In 2025, project management software is now ubiquitous across the business landscape, with companies of all shapes and sizes leveraging tools like monday.com to keep their tasks on track.
But if you’re new to project management, it can be difficult to know where to start. To begin with, there are dozens of tools out there. Which is the right one for your business? Check out our guide to the best project management software for our recommendations.
Let’s say you’ve made your choice, and you want to put your new platform to use. A lot of these tools have large feature sets, and it can take a while to get to grips with them all. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the 10 best tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of your new program.
Top 10 Project Management Software Tips
Navigate to your chosen tips by using the list below, if you like.
1. Automate Repetitive Tasks
One of the biggest things that project management tools have to recommend is automation. This is a process that simply can’t be replicated with a pen and paper.
With automation, you can complete arduous and repetitive tasks with little to no manual input. For example, some platforms, including Wrike, automatically monitor resource loads and will notify you when one of your employees has too much on their plate. This way, you can proactively delegate without needing to pore over individual employees’ workloads.
The best thing about automation is that it can free you up to focus on the more valuable work that will actually move the needle, rather than wasting time on repetitive administrative tasks.
2. Use Color Coding
No matter which project management tool you go for, it will likely deploy color coding to help you differentiate between your individual tasks. Some providers, including monday.com, lean into color coding heavily. It might sound simple, but it can be a powerful tool for keeping yourself on track.
monday.com’s colorful interface can be quite striking at first, but you’ll quickly get used to it. Source: Tech.co testing
Color coding is used to orient the viewer. In other words, you can glance at a particular board and immediately see your workload and how it fits into the bigger picture, or the different stages of a particular project.
When combined with Gantt charts, color coding can be particularly effective. Gantts are one of the most popular charts in the project management game, but critics point out that it can be difficult to understand how different subtasks exist in relation to each other. By deploying different colors, you can easily see the progress of different tasks, as well as how they fit together.
Teamwork’s Gantt chart effectively deploys color coding to make it easier for users to understand. Source: Tech.co testing
3. Permission Wisely
Like the name suggests, “user permissions” refers to what individual users can see and interact with. Most project management tools will allow you to provision different users with bespoke permission levels. For task owners or team managers, it’s an invaluable way of keeping your boards uncluttered. You know the saying – too many cooks spoil the broth!
Often, project management tools will allow you to choose from a few different permission levels. For instance, you might be able to categorize users as a “viewer,” “editor,” or “commenter.” This flexibility means that different stakeholders can interact with your workflows in different ways. While a manager may need oversight and editing ability over multiple projects, a junior might just need the ability to leave comments.
For agencies or freelancers, permissions allow you to shield unwanted information from your clients. This can be super handy, as it prevents them from interfering with your work before it’s finished.
4. Delete As You Go
Keeping your boards clear and clutter-free is an essential component of modern project management. Most platforms will allow you to either outright delete tasks or “archive” them. Our recommendation would be: go for the latter. You never know when you might have to dig out an old task. For instance, keeping a paper trail can be an invaluable tool for tracking down stakeholders.
5. Leverage The Power of AI
In the last few years, Generative AI has irreversibly transformed businesses and tools across the world. Project management software is no exception. Providers from all corners of the industry have implemented AI into their platforms to automate repetitive tasks, build complex workflows, and generally make users’ lives easier.
One of our favorite providers, ClickUp, recently unveiled “ClickUp Brain,” its flagship AI offering. Billed as “the world’s first neural network,” it’s an AI chatbot built right into the platform, enabling users to get accurate information on demand, while also connecting to external apps including G-Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox, Confluence, and more.
With different vendors in a race to one-up each other with the latest AI-enhanced innovations, make sure you check out what kind of functionality is on offer before you commit to your platform of choice.
Using ClickUp’s AI tool to generate a task description. Source: Tech.co testing
6. Use Templates to Save Time
No matter which task you’re carrying out, templates will expedite the process for you. You’ll have the option of using a preexisting template or building your own. We recommend that you experiment with the latter. Building your own template allows you to standardize how you manage your tasks, which is essential for business continuity.
What’s more, if all of your task components are formatted in the same way, you’re less likely to lose track of one or more dependencies, which can throw a whole project into jeopardy. Our advice? Build your templates early. It will allow you to get up to speed with your chosen platform as quickly as possible.
7. Make Notifications Work For You
Trust us: notifications can either make or break you. Luckily, most project management tools will empower you to take control of your notification settings, so that it’s more likely to be the latter. While getting set up on your chosen platform, customize your settings so that you don’t miss any key updates – deadline changes, direct mentions, and project updates are just a few examples. Silence everything else.
Getting your notifications right will mean that, when it comes to the stuff that matters, you don’t miss a beat. At the same time, you’ll waste less time getting bogged down in stuff that isn’t totally essential.
A lot of project management tools will allow you to integrate with third-party messaging platforms such as Slack. This can be a great way to get relevant message notifications directly from within the platform, without having to juggle between different apps.
8. Use Time Trackers
Most project management tools come with built-in time tracking functionality, so you can stay on top of how much time you’re spending on specific tasks. This is an incredibly useful way of making sure that you stay on schedule, while also giving you an overview of your team members’ respective outputs.
For businesses that work on a billable basis, such as an agency, time tracking is a great way of knowing whether or not you’re on track, and not working more (or less) than you’re being paid for.
9. Make Use of Your Calendar
Most project management platforms will offer a shared calendar view. In our opinion, it’s a really good idea to make use of this. A shared calendar can aggregate all your team members’ deadlines and deliverables into one place, giving you complete oversight of how different dependencies exist in relation to one another.
A lot of platforms will also give you the option to integrate your project management software with your cloud calendar of choice. For instance, monday.com offers both one-way and two-way Google Calendar syncs, so any changes that you make in your calendar will be reflected in your monday.com boards (and vice versa, if you opt for two-way).
10. Use Subtasks for Big Projects
With project management software, you can break all of your work down into manageable chunks that all ladder up to a greater whole. This is a really neat way of approaching a new project. It makes it feel less insurmountable and allows you to see your different task dependencies and how they fit together.
On Asana, you can create tasks and corresponding subtasks. You can assign these subtasks to different stakeholders, and when someone has updated a subtask, everyone within the broader task is notified. This is a great way of keeping your different stakeholders in the loop, as well as providing oversight of task dependencies and blockers.
Drawing a dependency between two tasks I imported into Asana. Source: Tech.co testing