Project management is important because it turns a goal into a plan with clear scope, deadlines, budget and owners, so team members know what to work on and nothing is built twice or forgotten. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2026 found that 31% of complex projects fail to deliver their full intended benefits, which shows what is at stake.
Key Takeaways
- Project management is the process of supervising a team’s work to achieve project goals within constraints, chiefly scope, time and budget.
- According to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2026, 97% of project professionals managed at least one complex project in the past year and 81% say projects have become more complex.
- The classic life cycle has five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing.
- Web and software teams commonly use Scrum or Kanban, supported by tools such as Jira, Trello, Asana or Basecamp.
- Even a solo developer benefits from a written scope, a task list and a simple progress record.
As web projects in particular become more and more advanced, understandably the code base grows and if you’re working on anything even remotely high spec you’re going to need proper project management. Most people think because it’s just them working on a given project that they don’t need any complex management system or routine but the reality is, they do.
Importance of Project Management
Obviously if there are more than 1 or 2 people on the team then project management becomes even more important as that is where things start to go wrong. Most commonly people not knowing what to work on or what others are working on etc.
Team Work – Made Easy
The main attraction of project management apps is that they make teamwork much easier. If you’ve ever been part of a large development team you’ll know what a nightmare it is when people have different coding styles and are not working on your schedule.
There is overlap, people working on the same thing as you or things not getting done because they thought you’d be handling it etc. Project management apps take all of the guess work out of the process and you can clearly see how far you are in your own tasks but not only that, you can also clearly see what everyone else is up to on the team.
Project Management Applications
Obviously web application developers know better than anyone how important it is to manage a project properly. So obviously with this in mind there are a lot of applications out there on the market designed for exactly that.
One tool the original author favoured when this article was written is MyCollab, an open-source project management platform written in Java and licensed under the AGPL v3; its GitHub repository was archived by the owner on April 22, 2025 and is now read-only, so it no longer receives updates. It’s not the easiest to get up and running with but there are lots of tutorials around which can help you get everything up and running. Another favourite of the author is Basecamp, a project management application launched in 2004 by the Chicago company now called 37signals; it has more features than MyCollab, and the choice between tools is largely a matter of team preference.
When Management Becomes Important
Unfortunately most people realise that they need proper project management when they’re mid way through a project or when something has gone wrong. Someone might have coded something wrong that doesn’t work with a module someone else has written or even two developers working on exactly the same element.
It’s a common, recurring theme unfortunately and one that pretty much all web development teams experience – especially if they don’t follow a proper project management plan. Fortunately there are lots of apps to assist with this!
Reporting
If you’ve ever worked for a large organisation or a dev team with a bunch of managers, you’ll know that they simply love reporting. Reports for this, reports for that. Many developers dislike reporting, but with proper project management tools it becomes much simpler.
Pretty much all of the project management apps on the market have a way for you to easily generate reports for pretty much every aspect of your project whether it’s progress overall or time spent by individual developers of the project. Obviously anyone in the team can also easily log in and see how the entire project is progressing too as well as see what other people are working on so there is no overlap.
Managing a project properly has many benefits, and it is worth considering even for small projects. But it’s not too late. Whatever your next project is, big or small.
Try writing a proper specification and tracking the work in a project management application. Most teams that make this change find it hard to go back to the old way. It’s sheer chaos and in the fast moving world of web based applications of technology you can’t afford any screw ups. 🙂
What Is Project Management?
Project management is the process of supervising the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. The primary constraints are scope, time and budget, often called the triple constraint. Changing one usually affects the others: adding features to a website, for example, tends to push back the launch date or raise the cost.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) publishes A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), first released in 1996. The newest edition, the Eighth Edition, was released in 2025. It defines a project as a temporary initiative in a unique context undertaken to create value, introduces six principles for effective project management and organizes technical ways of working into seven performance domains.
Why Is Project Management Important? Evidence From PMI Research
PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2026 report, titled Driving Success in Complex Projects, surveyed 2,023 project professionals and 511 senior leaders across 35 countries. Its findings show why structured management matters:
- Complexity is normal: 97% of project professionals said they managed at least one complex project in the past year.
- Complexity is rising: 81% said projects have become more complex in recent years, and 37% described a significant increase.
- Benefits are often missed: about a third (31%) of complex projects fail to achieve the full scope of their originally intended benefits, more than twice the 12% rate PMI reported in its 2024 Maximizing Project Success research.
