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If you have a diverse team that must work on different projects together, proper communication is key. Keeping everyone on the same page was already difficult before the pandemic, but it’s now becoming harder with the advent of remote and hybrid work arrangements. Lack of cohesiveness can affect your team’s productivity, but it can also lead to conflict and misunderstandings, lower morale, and revenue loss.
Thankfully, project management tools have evolved to meet new challenges, and there are many tools today that will allow you to delegate tasks, look over their progress, and have an open line of communication with people involved in the completion of those tasks easily and efficiently. The best tools can also become a vast repository of information on your processes and help you improve them. Let’s take a look at some of the project management software that should get your attention in 2022.
Trello is a great tool based on the very popular Kanban card-based project management system. What sets Trello apart is its simple interface and its free options. And if you think that their free version is only a trick to force the team to sign up with them once they become dependent, think again. Their free service is more than enough to support the needs of many small and medium-sized teams.
Their free version allows you to have unlimited users, but it limits you to 10 boards max and you can only have one integration per board. But unless you have a very large organisation with very segmented departments, and you need to integrate lots of different tools into your management system, Trello's free version could be all that you need.
The only big issue with Trello is that the reporting options are very limited. This could be an issue for those companies who like to unlock the process improvement and data mining capabilities of advanced Kanban systems. While you can always remedy that with plug-ins, you might have to look for another tool if you need advanced reporting.
If you’re looking for a tool that is a bit more advanced than Trello but you’re afraid of the learning curve that comes with many of these programs, look no further than Wrike.
Wrike has all the advanced reporting options that you would look for, as well as things like Gantt charts and advanced dashboards. It's also surprisingly easy to set up. You can set up the whole system in a few minutes and your team will be able to start working on small and medium-sized projects almost immediately after the system is implemented.
Wrike also has a handy time tracking tool that can be used by both employees and managers overlooking projects. You can’t use it as a dedicated time tracking system, but it’s still very useful.
We have to say that the interface could do with a bit of a visual refresh, but it still looks pretty good and we can expect the team over at Wrike to give it a makeover at a certain point.
The free plan comes stocked with all sorts of great features such as interactive spreadsheets and boards, two GBs of storage space for as many users as you want, cloud integrations with services like Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, and OneBox, and an organisation-wide work schedule tool.
We have to warn you that Wrike's paid plans are slightly more costly than some of the other platforms out there, however, but not by that much. The professional tier opens up all of the platform's options such as interactive Gantt charts, shareable dashboards, and integrations with advanced productivity tools like MS projects. The business tier adds time-tracking capabilities, salesforce integration, custom workflows, 5 GBs of storage, and real-time reporting to the mix.
Monday.com has to make the list since it’s one of the most widespread management tools for medium-sized and small teams. Monday.com is very popular with teams who work on creative projects, largely because of its customisable progress tools and visual appeal.
Monday.com's interface is pretty to look at and its Kanban-inspired layout makes it easy for anyone to see where tasks are in the pipeline and who's in charge of the tasks in question. It uses a simple colour-coded system to tell when someone is stuck on a task, when a task is in progress, and when it's completed. It also has tons of customisable events including a dashboard that can help you keep track of finances and budgets during projects.
One of the issues with Monday.com is that it’s not the cheapest tool out there and the pricing structure can be pretty frustrating. Prices will increase in set increments representing a fixed number of “seats”. For instance, there will be a different price for 20 seats and 25 seats, but if you have 22 employees, you will have to pay for 25 seats since you can’t pay per employee. So, this might be frustrating depending on your team’s makeup.
Basecamp
Basecamp is one of the oldest project management tools and has been around since the early 2000s. Basecamp is a pretty simple system that works best for teams with simple projects and processes. It also has a flat fee, which makes it even simpler to manage.
Basecamp has many features and while it does not integrate well with some of the top programs, it can replace many of them completely. It doesn’t integrate with Slack, for instance, but its built-in messaging system is sophisticated enough to handle most of your internal messaging needs. So, you may not be able to connect it with some of your favourite applications, but you’ll always be able to get what you need from Basecamp’s wide range of features.
Now that you know some of the best project management tools for this year, you can start looking into them in more in detail and see which one would fit the needs of your team and organisation the best. They all have something to offer, and some could benefit your team more than others, so don’t only take our word for it and consider giving a few of these tools a trial today.
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