Compare The 15 Best Project Management Software Of 2022
PM’s love project management software — with good reason — without good project management software, whether we’re in agencies, marketing communications or consulting, we can find ourselves drowning in an endless sea of spreadsheets, post-its and paperwork. Our project management software and toolkit can be the only thing that separates us from throwing our toys out of the pram and having a total meltdown. To get stuff done and projects out the door, we need a process to get projects done, a workflow for driving projects through the agency and the right project management software to make it happen.
Best in breed — the one trick (project software) ponies
But what is the ‘right project management software?’ There are lots of tools out there that do a single project related job, really well. These are the specialist one-trick-pony tools for project management planning, scheduling, milestone tracking, communication, collaboration, task management, file sharing or project reporting; Tools like Slack, Microsoft Project, Harvest and Dropbox are examples of these specialist project tools. Specialist, dedicated, best in breed, project management software and tools can be great, especially when you’re working in a small team, when you’ve got niche requirements for your tools, or when you’re working with just a few clients or projects.
Project management software enables you to work smarter
However, if you’re not careful, you can end up with a collection of unrelated, independent, SaaS online project software, each with their own subscription, that don’t talk to each other properly. You can find yourself using one tool for communication, another for file sharing and yet another for task management, and you end up entering the same data into each project management software application .
Maybe there’s a better way? Instead of using dedicated tools and manually tying them together or integrating them with API’s, there is project management software on the market with powerful shared-data functionality built-in. This project management software facilitates project management tasks within a project to enable better briefing, management of tasks and deadlines, contextual communication and easier sharing to enable a more efficient and straightforward management of a project, project team, and client.
What makes a good project management software tool?
In defining what makes a good digital project management software we’ve mainly focussed on tools that enable and facilitate the ‘doing’ aspect of a project — getting people together to create something amazing for a digital world.
So what does it take to deliver a digital project? We’ve identified five key aspects of project management software functionality that we think makes delivering digital projects easier. These is the kind of project management software that you could use and get rid of your post-its, spreadsheets, documents and emails, to run your project more smartly and efficiently.
- Project task lists — projects are made up of sub-tasks, and sub-sub-tasks, checklists and to-do’s, so being able to brief your team and outline what needs to be done, by when, by who, is critical to delivering a project to meet requirements.
- Project schedules — whether it’s a timeline, calendar or Gantt chart, knowing where tasks and sub-tasks fit within the broader scheme of a project, as well as the important milestones is key to being able to deliver a project on time.
- Project file sharing — No one likes having to waste timing trying to dig around for random files, so the ability to organize and share key project documents, files, and assets among the team and with the client, is important to deliver a project efficiently.
- Project communication — Contextual project specific communication to hash things out quickly and the ability to be able to chat with your project team as well as your client is vital to keep tasks on track and on brief.
- Project reporting — As project managers, it’s our job to know whether or not our project is on track, so it’s essential to know how a project’s tasks are progressing to know whether or not the project is going to be delivered in full, and on time — or not.
But you’re missing stuff…
Yes, lots. With any project management software, you have to draw a line between what’s essential, and what’s not. In our criteria for project management software we’ve focussed on the ‘doing’, execution aspect of a project, and not so much on the planning or billing aspect — or apps, integrations or other functionality. For that reason, we’ve not focussed on the pre-project estimating or resourcing, or the post-project timesheets, expenses or billing aspects of some project management software. Check out our article on the best resource scheduling tools, if you’re looking for that. That said, there are many similarities between these project management software tools so we’ve tried to highlight functionality or features that we think make them unique.
A selection of the best project management software tools
In our review of the best project management software and project management tool solutions we’ve sought to find solutions that are not just IT PSA project management solutions but which have at least some consideration for agency challenges — the creative process and integration into development.
Keep reading on http://www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-project-management-software-tools/
Originally published at www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com on January 3, 2017.
