From its primitive stages, project management has come a long way. Our goal in this article is to showcase the best project management tools that today’s professionals and teams rely on most. In their earliest implementations, project managers were still mostly seen as admin coordinators, whose job was just to monitor tasks and timelines. As with project management itself, the field of project management is not standing still but continues to evolve, and therefore, has a more mature role.
The project manager has a vast array of responsibilities today. This includes activities like developing detailed project plans, budgets, and communicating with stakeholders of the project. After all, project managers also have the important task of completing projects successfully and on time and within budget. With the sheer weight of those responsibilities, project managers are always on the hunt for additional resources so as to strengthen their skill sets and perform better in their jobs. And this is where project management blogs come in handy!
Project management has evolved through the years — click to reveal more info about the text! Project management was a specialty, even more so than it is today, where largely only trained project managers utilized tools that required extensive training and expertise to use.
Well, Project Management has not been immune to the change happening around it, and in fact, the group of people who are responsible for managing projects today is much wider than it was back then. The proliferation of online project planning tools has made it possible for teams all over the world to collaborate in real-time, breaking down traditional barriers faced by project managers. Tools from the old world, once adapted to the field of work, have lost their charm. Traditional project manager roles and legacy software will always have a place, too, but the best modern project management software has evolved to serve a more dynamic workforce that values collaboration.
If you are a new business owner who needs help with invoicing or if you manage an overseas multinational, there is project management software that will accommodate your needs. Scroll down to find the project management software that best suits your company.
Project management software is a robust toolbox used to help teams organize, track, and execute on their work seamlessly. Essentially, it is an interactive office where team members coordinate work processes, collaboration, and communication. The core of these platforms often revolves around powerful task management tools that help teams organize work and track progress efficiently. But not all project management software is created equal — the best of them go beyond these rudimentary functions to connect sophisticated workflows across the enterprise that help organizations accomplish ambitious goals.
Well, there is quite a variety under this category, ranging from basic digital checklists to complete work management platforms. The type of project management software you choose to use how you have chosen to use it should reflect the size, needs, and overall vision of your organization.
In the modern workplace, project management is a collective effort, but most Managers do not have the proper tools to manage projects efficiently. Teams often end up using spreadsheets, which are great for organizing tasks but not good for providing real-time updates. Spreadsheets are time-consuming and can impede cross-functional collaboration. Basically, they have none of the features that are found in proper project management tools.
This highlights the importance of project management software in today’s workplace. One of its many benefits, project management software is the central hub for people, work, teams, and stakeholders, targets – pretty much everything a project touches.
The benefits that project management software brings are huge:
Additionally, many organizations start with free project management tools, which offer robust features at no cost for small teams.
- Improved Work Focus: Teams can achieve more as the right things get done, preventing duplicated efforts and minimizing time lost looking for materials.
- Reduced Administrative Tasks: Project management software ties every task to broader company objectives, allowing team members to see how one project affects a business as a whole, encouraging them to produce quality work.
- Tools to Adapt: In this tech world, organizations have many tools they work on. Dynamic project management software allows you to bring all these tools into one platform, simplifying operations and communication by integrating Slack, Dropbox, and Google Drive for attachments in one interface.
- A system of record: Project management software provides a single source of truth for project information and deliverables. This helps to store your data in a basic way and easy for all stakeholders or the teams involved to access it.
- Better Cross-Functional Collaboration — Project management software (PMS) is a collaboration tool for the team. Uniting the work, goals, and people across different projects, teams, and departments creates a fully interconnected ecosystem where a cross-functional organization can thrive.
- A secure work storage: Using a project management software to store the work on the cloud helps stay organized, avoid losing data, while also keeping it private and providing access.
However, with so many different types of project management software and tools available in the market as we step into 2023, it can often prove to be a confusing choice on your end. However, you might note that for small businesses or startups, finding the cheapest project management software that still covers essential functionality can be a priority. So, to make your decision-making process much easier, we have compiled the best products in this vertical serving your specific business needs. Our roundup draws inspiration from multiple top 10 project management tools lists to ensure a comprehensive selection.
