Best Project Management Tools
Are you looking for that magical Project Management tool to help make everything on your team’s plate tick smoothly? I have a lot of opinions in this realm and can tell you from the start that there isn’t a one size fits all solution. However, I’ll give you some guidance that will help you avoid spending countless hours demoing every tool in the market. One of the keys to a successful implementation of a PM Tool is making a conscious work style shift in the way existing tools are used. Email and instant messaging are very useful for day-to-day communications, but they are project management nightmares. Keeping track of tasks and the timeframe for getting them done by using those tools is very inefficient and things always get lost. How do you build a roadmap in Slack?
The key is to help your team get their work done with the least amount of effort and time spent using the PM Tool. If you have to spend hours configuring the system or conduct extensive training for your team to know how to use a PM tool, just cross it off your list of candidates and move on. This is the modern world folks and we don’t have time to learn a system with bad UX.
In two decades of leading teams on a wide variety of design and technology projects, I’ve used a myriad of good and bad tools to help track the health of projects, including old-fashioned paper, MS Project, Excel, Jira, Asana, and on and on… Every Project Manager has their preferred toolbelt and pleasing everyone with one out-of-the-box system is next to impossible. All of the industry-leading PM tools do something particularly well and have their supporters and detractors. Trello with their slick Kanban boards, SmartSheets, and Airtable with the endless customization and flexibility, and yes you can pretty much manage anything with Google Sheets.
What I’ve learned is that various team members like to visualize the details of a project in different ways. Some people want to see a calendar view, others like to see a linear timeline and most just want a list or cards showing them what they need to get done and by when. So what are the key decision points in deciding which tool is best for your business or team?
1. Define your current workflow
- How are tasks assigned?
- Who needs to review updates?
- Some tools want you to adapt to their way of thinking instead of allowing you to easily customize theirs and assisting in your process
2. Determine who will truly use the system and how your team collaborates
- Can you get your designers, developers, etc. to adopt a new tool?
- Will you need to share details of the project outside of your organization?
3. Prioritize the most important features for your organization
For example:
Priority 1
- Task Management & Prioritization
- Resource Management
Priority 2
- Timesheets
- Budget Tracking
- SSO
4. Don’t believe the hype…
- Did you see that Monday commercial?
As a fully remote digital design agency working simultaneously with great clients, knowing the status of all of our projects at a glance is of paramount importance and a key to this is straightforward task management. Integrated resource management is also hugely helpful along with a lot of other minor features that make our day-to-day easy to keep a pulse on.
We tested a ton of tools beyond the list below, but here are some thoughts:
Needs Improvement
- Asana — It pains me to write this as Asana has been my favorite for years, but it requires too many integrations to accomplish everything our type of business needs, making for a less seamless experience and more money spent.
- ActiveCollab
- Avaza
- Zoho Projects
Overhyped or Outdated
And after that long-winded overview… We use Hive. Yes, it has issues, but overall it works with our process and has successfully been adopted not only internally, but also collaboratively with our clients.
If you are interested in learning more about how we manage projects at Gallardo Labs using Hive please reach out, I’d love to hear from you greg@gallardolabs.com.
Written by Greg Hernandez, Head of Operations at Gallardo Labs.
