8 Must-Have Features of a Project Management System

Project teams come in all shapes and sizes, and project management tools do too! Every team needs something a little bit different; smaller teams look for flexibility and responsiveness, large matrix teams need to have scalability, and mid-size teams need a bit of everything. The issue is, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re doomed from the jump.

At their core, project management systems centralize planning, execution, monitoring, and reporting. There’s really eight essential features most project teams need to keep in mind before selecting a project management system for their teams: task management, collaboration, resource management, planning and scheduling, reporting and analytics, risk management, integrations, and customization.

Task Management for Clear Responsibilities and Accountability

Task management is the backbone of any PM system: it creates, assigns, sequences, and tracks work so ownership, due dates, and status are visible and nothing falls through the cracks. Robust systems add task comments for context, priority levels to focus effort, and status updates that keep everyone aligned. You need to have a concrete understanding of how task management is going to be handed inside your project management system. Whether tasks are going to be handed off via email, in-system notifications, or as a combination, having a concrete understanding of the process is essential for success.

Key capabilities to keep in mind:

• Ability to create, assign, prioritize, and track tasks

• Functionality for comments and attachments for contextual discussion

• Space for status updates and notifications for progress visibility

Task management can be handed both digitally and manually depending on your system of choice. How you choose to structure and work within the limitations of each system will largely depend on where you’re working.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what you can expect with manual vs. digital task management:

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Manual Task Management	Digital Task Management
Centralized board or tracking sheet	Centralized digital task tracking hub
Updates occur via email updates, phone calls, and meetings	Real-time status notifications provide updates in-app/system
Physical handoffs and oversight required to move tasks forward. Good for teams looking for hands-on management	Tasks are automatically routed and progressed at team member/assignee discretion. Better for teams that function autonomously or remotely.
Total flexibility as to how tasks are visualized	Limited to the visualization offered in app/system

Collaboration Tools to Enhance Real-Time Teamwork

Collaboration tools create a centralized workspace for real-time communication, file sharing, and feedback, reducing email overload and supporting distributed teams. Effective systems integrate chat, document versioning, discussion threads, and notifications to keep discussions in context and prevent duplicate effort.

Advanced features often include:

• Team chat and threaded discussions

• Document sharing with version control and collaborative editing

• Integrated video/screen sharing and meeting links

• Configurable notifications to reduce noise

These capabilities ensure distributed or hybrid teams maintain context and momentum whether co-located or across time zones. Collaboration tools are most commonly associated with digital project management systems and are most beneficial to hybrid and global teams that need to coordinate outside a single location.

Resource Management to Optimize Personnel and Budgets

Resource management capabilities allocate, track, and optimize people, equipment, budgets, and time to maximize efficiency and prevent waste. This function’s primary purposes involve, providing capacity planning to avoid burnout, budget monitoring to catch overruns, and forecasting to prepare for future needs.

Some common resource types you should be on the lookout for or plan to include:

• Staff: availability, skills, workload

• Financial: budgets, expenses, forecasts

• Equipment: tools and technology availability

• Materials: supplies, inventory, vendor relationships

Resource management functionality can be as simple or complex as you wish. Some teams prefer to simply display essential KPIs like costs, resource availability, and skill-gaps, while others choose to get hyper-granular, covering a line by line breakdown of resources, inventory counts, and expenses. Your resource management stack will be highly dependent on what KPIs you need to present to stakeholders in your business.

Project Planning and Scheduling for Organized Progress

Planning and scheduling features translate the project scope into sequenced work using timelines, calendars, and Gantt charts so teams can meet milestones and manage dependencies. Each project management system tracks time differently, making this feature one that’s highly dependent on personal preferences and requirements. Before settling on a project management system, you need to verify your timeline can be accurately reflected in a way that makes sense to your team. If your project management system is unable to visualize your schedule, there’s no use in having the tool to begin with. Some elements of effective scheduling include dependency mapping, milestone setting, due-date management, multi-layered timelines, and baselines for measuring progress.

