Project Management Tools assists in managing the work and team involved in the projects. The complete software that allows you to plan, schedule, collaborate, document, and evaluate. Work management through project management tools covers allocation, workflows, calendars, templates, tasks, and folders. It allows the project owners to communicate with the team members, organize the dashboards, approve the tasks, add the comments to the tasks, and keep track of activities. The software enables documentation and easy storage of files, its versioning, editing, and uninterrupted access. Project Management Tools allows the managers to track the resources, manage resources, and verify their productivity.

Why do we need special Project Management Tools?

There is other software like resource management software, documentation management software but what a project management tool does is catering the needs of project. Specific needs of project like start, duration of project, short term goals, stakeholders, and deliverables. Comparatively the other programs designed for a company have a long-term perspective.

Top Benefits of Project Management Tools:

1. Automate Processes
2. Improve Accuracy
3. Ease to Use
4. Better Customer Support
5. Market Trend

Industries that have benefited by exploring the Project Management Tools are Information Technology, Public Service, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Energy, Real Estate, Marketing, Management Consultants, Professional Services, Architecture, and few others.

Popular and Standard Project Management Tools:

1.Jira: This sophisticated and efficient tool aids quick planning; monitoring helps the development team in streamlining the software releases. 

Pros:

• Powerful, flexible and easy to use
• Lot of Integrations
• Share business requirements
• Search and filter functionality
• Customizable fields
• Single view of user stories
• Track release tickets
• Easy export of data
• Generate reports for active and closed sprints
• Simultaneous check on active tasks
• Scheduling Tasks and E-mail notifications
• Timesheets and individual task tracking

Cons:

• Resizing of columns to fit in the window makes data unreadable
• Mobile App requires lot of navigation dissimilar to web application
• Error messages should be explicit
• Artificial Intelligence integration can automate lot of processes
• Code refactoring plugin can help

Pricing: 10 users – $10, $7 per user/month for 11- 100 users for cloud-based deployment

2. Zoho Projects: This project management tool is perfect for project planning; it covers minute details, set milestones and manages even complex tasks. It improves team productivity and supports knowledge sharing.

Pros:

• Flexibility of configuration
• Good UI and nice graphics
• Mobile App is highly customizable
• Notification to alert the users and groups
• Assign tasks with deadlines and comments
• Track project progress
• Tracking multiple IT projects
• Templates an online tutorials
• Chat with customer care

Cons:

• Integration with Calendar and attendance systems will be added advantage
• Not great for complex projects but not too large projects
• Include bug tracking
• Cannot view project specific manpower allocation
• Task creation and task management can be intuitive
• Tracking completed tasks date wise is difficult
• Project printing functions should be enhanced

Pricing: Rs. 1260/month for 6 users – 10 projects/ 10 clients, Rs. 3500/month for 15 users- unlimited projects/15 client users

3. Asana: This project management tool assists the project owners to collaborate on projects with other departments involved. It is suitable option for small to medium teams.

Pros:

• Set frequency of  E-mail notifications
• Communicate within project without exchanging e-mails
• Cross team communication
• Assign tasks with due date
• Maintain notes and attach files to the sub tasks
• Customizable views and fields
• To-do List Tracking
• Scheduling tasks
• Track multiple projects in one place
• Content  and data sharing with other applications
• Bug tracking
• Organize meetings
• Collect feature requests and suggestions
• Data deletion and export from enterprise version
• Data Security

Cons:

• Calendar integration is missing
• Software integration with Gmail is needed
• Expecting better features for the mobile application
• Task prioritization feature should be added
• Export allowed in JSON and CSV formats

Pricing: Free Plan – 15 teammates and $10.99 and $24.99 per user/month

4. MS Project: The built in templates, portfolio management, and resource management are the key features of this project management tool. It is best suited for complex and massive projects.

