Ensure that the project management software that you evaluate allows you to:

1. Get clear visibility of the project state. Clear visibility applies to how easily you can check what tasks are completed, who is currently working on the open tasks and where the bottlenecks are. Some providers offer diagrams and a count of open\closed tasks. These are simply statistics. They won’t help you get concentrated and complete your project successfully. Bottlenecks can be best seen with the help of Gantt charts, for example.

2. Create customized reports. Customized reports imply the ability to create reports by the responsible party across different projects, by the tasks assigned to a concrete person that are due before some milestone. Make sure that project management software doesn’t limit report creation to existent templates only.

3. Get editable Gantt charts. Only one Web-based software has a dynamic timeline. Many project management software providers offer just a timeline view. That’s a great difference because the ability to edit a Gantt chart means that you can quickly reschedule your plans without switching to the mode of editing every related task.

4. Set the due date of tasks\issues. This is a very important feature that helps you meet deadlines and complete projects on time. Some project management software provides e-mail overdue reminders based on the due dates of tasks. It keeps you from missing important dates and events.

5. Build hierarchies of tasks. This can be realized in a traditional subtasks way or in an innovative folders way. The traditional approach may have a pitfall: only one level of subtasks. The innovative folders way allows you to get project plan well-structured and share every folder with tasks with the appropriate people.