Project Management Automation: Pros & Cons of Unlocking the Power of Efficiency
There is an increasing presence of automation within the field of project management. In this article, we will explore why automation should be celebrated, how to use it to your advantage, and provide insights on what pitfalls to avoid. The ultimate goal of automation is to enable you to achieve more while doing less.
Pros
Increased Productivity
There are several ways in which automation contributes to increased productivity in project management. For example, establishing dependencies through task automation can help with scheduling and assigning tasks. Automation can also streamline communications by notifying team members and keeping them informed without needing to search for information or updates. These workflow automations may even rid you of the routine tasks that don’t really take that much time but chip away at your hours day by day, like organizing work within your project dashboards based on preset rules.
Cost Saving
Automating your processes is beneficial not only for you but also for your clients. We have recently automated some processes in our project management software, which has helped us save more than 15 hours per month that would have otherwise been spent on manual efforts!
Scalability & Efficiency
By taking over standardized processes and replicating them effectively, automation enables efficient and sustainable expansion for your organization. It also leaves you with the flexibility to adjust to changing demands without involving extra resources. With your newfound time, you can now focus on more important high-level tasks like stakeholder engagement, problem-solving, strategic planning, or risk management. By adopting automated processes, you position yourself and your team for long-term success and sustainability.
Cons
Risk of Overreliance on Technology
In order to save time in the long term, you’ll need to put in some work upfront otherwise you risk overreliance on automation. As you automate, you’ll need to provide adequate training and support to your team so they know what automations are running in the background and how to proceed if something goes wrong. This can mean many things, from spending time upfront to make sure the team understands and uses the automations properly, to producing documentation on how to use them. If you don’t take these precautions, your team may be overreliant on automation, and if something goes awry, they won’t know how to resolve it.
Identifying the Right Process to Automate
Technical dependencies exist based on your software of choice. You’ll have access to different automations, not all beneficial to you, not all working exactly as you would need them to, and certainly lacking some you wish you had!
The issue with automation is that, often times you either don’t know what you could automate or the software you use doesn’t have the option to automate what you need. Leading you to compromise on what you CAN automate, rather than what you’d WANT to automate.
Errors in the Automated Process
A common risk associated with automation. You should always test an automated process before taking it live, or you could be in for a world of pain if your automation works in ways you weren’t expecting. Instead of saving time, you’ll now spend an unknown amount of time fixing what the automation “broke” (can you tell I’m speaking from personal experience?).
Food for thought
Automation is set to revolutionize the job market, continuously transforming the jobs we know and prompting a shift in the skills needed for employment. Upskilling and adapting will be vital to staying ahead of the game in this automated world. If you’re in need of a PM team that understands how to use automation to your benefit, contact us.