Teams are now finding themselves more in charge of balancing more projects than ever before. With this additional responsibility comes an increase in the need for project organization and solid processes across all teams involved to ensure projects are completed on time. Teams used to communicate project progress and project needs through endless email threads, which often made communication between all team members hard to keep up with, and lost information often in translation, thus making teams less efficient and adding more work and time to tasks.
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What is Project Management Software?
Software for project planning, scheduling, resource allocation, and change management is known as project management software. It enables cost control, budget management, quality management, and document management for project managers (PMs), stakeholders, and users. It may also be used as an administration system. Software for project management is also utilized for stakeholder participation and communication.
Why Does Your Team Need Project Management Software?
Using a project management tool can give your digital marketing team an advantage in several ways. First off, it can help increase productivity by streamlining processes for tracking progress and assigning tasks. By having everything in one place, team members don’t have to waste time searching for information or trying to figure out who needs to do what next. Additionally, having all the data available in one spot makes it easier for managers to assess performance and make adjustments as needed.
Another benefit of using a project management tool is that it can help reduce costs by allowing teams to get more done with fewer resources. By streamlining processes and eliminating unnecessary steps, organizations can save money while still delivering high quality results faster than ever before. Additionally, by making sure everyone has access to the same information at the same time, you can reduce confusion and minimize wasted effort throughout the organization.
Our Top Project Management Software Platforms
Asana
Asana allows teams to easily organize projects, prioritize tasks, collaborate with other team members, and track progress from start to finish all in one place. Asana was created in 2008 by two software engineers: Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook) and Justin Rosenstein (former engineer for both Google and Facebook) – with the goal to create a centralized project management platform that would increase efficiency and workflow of Facebook employees. Asana’s platform includes task management, project management, individual work management, communication, and reporting.
Pros:
Friendly User Interface – Asana’s software interface is extremely intuitive. It also has organizational features such as “color-coding” which allows users to assign different colors to certain tasks or projects so everything is neatly organized and clear in their workflow dashboard.
Integrations – Asana integrates with a majority of other productivity and reporting apps to help centralize the many applications your teams are utilizing into a single dashboard.
Cost – Asana has a variety of plans to meet the budget of any team. They also have a free plan available for individuals that would like to take advantage of their basic features without the hefty monthly fee that other project management platforms may have. Additional levels of paid plans are available depending on the size and needs of your business.
Cons:
Onboarding – While Asana’s interface is user friendly, individuals who are new to project management software platforms may be overwhelmed by the functions and features that Asana has to offer. Additional time may be needed to onboard individuals who fall under this group.
Task Assignability – Asana’s current platform only allows a user to assign a task to one person. There are additional apps that can be integrated into Asana that would allow users to assign any given task to more than one person.
To learn more about Asana’s features and pricing visit: Asana
Monday.com
Monday is another project management platform that can help keep you and your team’s work organized and optimized. Unlike Asana, which is individual task focused, Monday’s main focus is team project tracking that is designed to keep your team’s workspace organized and your team members focused. Monday’s interface allows your projects to be compiled into one streamlined dashboard, making breaking down tasks and getting work completed more efficient than ever.
Pros:
Team Oriented – With just one click, Monday.com provides you with all the tools you need to see projects the way you like them, including Kanban, Gantt, timeline, and calendar views. You may quickly change perspectives, dive down or zoom out as far as you need, and see the broad picture or daily activities at a glance. You can quickly and easily access all the data and information you require about project statuses thanks to the vast array of views, including totally custom views. Thus, you no longer need to waste time seeking for what you require. Lastly, Monday’s team-oriented dashboard display enables enhanced visibility for all phases of your team’s projects because many tasks frequently require the assistance of more than one person.
Time Tracking Feature – Time tracking is typically an add-on for project management systems, so obtaining it for free (on the Pro plan or higher) is a great deal. You may gain a more in-depth understanding of how long tasks take, the complete schedule of your projects—down to the minute—and discover your most time-consuming jobs when our time tracking and project management tools work well together. Users have the option of manually entering time or clicking to turn on or off the tracker. With just a few taps on the smartphone app, you can even track time from any location.
