Top 10 Best Project Management Software For Small Businesses (2022): Compared & Reviewed

Introduction

What is Project Management?

When you have a project to complete, there are certain ways to achieve it. That is what project management is, it’s main focus is to meet the project goals within the given restraints.

It is the process of managing work of a group or a team to achieve the required goals and meet the criteria to succeed at a deadline. 

Project management includes certain necessary steps and techniques that are important to follow in order to reach the goals.

The objective is simple; to create a project which goes along with the client’s intent

Best Project Management Software For Small Businesses

The initial objective of project management is to understand the true requirement of the client by holding a meeting to address the feasibility of the customers objectives.

After the objectives have been clearly understood, they ought to be implemented in a manner that they influence the decisions made by all the stakeholders in the project.

These stakeholders include project managers, designers, contractors and subcontractors. If the objectives are ill defined, they will lead to goals that don’t reflect the customers needs.

Well defined goals are critical in the success and decision making of a project.

If you look at a project from a technical and completely rational point of view, a project is nothing but a task that is being carried out to produce a unique product, service, or result.

This product, service or result has to be (preferable) well defined from the start to the end to the task to bring about awesome beneficial change or add value to the world or just the customer.

Unlike businesses that are seemingly permanent, projects are a temporary endeavour.

This management of such temporary practices requires the adoption of unique developmental and technical skills combined with management strategies to make the ends meet in the most efficient manner.

Monday.com is an amazing cloud hosted project management software that has impressed reviewers and users alike.

It is one of the leading project management tools out there. The software is able to help you in all departments in the best possible way. 

It doesn’t just collect important data, but the way it assembles and displays data in a logical and understandable way makes it an easy to use software.

Monday.com makes sure that you have all the tools that you would need at your disposal.

The software has a very pleasing UI that is neat, well-organized, and collaboration friendly. The UI is so well built that it sometimes resembles a profile on a social media platform.

The UI is extremely user friendly and the learning curve for learning to use this software is not steep either.

Even with such ease of use, the software comes with a number of training materials for those who cannot work their way around this software. It can be found on YouTube.

One feature that sets this software apart from other project management software is the advanced scheduling it offers.

The scheduling feature is available for both tasks and project management.

With its advanced scheduling, the software allows users to get rid of paperwork and automate most of its work to reduce errors that are primarily caused by manually inputting data.

Not just that, but the software is very fast. The software zips through the tasks assigned to it and it notifies and alerts its users through a single board. It also allows you to store all relevant discussions in its searchable database. 

The communication capabilities of this software don’t end here. Monday.com offers smooth integrations with channels like Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.

With these integrations, you are able to share files and ideas across boards and get feedback too. You can assign tasks and get progress updates to have a complete idea of the current status of the project.

The main features of this software include:

1. Easy access and constant monitoring: Monday.com employs the board model of managing a project. On monday.com there is the main Board that shows all the projects and tasks associated with different projects.

These tasks and projects are connected to team members that are assigned those projects and tasks. You can even monitor the project board as a thirds party partner.

This way, monday.com makes it possible to monitor the performance of teams and individuals in the most efficient way and save time which can be directed in completing more important tasks.

2. Customization: Monday.com is highly customizable. You can customize almost every aspect of the software till it works completely according to the specifications of your brand.

You can set it up to follow your sets of rules and policies. You can even add special alerts and notifications. No matter what customizations you’ve set up Monday.com always remains in charge.

This means that it monitors everything and every change made in the system, so there is very little chance of something going wrong. And even if something does go wrong, Monday.com will know the case of it.

3. Easy collaborations: Collaboration is the strong suit of this software. All you need to do to discuss or change action is to click on it. Monday.com makes the task of adding or updating comments, asking questions, starting discussions, and creating forums very easy.

The exchange of information is streamlined by adding the capability of leaving notes, uploading different types of files, or even following live Facebook/Twitter activity.

4. Support: The application offers good support that can get you to get out of any sticky situation. The customer support is present 24/7.

5. Reporting and analytics: The software offers excellent reporting and analytics tools. These tools are able to collect and mathematically relate connected projects and tasks.

Then these are organized in a spreadsheet in a historical fashion. This historical document makes it easy for the users to find anything when needed. The figures are clear and organized. You can even export this data to third party systems.

6. Integration: The system is well integrated with services like Dropbox, Zapier, Google Drive, and similar sharing and management tools.

You can even use its Open API architecture to build your own custom project management tool.

Pricing: The software is sold into 4 categories.

Free Trial: $0

Basic: $39/month

Standard: $49/month

Pro: $79/month

Enterprise: Details with the provider

2. Asana

Asana is a project management software that aims to keep the focus of your team in place.

It is a robust system that helps your work management so your team can stay focused on the goals, projects, and daily tasks.

The application enables its users to structure their projects in a proper and efficient manner.

They can set priorities and deadlines, share details - all in one place. With Asana you are able to track your project at every stage.

You are able to create visual project plans to help you meet your deadlines. 

You can visualize the amount of time you need to give to each task which makes it easier to detect and avoid risks. 

Key features of the application include: 

1. Timeline: The timeline feature allows you to see how the different parts of your project fit together. This helps you keep your work on track even as things change.

2. Calendar: You can use the calendar to view the schedules you made and identify the flaws or overlaps in your plan in real-time to make quick adjustments.

3. Templates: You can create templates out of your previous projects so you don’t have to start from scratch all the time.

