do it?

• Who's going to do what?

• Where is it going to happen?

• When does it need to be finished by?

Write the answers to these questions or other questions you need to answer out and assess each thing that you need to do to finish your tasks. Dividing the workload for a project into smaller chunks can make it easier to handle. The questions you need to answer can vary depending on the size and complexity of the projects you're working on, and each will have its own workflow.

Creating a project workflow management system

A good project workflow management system will help you efficiently arrange and track the tasks you're completing.

Compiling what you need to get done into a simple bulleted to-do list you can use to help yourself better manage your team. Each item should help your firm in achieving its goals and project KPIs. You can delegate the to-do lists to different employees to get more tasks done or give them to teams within your firm or group, depending on your firm's set-up.

Learning your employee's strengths and weaknesses can help you assign tasks more effectively. Project workflow management software could help you generate these lists and distribute them to the appropriate employees. Project management workflow software can also help you track 11 of the most essential performance metrics that could derail your firm if left unmonitored (Related: How to Manage Project Workflow in BillQuick).

Outlining what needs to be done with a basic project workflow chart could also be helpful. Writing out the steps you'll need to take to complete a project in chronological order along with who is completing them is the basic outline of what a workflow chart would look like. However, creating these lists manually can be draining and unintuitive. Without an automated system that everyone in your firm can use, it's easy for people to miscommunicate and fail to stay on the same page.

Project management vs. workflow management

Although the phrase "project workflow management" is commonly used when discussing software to help you manage your project workflow, there is a difference between the project management and workflow. Though the same project can repeat, projects are typically one-off tasks that need to be finished. Project management involves the facilitation of those projects. On the other hand, workflow is constant. It happens in all aspects of business and is a repetitive, continuous and functional process within a firm. This encompasses all aspects of a firm and its operations.

Yet, the two are intrinsically linked. Both serve to help you work more efficiently while completing goals and checking off boxes. They work together and streamlining your workflow processes will undoubtedly help you finish projects more productively. Without projects to complete, workflow wouldn't matter, and without a well-structured workflow process, projects wouldn't be completed efficiently or at all. Simplifying and automating your management processes for both will help you save your firm time and money.

Project workflow management software

Project workflow management software may also be useful in helping your firm operate more efficiently. The program you choose can set up, complete, and track business tasks that your firm must tackle. It also helps you see inside of your operations and will give you the information you need to make streamline your firm's practice while effectively meeting your project KPIs. It unifies teams by allowing them to all work from the same platform, which is flexible enough to alter to fit seamlessly in with your firm's current operations to streamline your project workflow management. This keeps you better connected with the people you work with as well as your clients.

Programs like QuickBooks, which is part of BQE's CORE software, help you effortlessly add contacts, update your job status descriptions and add notes to projects. Click below to see if project workflow management software will mesh well with your firm.