Here is a summary of these software solutions and how they optimize your efforts:
Asana: Perfect For Enterprise Businesses
Asana goes far beyond traditional project management software to deliver an enterprise-grade work-management solution that addresses the changing needs of large businesses. However, Asana does more than task management — it creates a seamless link between your company-wide work and those ultimate goals and strategy.
Key features include:
– Compatibility with tools and systems that you are already using, bringing work to one ecosystem.
– Feature for managing goals that connects tasks to company-wide objectives to maintain alignment with key priorities.
– A lot of automation features, including task management, scheduling, work assignment, and other things, are used to minimize low-level manual effort.
– Project templates to kickstart tasks and critical paths.
– Reporting dashboards that update stakeholders with live reporting data, minimizing the need for status update meetings.
– Strong security, privacy, and compliance features to protect your data.
Trello: Incredibly Simple Project Management
Trello is often celebrated as the simplest project management software for those getting started, due to its easy Kanban-style interface.
Trello is a Kanban board-style project management platform and is also one of the Atlassian-owned tools. Organizes tasks simply by thematic boards under headers Light, Work in Progress, and Done, and sorts project tasks. Such an arrangement is especially useful to follow the progress of projects, thus making it a perfect fit for simple and smaller-scale projects.
Smartsheet: For The Spreadsheet Lovers Out There
Think of Smartsheet like a supercharged spreadsheet. It is designed for organizations using spreadsheets to manage projects (e.g., tracking time/effort with timesheets). For teams better fluent in spreadsheets, Smartsheet gives a more dynamic option.
Jira: Purpose-built for Agile Project Management
Tailored specifically for software development teams—especially those using Agile methodologies—Jira is a powerhouse. It is owned by Atlassian and out-of-the-box is ready for Agile work (bug tracking, following the Scrum process, etc.). If your projects are focused on software development and Agile methodologies, Jira makes for an exceptional selection.
So each of these project management software comes with its strengths, helping you fulfill some particular essential business need. Taking into account the size of your organization, project complexity, and unique needs, you can choose the software that best fits your goals and workflow.
Monday: A Small Business Dream
Monday has tons of applications for quick implementation and immediate action. This translates into a perfect principle for beginners with project management software in smaller businesses. But soon, as your workload increases, the company expands or cross-team collaboration grows, you will come across a dent in its capabilities.
ClickUp: Best For Small Teams and Startups
ClickUp is frequently recognized as the best project management software for small teams seeking a balance of features and ease of use.
ClickUp is known for the most intuitive and aesthetic interface there is matches ease of use with adoption among teams. This makes it a go-to choice for any startups that may not have the bandwidth or need for an elaborate feature set.
Notion — the Mark of Every Note-Taker
Notion gives you a step up to creating the best dynamic documents, spreadsheets & notes. This makes it especially ideal for someone or a business that needs an organized place to keep track of their thoughts and ideas. However, when used collaboratively in the actual tool itself, Notion does have limits.
Airtable: Best for DIY Fans
At its core, Airtable provides a powerful, no-code and low-code flexible database used by anyone looking to create their custom project management systems or other forms of custom solutions. Airtable gives you direct hands-on control over the development of your project management software, if that’s your preference.
Wrike: Custom-built for Client Management
Wrike provides safe storage and an easy-to-use platform for internal teams as well as clients to access data securely through external folders. That is especially useful when handling work in conjunction with some external stakeholders.
Workfront: Designed For Marketing Teams
Designed for marketers originally, Workfront (now part of Adobe) has broadened its platform for all types of teams. But it can also be a bit difficult to integrate with other teams (outside of marketing) due to its specialization.
What is it: Microsoft Office — Personal use choice
Microsoft Office typically is not the first tool that comes to mind for project management, but rather a cornerstone suite in various businesses. Excel spreadsheets and documents are familiar because we have used them for many years, but they were never planned for collaborative work. So, they are best paired with dedicated project management software for complete project management coverage.
All of these 10 project management software tools have their strengths suited to particular business needs. Decide based on what constitutes a focus of your company, projects, the level of collaboration you need, and which language resonates well with you.