Pros:

• Suitable for projects of all industry types including tech industry
• Integrate with Microsoft tools
• Best for experienced project managers
• Integrate other Microsoft tools
• Planning and Scheduling
• Drag and drop function helps scheduling
• E-mail and Calendar integration
•  Web based facility saves allows to check the assigned tasks without downloading MSProject

Cons:

• Advanced tools difficult to use for new users
• Not ideal for collaboration and data sharing
• Access data only if MS Project is installed on the machine
• Working remotely is challenging
• Tools does not work across devices
• Conflicts in manually scheduled and automatically scheduled tasks
• Integration with external apps needs manual intervention
• Cannot send messages to the resources
• Cannot measure individual or team’s productivity

Pricing: $10, $30, and $55 per month.

5. Monday: This project management tool has inbuilt templates, customizable views and helps in daily management of team and project activities.  Get good presentation of project overview. Monday was earlier Dapulse, it is best for small and medium businesses.

Pros:

• Users have private boards and team can create public boards
• Visual display of progress
• Powerful data manipulation and exporting tools
• Colour coding and easy task assignment
• Keep track of pending and complete
• Discuss projects with the team from the tool
• Integrate multiple tools like E-mail, Google Drive, and Dropbox
• Easy customization
• Leave live comments on the visuals

Cons:

• Learning curve is bit overwhelming
• With added users the product becomes slow
• Costly for individual users
• Scheduling recurring tasks can be improved
• Better view required

Pricing: $25, $39, $59 and $118 for 5 users/month

6. Podio: The project management tool that lets you customize the features and is a good tool for large teams. Using podio information system can support all the areas of the organizations. It is suitable for small and medium businesses.

Pros:

• Connect with Go To Meeting
• Keep track of contacts and meeting info
• Data accessibility
• File sharing
• Automated task assignment
• Customized workflow lets you follow an item
• Workspaces can include internal and external members
• Powerful communication platform
• Notify team members easily
• No need of internal e-mails
• Great for managing resources

Cons:

• Visual Interface should be
• Not mobile friendly
• Calendar integration required
• Archived workspaces consume screen space
• Attachment size limit is 100MB
• Automated workflow needs improvement
• System does not support mass data entry is not

Pricing: Free, $9 per user/month

7. Celoxis: It is best for medium sized companies and enterprise. This award winning project management tool is one of the best tools in terms of delivering projects and real-time financial analytics.

Pros:

• Plan and track project portfolios
• Budgeting, revenue forecasting and resource management
• Comprehensive project and work management platform
• Easy to navigate
• Customizable client portal and dashboard
• Powerful Reports and dashboards
• Schedule report delivery
• File sharing
• Comments can be exchanged between the colleagues and clients too

Cons:

• No Chat within the app
• Advance security rules are bit confusing
• Cannot edit comments, need to download file and modify
• Mobile app will be useful
• Task checklists is missing
• Dropdowns and options in reports are not customizable
• Improve graphical representation

Pricing: $25 per user/month on cloud, and $450 per user/month on-premise.

8. nTask: Start-ups, small businesses, and enterprises prefer this project management tool. Its intuitive design adds to performance. Simple and elegant user interface eases the use of first timers.

Pros:

• Automate Tasks
• Easy Navigation
• User Friendly
• Risk Management
• Percentage of task completion tracking
• Flawless Integrations
• Workspace management for teams
• Bug Tracking
• Resource Allocation
• Meeting Management lets you store the agenda, discussions and follow-ups
• Unlimited Storage in paid version

Cons:

• No templates
• Customization and formatting options missing
• Kanban board view can be introduced
• Need more options to organize work

Pricing: Free, $ 2.99 per user/month, unlimited users, workspaces and projects.

Synopsis:

Inter-dependencies of tasks and resources, estimation, managing time constraints, and bottlenecks, re-scheduling tasks automatically, foresee the budget limitations, and detailed execution of the project is possible with the Project Management Tools. Software is not worthy or worthless especially if they survive in the market. The criteria mismatch makes it inoperative.

Selecting a project management tool needs you to define the business and key users requirements in terms of software and their dependency on the system. It should take you through various stages of the project right from defining goals, developing a roadmap, setting deliverables, executing, monitoring, measuring performance, and closure. The aim is to create a pleasant work atmosphere and produce stable software.