Cons:
Feature Limitations for Select Plans – Although Monday.com is a sophisticated project management tool with a wide range of applications, many of its key features are only accessible at higher tiers. For instance, even if you pay $24 a month for the entry-level plan, you cannot access Gantt charts or calendar views. The entry-level plan also excludes time tracking, private boards, automations, dependencies, formulas, and even integrations from its list of capabilities. The lack of some capabilities in Monday.com’s entry-level subscription is undoubtedly a drawback since those features come as standard features with other tools and are not an additional cost.
Pricing – While Monday.com does offer a free trial for all levels of their platform, they currently do not offer a free monthly plan. Monday currently offers four levels of services – Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise.
Jira
Jira is a software for managing projects and keeping track of IT/website issues. Jira is popular with agile development teams, as these teams frequently utilize the program to monitor bugs, stories, epics, and other activities. The platform makes use of many different project management techniques, such as software development, Agile project management, bug tracking, scrum management, content management, marketing, professional service management, and much more.
Pros:
Effective Agile and Scrum Management – Jira Software offers capabilities that are tailored toward the Scrum and Kanban processes and primarily focuses on Agile project management. Teams can use Jira to efficiently track and monitor information regarding their Agile projects, such as, user stories, story points, and spirits. Additionally, through the tool’s simple drag and drop functionality, you can also quickly reorder the items in your product backlog, such as defects, software issues, and user stories.
Project Planning – Large-scale projects require a team of individuals to work on a large number of intricate tasks from conception to completion. Jira’s integration of Scrum and Kanban boards simplifies this frequently perplexing circumstance. Each work branch can be broken down into its respective boards and task-assigned personnel.
Project managers may also turn the boards into interactive “to-do” lists so they can keep track of how each team and team member are doing. The boards can also be used to add important details like deadlines, KPIs, and project needs and specifications. Additionally, you can use the platform to track a project’s progress and determine whether the objectives were reached by creating burn down and velocity reports.
Customization – Jira offers a greater degree of customization beyond workflows. The dashboard can be modified to meet your practical and aesthetic requirements if you find it to be a little too plain. In fact, the filters can be customized. The Scrum and Kanban boards’ names and color schemes follow the same logic. While most of the customization options are simple to use, others may need a little adjustment on Atlassian’s part.
Cons:
User Interface – Jira was initially developed as downloadable software for developers by developers. Without giving the user experience much thought, the administration interface simply displayed the internal data model. Since its inception, it has gotten better, but just slightly. Users who enjoy a simplified user interface and user experience may find Jira difficult to navigate and utilize for task or project management.
The abundance of extra settings and functionalities on a typical Jira interface overwhelms both new and experienced users. Not to mention that you’ll definitely need one or two Jira integrations, which increases the clutter on the user interface. While some users enjoy complex customizations, Jira is certainly not the best option for the majority of users. Long-term customers have also complained that the UI/UX has changed over time inconsistently, with the most recent versions being unstable and very challenging to use.
No Collaboration Features – One of Jira’s most glaring flaws is that you can’t collaborate with team members using the project management tool. Jira doesn’t have an appropriate commenting or collaboration mechanism by itself. Isn’t that what a project management tool is for, to coordinate project management with your team? To reply to comments, you would need to download extra Jira apps from the app store. If that is insufficient, you may need to purchase more Atlassian software, such as Confluence, and utilize it in addition to Jira to work with your team.
Continue Your Research To Find The Best Platform For Your Teams Needs
Choosing the right project management platform can be tricky but it doesn’t have to be! With the right platform in place your digital marketing team will be able to stay organized while working smarter not harder – resulting in better outcomes overall. Whether you choose Asana, Monday.com or Jira (or another one entirely), investing in a good project management tool now will pay dividends in the future as your brand grows and evolves over time. So don’t wait, establish your team’s needs, do your research and find the perfect tool for your team today!