PMI’s 2025 Maximizing Project Success research also reframed project success away from only meeting time, budget and scope constraints toward the value and impact a project creates.
Key Benefits of Project Management for Web and Software Teams
- Clear ownership: every task has one owner, which prevents two developers from building the same element.
- Visible progress: a shared board shows what is done, in progress and blocked.
- Controlled scope: new requests are logged and weighed against time and budget instead of being added silently.
- Earlier risk detection: regular reviews surface integration problems, such as one module not working with another, before launch.
- Easier reporting: progress and time data come from the tool rather than from manual status reports.
What Are the Five Phases of Project Management?
The traditional project life cycle has five process groups. A simple website project shows how each one works:
- Initiating: define the goal (for example, a new company website), the sponsor and the high-level budget.
- Planning: write the scope, break it into tasks, estimate effort and set milestones.
- Executing: design, build and test the site.
- Monitoring and controlling: track progress against the plan and handle change requests.
- Closing: launch, hand over, and record lessons learned.
Planning aids such as network diagrams in project management and the Gantt chart, associated with Henry Gantt (1861-1919), help with the planning and monitoring steps.
Waterfall vs. Agile: Which Approach Fits Your Project?
The waterfall model performs the software development life cycle phases in sequential order, and each phase is completed before the next is started. Winston Royce presented the first formal, detailed diagram of the process in a 1970 article, while warning that testing only at the end was risky.
Agile methods grew from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, published in 2001 by seventeen software developers who met in Snowbird, Utah. It values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan.
| Approach | How work is organized | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Waterfall | Sequential phases, each finished before the next starts | Projects with fixed, well-understood requirements |
| Scrum | Time-boxed sprints of one week to one month (two weeks is most common) | Product teams that ship in regular increments |
| Kanban | Continuous flow on a board with work-in-progress (WIP) limits | Support, maintenance and teams with unpredictable incoming work |
Scrum in Brief
Scrum is an agile framework with three roles: the product owner, who manages the product backlog; the Scrum Master, who coaches the team; and the developers. Its events are sprint planning, a daily scrum of up to 15 minutes, the sprint review and the sprint retrospective. A ready-made Scrum template for team collaboration can help a new team start.
Kanban in Brief
Kanban is a lean method that manages work by balancing demand with available capacity. It originated in Toyota’s Production System in the late 1940s, and David J. Anderson’s 2010 book documented its use in software development. These tips and tricks for Kanban project management cover practical board setups.
Popular Project Management Tools Compared
| Tool | Maker | First released | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basecamp | 37signals (Chicago) | 2004 | Team projects, to-dos and messaging |
| Jira | Atlassian | 2002 | Bug and issue tracking and agile project management for software teams |
| Trello | Atlassian (acquired January 2017) | September 2011 | Simple kanban-style boards |
| Asana | Asana, Inc. (San Francisco) | Commercial launch April 2012 | Work management across teams |
| MyCollab | Open-source project (AGPL v3) | Not stated | Self-hosted project management; repository archived April 22, 2025 |
Pricing and plan limits change often, so check each vendor’s current pricing page before choosing.
How to Start Managing Your Next Web Project
- Write a one-page scope: goal, deliverables, what is out of scope, deadline and budget.
- Break the scope into tasks small enough to finish in a few days, each with one owner.
- Choose one method (waterfall, Scrum or Kanban) and one tool, and keep all tasks in it.
- Hold a short regular check-in to review progress and blockers.
- Log every change request and decide on it against time and budget.
- After launch, record what went well and what to change next time.
Readers considering project management as a career can compare agile certifications and review project manager salaries in the US.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is project management important in software development?
Project management is important in software development because it assigns clear owners, controls scope and exposes integration problems early. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2026 found that 31% of complex projects fail to achieve their full intended benefits, so structure directly affects results.
What are the three main constraints in project management?
The three main constraints are scope, time and budget, often called the triple constraint. Changing one of them usually affects the other two.
What is the latest edition of the PMBOK Guide?
The newest edition of PMI’s PMBOK Guide is the Eighth Edition, released in 2025. It introduces six principles and seven performance domains.
Do solo developers need project management?
Yes, at a simple level. A written scope, a task list and a record of progress help a solo developer estimate time, avoid scope creep and report to clients.
Is Scrum or Kanban better?
Neither is better in every case. Scrum suits teams that deliver in fixed sprints of up to one month, while Kanban suits teams with a continuous, unpredictable flow of work, such as support or maintenance.
