Employers have moved on from hiring based primarily on book qualifications: project and time management are now considered extremely high value in the workplace, and effective project and time management skills are vital to a successful career.
With the hyper-focus on productivity in the modern workspace, management and time management tools have grown rapidly in number. All offices and teams have different needs: the size, composition and culture of a company, as well as their workflow, products or services, all play an important role in directing which app or tool will work best in helping manage project.
Here are some questions you need to communicate with your team before committing to a contract or subscribing to any project management apps.
- Which features will you actually use?
- Which of the features are 100% necessary?
- Can you live without it?
- Will your team be open to using it?
I have tried out several tools and apps so far, listing 3 of my favourites below:
- Basecamp
The winner so far is Basecamp, a web-based project management software with the slogan “Chaos, Organized.”
Its objective is to help your team work together to complete a common goal. It is, in a nutshell, a digital project management system combining a great interface with an extremely easy to use calendar.
Pros:
- Work from email without always having to log in.
- Break projects into tasks and to do lists.
- Combine integrations and add-ons like TimeSheetr, Time Doctor, FreeAgent and RoadMap.
- Asana
Asana is a project and task management app that facilitates team communication and collaboration. You can use Asana to create projects and tasks within the projects, and follow the progress of those tasks from various browsers and devices.
Asana seems very appropriate for small teams or companies with a flexible project structure. It gives a high level of visibility to each project with its calendars, user tagging and email notifications.
Pros:
- Simple to use.
- Free of charge.
- Provides reminders of upcoming deadlines.
- One click task assignment.
- Google plug-in and mobile apps allow to track conversations from any team.
- Trello
Trello is a visual collaboration tool that enables teams of all sizes to get things done in a fun and flexible way.
Trello provides agile project management, budgeting, customization, issue tracking, notifications, reporting, task management, and traditional project management functionality for personal use and small/medium businesses.
Pros:
- Organize cards by colors to represent priorities and represent groups.
- The drag-and-drop interface is conceptually easy to use.
- Clutter free user interface.
- Changes are pushed to all logged in users in real time.