Typical features to be on the lookout for when evaluating project scheduling capabilities:

• Task dependencies and critical path visibility

• Milestones and baseline comparisons

• Interactive Gantt charts and multi-view timelines

• Deadline management

Visual planners help team members see how tasks fit the broader timeline and allow managers to make informed resource and schedule decisions.

Reporting and Analytics to Drive Data-Informed Decisions

Reporting and analytics turn raw project data into actionable insights that reveal bottlenecks, cost variances, and performance trends. High-value systems offer automated status reports, cost tracking, KPI dashboards, and stakeholder summaries. Much like what we discussed earlier in resource management, understanding which KPIs are worth reporting on is something that will vary from project to project. Before deciding on these metrics, you should meet with key-stakeholders to better understand what qualifies as a success or failure for the project at-hand.

Best practices for defining key KPIs for reporting:

1. Define metrics that align with objectives

2. Automate regular reports to match decision cycles whenever possible

3. Review data frequently to spot trends and act proactively

Having some structured reporting in place enables timely, data-driven adjustments rather than reactive firefighting.

Risk Management for Proactive Issue Prevention

Risk management capabilities let teams identify, assess, and mitigate threats before they affect timelines or budgets, shifting projects from reactive fixes to proactive prevention. Tools should support the full risk lifecycle: identification, assessment, mitigation, tracking, and lessons learned.

One of the strongest ways you can implement risk-management procedures is by implementing a simple color-coded system into your project management tool of choice. Having colors represent status updates for a particular metric is a great, simple method, that keeps high-priority tasks and metrics at the top of mind for everyone. Rather than having to scan the system for numbers and updates, colors can instinctively guide the viewer’s eye towards the metrics worth noticing.

Useful elements to consider implementing color-codes for:

• Centralized RAID logs (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies)

• Risk assessment templates for likelihood and impact

• Automated alerts for risk triggers

• Resolution tracking and post-mortem documentation

Documenting realized risks and effective mitigations builds institutional knowledge and reduces repeat issues across projects.

Integration Capabilities with Existing Business Tools

Integrations connect PM systems with existing business apps to eliminate duplicate data entry and streamline workflows, increasing adoption and value. The ability to sync calendars, link to chat platforms, and exchange data with CRM, accounting, and time-tracking tools is now essential.

Another thing worth noting when it comes to integration capabilities: integration isn’t only digital! Make sure your system integrates culturally with your organization. Organizational values, communication styles, workflows, and even decision-making processes all play a role in successful adoption. A technically powerful system that clashes with your company culture can create resistance, confusion, or disengagement

Practical examples:

• Calendar sync with Google Workspace or Outlook

• Updates and alerts routed to Slack

• Supports Existing Workflows and Decision-Making Styles

• Matches Organizational Communication Norms

Seamless integrations reduce administrative friction so teams focus on work, not system upkeep.

Customizable Dashboards for Personalized Project Visibility

Customizable dashboards let users tailor views to their role—showing KPIs, alerts, and status details that matter—so stakeholders get the right level of detail at a glance. Configurable widgets typically include progress bars, task lists, risk indicators, resource utilization graphs, and budget monitors. The level of customization at your disposal ultimately varies from service to service. Some digital providers offer robust customization options, while others limit what can be done inside the system.

At the physical level, customization can be even more expansive. Custom project board manufacturers, like Magnatag, give users complete control over how information is displayed—down to the layout, labeling, color coding, and visual structure. These tactile systems can be designed to reflect specific workflows, terminology, or cultural nuances unique to your organization, providing visibility that's not only useful, but immediately intuitive to your team.

Key considerations:

• Role-Based Dashboards: Let users control what they see based on their function, focus, or hierarchy.

• Flexible Layouts: Support drag-and-drop widgets, resizable sections, and custom views to reflect how your team works.

• Terminology Control: Allow labels, statuses, and field names to be adapted to your organization’s language and culture.

• Data Visualization Options: Provide multiple ways to display information (e.g., charts, graphs, lists, Kanban boards).

• Custom Fields & Tags: Enable tracking of organization-specific metrics, categories, or priorities.

• Physical Integration Support: For hybrid or analog-first environments, ensure data can be mirrored on customizable physical boards like those from Magnatag for high-visibility, real-time tracking.

