Project management software can help businesses, companies, and even small teams better organize the flow of their work. Instead of long email threads, countless spreadsheets, and unproductive meetings, project management tools are designed to condense and centralize a business’s operations. From Monday.com to Trello, the top project management tools currently available sell themselves on the efficiency, productivity, and adaptability that they bring to a team of colleagues. Time is a valuable resource, one that most businesses cannot afford to squander. Therefore, as technology advances, so too do the tools that companies use to streamline their deliverables.
Depending on the nature of the project management software, these tools can assist in creating agendas, tracking tasks, scheduling meetings, and archiving past projects. The point of many of these project management tools is to eliminate time-consuming meetings, lessen the need for direct communication via email, and keep a working team focused on the tasks at hand in a manner which leaves no stone unturned or allows for any important deliverable to fall through the cracks.
Project management tools were in existence well before the COVID-19 pandemic, but once lockdowns began in earnest across the globe in March 2020, top project management tools started to become even more important to businesses and companies as they tried to navigate a world that became virtual almost overnight. With managers no longer able to oversee their employees in the office, some of them were left with little recourse except to rely on project management software to ensure that their sales and productivity did not plummet.
There are many project management tools out there, but this article shall focus on the top ten. These tend to be the most popular and most well-known. Therefore, without any further preamble, here is a list of the top 10 project management tools.
Project Management Tools List
- Docket
- Trello
- Asana
- Wrike
- Smartsheet
- Monday
- ProofHub
- HubSpot
- Kintone
- ZenHub
This top 10 project management tools list offers the most relevant examples in our current business climate. Flexible and agile, project management tools like these can make life more productive and focused. On this list, the best project management tools in software engineering are Wite and ProofHub.
Wrike allows development teams to obtain greater visibility through the use of timesheets, reporting features, project templates, project planning, and performance optimization, resource planning and management, reporting features, and dozens of integrations.
ProofHub is also beneficial for development teams because its features include custom workflows, kanban boards, Gantt charts, and project timelines, task management, a group chat tool, time tracking and timesheets, custom reports, and online collaboration features.
Docket is a good resource because it has features that focus before, during, and after the meeting. From collaborating on agendas to sharing meeting highlights, Docket is a versatile project management tool that can get the job done.
Monday tends to be great for building custom workflows and across teams, while Smartsheet is good for flexibility and customizability. Asan is nice in the sense that it has drag and drop functionality for task management, but one of the cons is that team members may have difficulties in collaborating over a shared plan/project. Trello has easy task management and scheduling, but it is incapable of managing more complex projects, and thus it would not be the best choice for a project management tool for software engineering.
Project Management Apps
Project management apps are an integral part of many of the top ten 10 project management tools. Nearly everyone has a smartphone now. For better or worse, technology has caused the lines to blur between work and home, regardless of whether the work team is working remotely or in an office. Therefore it is critical now more than ever for team members to be able to connect with one another with a simple tap of their cell phone.
The benefits of the app are for employees to receive notifications in the same manner they receive text messages. I probably used the Trello program management software more as an app than I do in its desktop format. This was true for both my day job at the university and my volunteer work as a staff journalist for a digital magazine. This simple project management software helps to keep me in the know of what is going on in the team even though I may be off the clock.
Having access to all the open source project management software’s data via a smartphone app keeps a team informed of business updates and developments as soon as they are decided, whether the employees are in the office, on their lunch break, or at home.
Project Management Techniques
Here are the top ten project management techniques that can be found to varying degrees in the top 10 project management tools.
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) – A breakdown of large projects into smaller takes that makes the overall project less intimidating
- Critical Path Method (CPM) – Estimating and moderating of a project’s duration
- Scrum – Project goals are defined as a series of brie cycles
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) – Divides Agile Framework via four levels for organizations (Essential, Large Solution, Portfolio, and Full)
- Kanban – A display of a project’s tasks where the progress of each task is shown for the users to reference.
- Gantt – A bar chart that shows the lifespan of a project and its tasks over a period of time
- Pert – A flowchart is created to demonstrate the project’s duration and the relationship between particular tasks.
- Waterfall – A linear technique that is meant to control projects in a clear way.
- Extreme – Promotes a flexibility for planning and incorporates the human element for change without enforcing strict rules.
- Event chain – an uncertainty module which identifies the connection between events and focuses on events that could impact schedules within the project.
These strategic project management tools can help in structuring a business model. Different companies with different products will call for different priorities and approaches to their operations. For example, construction project management tools and techniques may include Kanban and Work Breakdown Structure, but maybe not Pert
Docket, for example (one of the project management tools listed), used Kanban to highlight projects and tasks and Gantt charts well.
Project Management Tools And Techniques
The combination of project management tools and techniques is what makes software like Trello and Monday and the rest so valuable. That is the entire point, to take these abstract techniques about portfolio management and give them a digital face so employees can visualize their workload.
One tool may have four project management techniques, while others may specialize in only one or two. That can be a pro or a con depending on what your workflow goals are. Some techniques may complement each other very well, but others may completely contradict each other.
Generally speaking, the more project management techniques a single program has, the more versatile it is for a larger work team. When shopping for a project management tool, ask yourself, “what are the five project management techniques that I need to start or grow my business?” Is it Pert flowcharts or Gantt charts or the very simple Work Breakdown Structure? What construction project management tools and techniques are the most important will not be the same as project management tools and techniques for book sales.
Best Project Management Tools
As mentioned before, the best project management tools depend on a company’s business model, what it is trying to accomplish, and what is the work culture at that company. The best project management tools for individuals are those that are less geared towards collaboration like Asana. The best project management tools for small teams are those like Trello that can display workflow easily but cannot handle super complex projects. Monday may be good for both individuals and small teams, it should not support large teams because it does not have the capacity to take on complex project management. ProofHub and Wrike, on the other hand, can take on the most complex of projects and streamline development teams.
Anyone looking to maximize their productivity should sit down and research the top ten management tools mentioned in this blog, observe which project management techniques they favor in their interfaces, and make an informed decision on which one would fit best based on their needs and priorities. There is no right or wrong answer, only possibilities, and preferences.
When it comes to the best project management tools, Reddit has quite a few opinions, and thus it may be worthwhile to inquire who is recommending what for what types of businesses.
Docket is beneficial because it is video conferencing platform that allows users to integrate other project management tools at the Pro level.
Project Management Tools Examples
What are project management tools that a business needs to thrive? Again, it partially depends on what you hope to achieve with your team and your company. How much collaboration is needed? Do team members need access to data from other departments? How small do you need to break apart the tasks of a bigger project? There are plenty of project management tools and resources out there for you to choose from. The top 10 project management tools discussed in this article all have pros and cons with different strengths and weaknesses. What is the best for project management tools in software engineering will vary from ideal construction project management tools and techniques?
There are so many project management tools examples that have been listed in this article: Docket, Trello, Asana, Wrike, Smartsheet, Monday, ProofHub, HubSpot, Kintone, and ZenHub. These tools tend to be the most used and the most popular. Their features help us to compartmentalize tasks into feasible patterns and our brains love patterns.
These are the project management tools of the present and the future. More techniques and technology will develop as the years go by. But for now, here are the top 10 project management tools.
