Don’t sit on your employee’s head; use these tools to track progress instead!
Whether you are working from the office or in the comfort of your home, no one likes being constantly nagged about the progress of a task. The easiest way to solve this problem, for both managers and employees, is to use project management tools.
Companies across the world have begun understanding the need for digital project management, which is evident in the growth of the sector. The project management software sector was worth US$5.37 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach US$9.81 billion by 2026. According to research conducted by the multinational firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), 77% of projects that perform well use digital project management tools.
Want your company’s projects to be completed seamlessly? Here are some tools that you should consider investing in!
Notion
Notion is an online workspace that helps you clearly visualize your day-to-day tasks in the form of a Kanban board (a board where tasks are organized into different columns depicting the stages of completion). Besides the Kanban board, Notion has a wide range of other features that make it a comprehensive digital workplace, including:
- wikis—pages where a company can document its policies and goals;
- database view—you can change how you view your workplace from a list to a calendar view;
- blocks—which can be rearranged based on your needs; and
- project pages—where you can add details of each task
Notion also has a sidebar that you can use to navigate between different workspaces and also to quickly find something you were working on in the past. What’s more, you can tag your teammates by typing “@theirname” and leave comments, making it great for collaborative work. You can use Notion on both your mobile phone and your computer to constantly keep track of the project.
Notion is a viable tool for individuals as well as teams. Its personal plan costs US$5 and its team plan costs US$10 per month.
Clickup
Clickup is a cloud-based project management platform that allows multiple users to simultaneously work on a project. Clickup allows companies to create different spaces inside one larger workspace. These spaces can help you separate the workspaces of different departments (or different teams) within the company. Some of Clickup’s unique features include:
- a time tracker—which can help the company know how long it takes to complete a certain task and thus plan accordingly;
- template creation—you can use it to make templates for repeated projects or task sets; and
- a me-view (where a user can see how many hours of work they are left with
Clickup not only has a desktop and a mobile app but also comes with a Chrome extension, email add-ons and a voice assistant. You can use Clickup’s Chrome extension to connect your email inbox to your workspace; this can help you assign tasks right as they come without having to check your email.
Clickup has a free plan which offers users 100 MB worth of storage space for unlimited tasks and members. Its paid plans (all of which come with unlimited storage) start from US$5 per month per user. Businesses can spend US$9 per user per month for additional features, like Google Single Sign-On (SSO) and customer exporting. It also has an Enterprise plan which is customized according to your organization’s needs.
Trello
Another Kanban-style project management tool on this list is Trello. Trello helps you create task cards for your project where you can add details, like due dates, assign it to a team member as well as add a general description of the task. What sets Trello apart from other project management tools is its simplicity and ease of use.
All the tasks are right in your workspace in the form of task cards which you can drag around, such as from “to do” to “done”, and also check their progress by clicking on them. You can add to Trello’s basic functions by integrating tools you might already use, like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, into your Trello workspace.
Trello has a free tier that consists of ten boards and unlimited task cards and paid plans ranging from US$5 to US$17.50 per user per month. Each of these plans extends the features available. What makes Trello unique is that its free plan supports automation, wherein you interact with Trello’s automation bot Butler to completely automate the process of assigning and moving tasks from one column to another.
Jira
Jira started off as an information technology (IT) tool which gradually transitioned into being used for bug tracking and project management. Both Trello and Jira have been created by the Australian software company Atlassian. One of the main differences between the two is that while Trello simply visualizes tasks in the Kanban-style, Jira allows you to view tasks in Kanban and Scrum Boards. Scrum boards are fairly similar to Kanban, only that Scrum boards are usually used for short sprints of work with tight deadlines.
Another difference between Jira and Trello is their user base. While Trello is meant for a wider audience, Jira is focused on facilitating project management in the software development space. Jira also allows for greater integration of third-party applications than Trello and has over 100 integration partners. You can use Jira to track metrics, like the time taken to resolve issues, and create workload pie charts to see how work is distributed across the team.
Jira has a free tier that allows for ten users and 2 GB of storage space. It also has a wide range of paid tiers that start at US$5 and go up to US$17,200 per year for the Jira Service Management Data Center plan.
While these are some of the most popular options at your disposal, they are not the only ones. There are other project management tools, like Asana, Zoho Projects and Monday.com, that are also worth looking into. Ultimately, you should pick one that fits the needs of your company. Make sure to carefully consider the offered features, like storage space, project view and tracking, to decide which one suits you the best.
Also read:
- The Remote Working Revolution
- Tips for Time Management in a Startup Environment
- Ethics of Surveying Your Remote Employees
- Five Easy Hacks to Stay Focused at the Workplace
Header image courtesy of Freepik
