Why Flat Organizations Need Project Management Software?

Achieving large business goals, projects, deadlines, and assignments requires accountability and oversight. Business leaders often rely on project management software to:

• help them oversee complex endeavors
• identify any failing aspects of a project
• track and forecast completion dates
• visualize allocated time and resources

But what happens when you remove these managers from a business hierarchy? Weak project management often results in undefined objectives, poor communication, and missed deadlines. Without managers, can flat organizations remain efficient and organized? The answer may surprise you.

Flat Organizations: Can They Really Have It All?

A growing number of companies are replacing the traditional business hierarchy with a flat management structure. These self-managing offices give decision-making capabilities to employees rather than executives. The goal is to minimize management, and empower individuals.

In a flat management company, transparency and personal accountability are increased since everyone has a say in the projects they work on. Priorities are generally decided through group discussion, and work is distributed as necessary. Employees share a vision and are intrinsically motivated to seek peer approval and collaboration to advance an idea — very possibly an idea they helped create.

There are several benefits of a flat organization structure but the most common goal is to promote innovation. However, renouncing management doesn’t automatically equate to positive change. A lack of hierarchy creates unique needs for businesses. Mainly, the need for proper self-organization.

Self-organization relies on increased communication and collaboration among employees. Innovative networks require constant learning, which means knowledge should be readily accessible to everyone.

How does flat management connect the dots? Usually, some type of project management software provides the necessary tools to increase communication and collaboration.

Communication Tools

Flat management companies need internal platforms to boost communication and bring ideas to fruition. One way software can enhance communication is through company forums or discussion portals. These tools make it easy for employees to share knowledge and ideas directly with each other, rather than filtering them through management hierarchies.

Forums also decrease reliance on email, which ensures important information isn’t lost in long reply threads. Eventually, these centralized discussions become a knowledge database that provides retrievable information for new hires.

Along with self-organizing into teams or proposing new ideas, employees can use a forum to educate themselves about past and current projects. This knowledge is valuable for providing accurate projections for future projects. By referencing former projects, teams can predict the time, cost, or team size their job requires.

Collaboration Tools

Since self-managed employees may be asked to join any project, they need readily accessible project materials and documentation. Software that allows document sharing provides a central location to keep project details. All files can be accessed, reviewed, and organized in one place so nothing is lost and all team members can retrieve relevant information from anywhere at anytime.

With project management software, new projects are outlined in a shared document where anyone can make or suggest edits. Comments turn into to-do lists and then into defined responsibilities.

Collaborative documents keep everyone updated on incremental adjustments. This ensures all project members will know about small corrections and no one falls behind. Additionally, anyone brought in later can review previous discussions to swiftly catch up.

By sharing interactions with team members, the entire company can see where projects stand, who is doing what, or redistribute uneven workloads. Project management software makes it easy to divide roles and tasks as needed to achieve goals and deadlines.

Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

The proper project management software can save time and energy when planning, tracking, and overseeing tasks. These resources can then be put into increasing project success rates instead. Almost half of all businesses say they experience a project failure each year. Additionally, 33 percent of project failure is due to requirement changes, 58 percent fail to deliver the benefits they set out to achieve, and 31 percent of projects fail to deliver either within budget or on time.

If you allow everyone to contribute creatively to the company, you must give them the tools to introduce new ideas, processes, or products in an organized manner. Flat organizations need a way to remain transparent while fostering communication and collaboration throughout all phases of the creative process. Project management software empowers employees to self-organize every project from start to finish, meet deadlines with greater precision, and turn innovative ideas into reality.

Author Bio:
Jenna Puckett is a staff writer for TechnologyAdvice. She covers topics related to gamification, employee performance, and other emerging tech trends. Connect with her on LinkedIn.