Here's how to keep your team happy and productive

How does it matter?

It does matter, we are not getting our work done from machines or mechanical robots. We are getting our work done from humans. 

It is very important for a Project Manager to make sure all our team members, employees are happy. They are not just "Resources" that are assigned on project, they are "Human Resources"!
Humans with feelings!

As stated in article from Business.com about how keeping employees happy benefits a business and a research done at Warwick proves that happy employees are around 12% more productive.

When we talk about teams, it is very important to keep our whole team happy in order to be productive and efficient at work and to deliver best results for our projects.

5 ways to keep your team happy and productive!

1. Transparency

As per the survey conducted by TINYPulse, it states that Transparency is #1 factor responsible for employee happiness. It is very important we involve each of our team member during client meetings, as well as important project discussions.

2. Ownership

When a team is micro-managed and controlled by a supervisor or a manager, it drives down their motivation and happiness. On the other hand, when they are given ownership and freedom, they feel much more responsible and motivated.

This makes me share an interesting article for those who would like to build self-organizing teams. 
Click here to know more, how ownership plays a vital role in that.

3. Welcome Ideas

Individuals are full of great ideas when given a chance. Thinking out of the box and doing it differently from others, this is what makes a difference. A good project manager always encourage & welcome great ideas from its team.

4. Acknowledge & Appreciate

It is very important we acknowledge our team's work. We often find problems and recognize what team didn't do correctly. To maintain a balance, we need to acknowledge and appreciate what they did correctly and how their great inputs made our projects successful.

Here goes the Principle #2 from famous "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - by Dale Carnegie.

"Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation"

5. Support

Treating team as a "Team". It is very important to always support our team in bad times. If there's a problem, whole team is responsible and not a single person. A good manager never blames it on one person, they take responsibility as a whole team and this is what makes them a great Team Player.

Top 5 Awesome Project Management Tools!

The main causes for any Project failure are Poor Planning, Poor Management and Lack of Communication/Collaboration.

To avoid these, we should be seriously looking at the type of project management tools we are using for our projects, and to what extent they meet our organization needs and the process. How simple it is to use, and how motivated our team feels when they use it :)

Choosing the right management tool can increase the work efficiency and improve the collaboration, which aims in getting the projects successful as well as the process being improved.

Remember! The success of any project majorly depends on the project management and collaboration.

Let’s go through the list of some of the top ones.

Trello

Trello is a simple and easy to use project management tool. It consists of "Boards". Each board contains a "List". We can create & name our lists as “To Do”, “Doing” and “Done”!

Each list can contain tasks which are called as "Cards" in Trello. Assign members to each card with proper due date and description.

So, as the project goes on, just drag and drop your cards from “To Do” to “Doing” and then “Doing” to “Done”.

Used by top clients like - Google, Paypal, Adobe etc.

Pros

• It’s Free!
• One-page picture of a project status through Trello Board
• Easy Drag and Drop updates
• Great tool for Agile teams
• Provides a facility to add a Checklist to your Cards
• Easy commenting feature for collaboration
• Upload files using different platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• No Gantt charts
• No Calendar
• No Time tracking, will have to use third party tools for this

Atlassian JIRA

Atlassian JIRA is a top tool used by Agile teams. It provides lot of features like agile planning, tracking time, release planning, reporting etc. It enforces the use of scrum and Kanban framework using Scrum and Kanban boards.

Issues/Tasks are being created as a part of product backlog and then assigned to team members.

Pricing starts from $10 per month for the basic plan or try it for free for 7 days.

Used by top clients like – eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn etc.

Pros

• Provides all the features to easily use Agile management
• Supports Scrum & Kanban framework
• Provides all kind of reporting features like burndown charts, etc.
• Easy drag and drop feature for prioritization and sprint planning
• One-page board view for the project
• All the features for planning sprints to planning the releases
• Bitbucket Integration
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• Requires a learning curve for people to understand using this tool
• Some team members feel it’s too complex to use
• With Lot of features, if no proper process or workflow is there, can confuse the users

Asana

Asana is simple and easy to use software for tracking tasks and team collaboration for different projects. It allows easy collaboration using commenting feature for tasks. Great tool for managing small projects.

Used by top clients like – Harvard University, Khan Academy, Uber etc.

Pros

• It’s Free & easy to use!
• An open source project management tool
• One-page list view for your tasks and your team tasks with due dates
• Ability to create recurring tasks
• Mark the task complete using a simple tick
• Assign tasks by forwarding emails to Asana projects
• Allow integrations with third party tools like Dropbox, Slack, GitHub etc.
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• No time tracking, will have to use additional app integration
• Not a best fit for implementing Agile methodologies

OrangeScrum

OrangeScrum is the simple project management tool for small businesses, freelancers, agencies etc. Great project view, quick reporting features, & simple design makes it easy for you to stay on top for daily task updates.

It provides features like resource planning, Kanban boards etc. Easy to work with remote teams.

Used by top clients like - InsidersHealth, AuditNet etc.

Pros

• Free & Easy to use!
• An open source project management tool
• Share documents from Dropbox, Google drive with ease
• Sync and integrate with Gmail
• Integrated Cloud Storage Apps
• Real-time collaboration
• Time tracker and report generation
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• Doesn’t give all the features of Scrum like managing the product backlog
• Can’t setup user based permissions

Basecamp

Basecamp provides a “To Do” list which is used to keep the track of all the tasks that are needed to get completed. It provides a platform for reviewing the schedules and staying up to date. It also provides facility for group chats like Campfire and posting messages through Message board.

Used by top clients like – NASA, WWF, Petco etc.

Pros

• It's Free!
• Simple & Easy to use!
• Ability to upload docs and file storage
• Real-time collaboration
• Report generation
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• Not a best fit for implementing Agile methodologies
• No Time Tracker, will need to use third party integrations

To Conclude, I would like to wish you "All the best" in your search for choosing the Best Project Management tool for your organization and projects. Hope this helps!