Personalized dashboards speed decision-making and daily execution by surfacing the most relevant data.

Frequently Asked Questions about Project Management Features

What are the essential features every project management system should have?

Task management, collaboration, resource management, planning and scheduling, reporting and analytics, risk management, integrations, and customizable dashboards are the eight essentials that deliver visibility, control, and coordination.

Why is task management critical in project success?

It ensures responsibilities are assigned and progress is tracked, preventing missed work and confusion about priorities and dependencies.

How do collaboration tools benefit remote and distributed teams?

They enable real-time communication, file sharing, and centralized discussions so distributed teams stay aligned and avoid information silos.

What role does reporting and analytics play in managing projects effectively?

They provide objective insights into progress and resource use, enabling proactive decisions and continuous improvement.

How important is integration with other software tools?

Very—integrations streamline workflows, reduce manual entry, and keep project data synchronized across the organization.

What do three former Olympic gymnasts: Monica Gorman (1980), Kathleen Finnegan (1984), and Bonnie Wittmeier (1984) have in common? They all trained at the Winnipeg Gymnastics Centre. The 11,000 square foot facility, which first opened doors in 1977, is home to one of Canada’s largest gymnastics programs, boasting over 1400 active members in the 2018 calendar year. The person in charge of keeping the lights on is none other than Celia Champion, current owner and longtime gymnastics coach who took over the operations of the facility nearly a decade ago.

Working as the Owner, Head Coach and Facility Manager is no easy task; Celia is not only responsible for processing payroll, but she’s also accountable for scheduling competitions, facilitating coaches’ meetings, planning gym space for weekly training programs and much more. Until just recently, the faculty used a monthly calendar to detail dates of interest for both faculty and members. It was Celia’s responsibility to update the schedule at the end of every month, and with the gym open 6-7 days a week, setting aside time to organize and edit the gym’s monthly calendar became increasingly challenging to manage.

After years of frustration, Celia reached out to the team at Magnatag Visible Systems to develop a calendar system that could display the entirety of the gym’s schedule in a large, easy to read format. With the help of Magnatag’s GiantYear^® 365-day magnetic dry-erase calendar, the Winnipeg Gymnastics Centre is now able to display their complete program schedule on a single dry-erase board.

“We lay out an entire year’s worth of competitions, meetings, and priority bookings on the whiteboards. We actually have two: one for the coaching staff and parents, and one for myself, which also helps me with administrative duties in addition to our regularly scheduled agenda”, said Celia.

The gym’s calendar system is designed to highlight fixed dates (such as gym closings, holidays, and competitions) with color-coded cardholder magnets. Any other last-minute changes that need to be made to the schedule are then added to the board and emphasized with a colored signal magnet. With this method in place, gym members can reference the schedule as needed and the coaching staff can add notes when conflicts arise, establishing a line of connection that is always open. Celia’s calendar is managed in a similar method, with administrative duties also being tracked with the use of the cardholder magnets.

“Using the small calendar was such a pain. There was no room to add notes, things were constantly changing, and it became somewhat of a mess. With the new 365-day calendar, I can display everything I need in a single whiteboard. I know it’s also a big help for parents too, as competition times and dates will be posted as we receive them, and rather than having to check in with the coaches at the end of a practice, they can simply reference the board when they come to pick up their children.”

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If you'd like to learn more about the Winnipeg Gymnastics Center, you can visit their website at http://winnipeggymnasticscentre.com/

There's only so much time in your workday, and without a bulletproof scheduling system, it can be tough to stay on task and on time. If you're a frequent visitor of our blog, it's likely you've stumbled across a few of our time management resources in the past. A few months ago, we shared a story about a Magnatag customer that was using our whiteboards to aid in the development of his time blocking strategy—we even created a separate blog post breaking down time-blocking strategies for beginners. After creating these posts, we realized there's a lot of interest in learning more about time-blocking strategies. With this in mind, we put together a new infographic that details additional time-blocking strategies, tips, and statistics that can help improve your time management efforts. Check it out and let us know what you think!