Why This Matters
It’s important to understand the scope of a project and where different aspects of a project is in development. Whether this is building a custom car, creating a video, building a house or authoring software it’s important for you and your team to know where everyone is at and to help people stay on track, time and budget. Project management software will help you manage and track time, digital assets, communication, scheduling and more. Keep in mind that if you follow a certain management methodology (agile or kanban for example) you probably want that reflected in the project management software you choose.
As with any software purchase, it’s important to understand your requirements/needs, what features you are looking for (nice to have vs. must haves). Making a list of things you would like to “operationally do” will help determine your software requirements. Do this before looking for a software to meet those needs.
Resources
Five Popular Project Management Methodologies and When to Use Them
Get Organized: How to Pick Project Management Software in 5 Steps
Recommendations
Power Automate – (Formally Microsoft Flow) – An online tool within the Microsoft 365 applications and add-ins, used for the creation of automated workflows between apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, and collect data.
Monday – Cloud-based platform that allows companies to create their own applications and work management software
Jira – A software development tool that allows users to plan the software, track and prioritize the creation process, release, and get reports on all steps of the project. This is commonly used for software development. They have a few different tools.
Kanbanflow – Cloud-based project management solution by CodeKick that allows real-time collaboration between users and coworkers
Asana – A work management platform perfect for groups that need to focus on getting projects done. It allows you to map your project out as a Gantt chart, then create portfolios of steps, and monitor the workload of each member.
Podio – Project management and collaboration web-based platform for organizing team communication, business processes, data and content in project management workspaces according to project needs
Trello – Project management and organization uses boards, lists, and cards to allow you to organize and prioritize your projects in a flexible and easy-to-use way
Basecamp – Project management & team communication in a complete project package – includes all the tools teams need to work together, such as message boards, to-dos, schedules, docs, file storage, real-time group chat, and automatic check-in questions