Supercharging Project Management using No-Code

What led me to build a custom project management application using no-code technology?

It is always tricky, juggling with multiple projects with different priorities, and resources at work to meet deadlines within stipulated budgets, in addition to giving the higher-ups a unified /top-level view over the timelines, progress, and actual results. 

And today, your organization needs a lean project management tool more than ever to bridge the information gaps when all your employees are working remotely.

For a short term, simple email exchanges and logs maintained on a spreadsheet may suffice for smaller teams. But what to do when the team is large, the spreadsheets start to overflow, logs are lost, and you are one day away from chaos?

Whether it is for single process management or multiple, simultaneously active processes, you expect your project management efforts to –

1. Add new projects and set custom statuses/priorities
2. Effectively assign tasks and monitor progress
3. Organize yourself and your team
4. Monitor project’s progress in real-time

The ideal way out to effectively get things in order and not allow anything to fall through the cracks would be to automate task management with workflows to see the status of in-progress projects, get timely notifications, speed up approval and responses, and reminders with prioritization controls to get mission-critical projects executed first.

By now we should address the fact that most of our employees are working remotely with drastically reduced personal interaction as compared to being in the office and staying connected with the team. Some of us may already be using project management tools from simple task management features to a more complex project assignment and tracking capabilities. 

The story ahead will be interesting for those who found themselves in a tricky situation as team communications and visibility dropped, and, as a result, project progress took a hit.

Building a custom project management app

My team needed a custom mobile solution to manage tasks; something that can be made available across all platforms and from anywhere. Especially to get the employee-manager accountability rolling for assigned duties and for the Delivery team, to keep track of activities and the human resources at work in getting the project ready for business. 

I aimed to give the upper-level management a crystal clear view of the projects in progress and visibility over the achieved results against the estimated numbers.

I was able to build an elaborate micro-app within 2 days of our remote work phase using DronaHQ’s drag and drop UI builder, Workflow builder, Sheets, integrated with Emails.

I started with a process flow in mind to plan how the employees will interact with the app to submit the necessary details for their managers to map project progress, identify bottlenecks, and make decisions. 

In the two days, I created an app with a Project Planning Screen, a Dashboard, and a  Task Assignment screen.

App Features by User Roles-

a] Project Manager View – A dashboard for higher-ups to plan and monitor all projects.

1. Track Project Status (Pending, WIP, Completed, etc),
2. View Total Project Efforts (Timesheets submitted by resources),
3. Resources Assigned (Resources actively engaged in a project)

Project managers can plan projects :

1. Add a new project, set priority, estimate time of completion
2. Assign resources to planned task 
3. Get % completion reports of the project once a task is completed by team members

b] Resources [Team Members]

1. View tasks assigned to them in the timesheet
2. Submit a detailed description of tasks in their pipeline 
3. Enter the time taken per task, and 
4. Mark Completed or WIP progress of the task

c] Management View [Dashboard]

1. The upper-level management has access to the Dashboard. They can monitor:
2. Total projects planned VS Project on Track/On-going
3. Total Manpower efforts of all individual projects
4. Efforts estimated while planning vs actual resources utilized

15 days of using the app [Perks of building on DronaHQ]

In the last 2 weeks of launching and using the application every day at work, we observed a high surge in productivity of our remotely working team due to increased involvement in projects and therefore, increased accountability on their end. 

The application is already helping us 

1. Stay on track despite the circumstances, meeting deadlines well in advance
2. Get Complete transparency overall projects with clear demarcations avoiding mix-ups
3. Use a Unified platform manage/switch between tasks – with priority and status filters
4. A fail-proof workflow system that sends out task-driven alerts and updates
5. Agile methodology to update and iterate the app 
6. Real-time visual reports and insights into project progress [user-level reports]
7. On-the-go access from android, ios or web

How to build a custom Project Management app?

If you would like to see how I built this app, I have a 30-minutes video on how you can too build your custom app with insider-tips on some of the platform features used in creating this app.

Here is the link – https://www.youtube.com/

I would love to answer your questions or hear your feedback.