Online Project Management Keeps Teams on Task

Online project management services' sole purpose is to help your team collaborate, stay on task, keep on budget and succeed at your project. Effective online project management helps your company handle complex projects without delays from miscommunication, unclear job roles and lack of accountability—all from anywhere your team has access to the Internet.

Online Project Management Services Provide:

• SaaS Module: An SaaS (software as a service) runs from either your company server or the manufacturer’s server (depending on your monthly subscription), rather than installing on individual computers. This type of project management software lets your entire team access your project from anywhere they have access to the Internet. This also means you can use any SaaS with any operating system (Windows, OS X or Linux).
• Project Flexibility: Being flexible means being successful. It’s tough to be flexible when the right hand of your team doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Project management services help your team delegate tasks, schedule deadlines, monitor progress, assess risks, track expenses and more.
• Accountability: The best project management services support financial and personal accountability. Most project management services provide statistics and tracking, as well as graphs, feedback, timesheets, Gantt charts, milestones, critical work paths and task assignment. Effective project management services also track expenses, monitor budgets, regulate resources and calculate costs.
• Resource Management: Managing resources is on the same level as flexibility. Project management services manage all resources—people, talents, money and time. Sometimes knowing who is on your team, and what skills they have, are hard to keep track of. Effective resource management lets you build member profiles so you can assign the right task to the right person to get the job done.
• Global Communication: Some project management services help members communicate and collaborate no matter their country of origin. Capable project management services have remote applications to PDAs and iPhones, and some even manage global schedules; regardless of the time zone, projects are completed when they need to be.

On this site, you’ll find easy-to-read reviews of the best online project management services around. You can also read articles on SaaS and client modules, and recent news stories on project management to help you decide which online project management service is best for you. Or if you're looking for an actual software that you install on your computer, refer to our review of Project Management Software . At TopTenREVIEWS—We do the research so you don't have to.

What to Look for in Online Project Management

The best online project management is flexible and can manage projects in all industries—construction, engineering, accounting, technology, development, training and more. Accommodating project management services also manage resources and provide adequate reporting and collaboration tools.

When looking for online project management that will fit your business best, first decide how you want to interact with the program, whether you want to use it on your server or the manufacturer’s server. Also, decide who will use the service. Some online project management services charge per user per month. If you have international team members or a mobile work force, this is essential to know for budgeting purposes.

Below are the criteria that TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate online project management services:

• Collaboration: The way information and issues are communicated, including email, conference calls, meetings, intranets, web-based locations and more. Collaboration should be simple and intuitive.
• Resource Management: A project management program should manage and control the limited resources needed to run a project, such as people, money, time and equipment.
• Project Management: The processes, practices and specific activities needed to perform continuous and consistent evaluation, prioritization, budgeting and selection of investments. This provides the greatest value and contribution to the strategic interest of the organization.
• Ease of Use: All online project management has a learning curve, but the best software has features and instructions that are easy to find and simple enough for anyone to use from Day 1, Project 1.
• Help/Support: Project management services should offer a comprehensive user guide and help system. The manufacturer should offer a customer service email address or telephone number so you can get answers directly from their technical support team.

Whether you’re a small business owner or an employee of a multinational corporation, online project management will streamline and simplify the process needed to get your project done and out the door—on time.