Other features of the application include an Activity feed, Add assignees, attachments, and hearts to tasks, Automatic updates to email/inbox, Create custom calendars and views, Email bridge, My Tasks list, and Focus Mode, Track tasks and add followers, notifications, and reminders, and much more.

Pricing: The application is sold under 3 plans:

Free plan: $0

Premium plan: $9.99 per member/month

Enterprise Plan: By quote

3. Trello

Trello is a project management software that implements Kanban boards, cards, and lists to manage the workflow and keep everything simple yet visually appealing.

You can use Trello to manage your resources and organize your workflow in real-time. You can even manage multiple projects at the same time.

Not just your own work, but you can track the work of others too by keeping an eye on who’s working on what and on their progress. 

With Trello, you can track your project from start to finish with extreme detail.

Trello also allows you to work more collaboratively to maximize the work completed in a given time. With Trello, everyone is included as an integral part of meetings.

It offers features that make these discussions and meetings fun, flexible, and rewarding. Trello can be used by organizations ranging from startups to enterprises.

The main attraction of this application is the pricing model which makes it a comfortable choice for freelancers and small businesses.

Even though the application is cheap, it can be scaled very well to fit the needs of your company.

Some significant features of the application include built-in rule-based workflow automation with buffer, custom card/board buttons, and a checklist tool.

Trello can be integrated with s productivity apps, email apps, time tracking apps, and IM apps.

Key features of the application are:

Flexibility: The application is open-ended. This means that it can manage any task for any kind of an organization without much hassle.

Cloud storage: The application offers cloud storage. This means that you can access your project in the office, field, or anywhere else as long as you have access to the internet.

Organization: It is very easy to organize and access your projects and the subsequent tasks associated with them.

Since the application uses Kanban organization, attaching checklists due dates, etc to the cars also becomes easy.

Resolving issues: Trello offers great customer support to detect bottlenecks that might halt your projects. You can also create an issue and assign someone to take care of those issues.

Automation: Trello offers an assistant robot that helps you automate tasks. It can automatically add or remove labels, assign or reassign tasks, and schedule tasks.

Pricing: The application is sold under 4 packages:Free: $0

Business Class: $9.99 per user/month

Enterprise: $20.83 per user/month

4. Wrike

Wrike is a project management software built with the goal of improving speed and efficiency in the files of co-located as well as distributed work.

Wrike allows different groups to collaborate and finish tasks in a much efficient manner.

It allows you to schedule, prioritize, discuss, and keep track of both work and progress in real-time.

The user list of this software includes giants like Google, Stanford University, HTC, Adobe, and many more.

Wrike is a highly popular tool and some of its features include:

1. 3 pane project view: Wrike enables its users to work in a highly efficient environment. The 3 pane project view allows users to view maximum data while navigating through it with ease.

The screen is divided into 3 sections. The last sections display the projects in a hierarchical manner to allow you to work on subtasks and navigate to different projects.

The middle panel shows all the tasks in that specific project while the right section shows the task details of each task selected.

Within this 3 pane window, you can ask for updates from your team members, you can monitor and control the progress of your work, and you can even prioritize tasks.

2. Tags and folders: With Wrike, you can put different items in different folders without creating duplicates. You can view and filter through the data tasks, projects, or any other way.

You can share a single task in multiple folders without it being duplicates and a change in the task is reflected across folders. You can also share your tasks with other teams through folders and tags.

3. Tracking progress: With Wrike, you can easily break a project into smaller, well-defined tasks. These tasks can be further broken down into activities that can be marked as complete or not.

This gives you an accurate picture of your work progress. The task timeline also allows you to prioritize tasks.

4. Analytics: Wrike has powerful analytics tools that can help you anywhere. It offers Global Reports and Performance Chart that allows you to prepare a robust report and give you a visual outlook of how your project is progressing.

The graphs it offers making it easier to estimate work and plan resource management.

5. Integrations: The application is well integrated with Jira, Dropbox, MS Project, Zapier, Salesforce, and many other apps. This means that you’ll be able to finish tasks without getting stuck anywhere flawlessly.

6. Collaborations: The application provides an entire set of dedicated features that help you collaborate flawlessly.

This way there is less burden on the project manager as the team member can coordinate with each other seamlessly.

Some other features of the project management tool include audit reports for Enterprise-Grade Users and Advanced Forms and Requests.

The application is hosted on the web and also offers an open API for custom builds.

Pricing: The package comes in 5 different categories

Free Trial: $0

Free Plan: $0Professional Plan: $9.80/user/month

Business Plan: $24.80/user/month

Wrike for Marketers: $34.60/user/month

Enterprise Plan: Depends on the customizations.

Basecamp is the most popular online project management software in the market today.

It is serving thousands of customers which are attracted by its simple setup and short learning time. 

Basecamp has been serving users for over 10 years and now it has become the top choice in the industry.

Key features of this project management software include:

User friendly: The application is quite user friendly and intuitive. It is easy to navigate through the different settings and tools offered by the software.

The software has a very short learning curve as the emphasis on ease of use is high. Basecamp is hosted in the cloud as provided as a service which means that there is no extra cost of maintenance to this software. 

Support: The service has great customer support that is able to find bottlenecks in your workflow and resolve them as quickly as possible.

The service is available 24/7 and unlike other support teams that don’t know what they’re doing, this support team is amazing.

Organized: The application allows you to organize your projects and tasks in an easy and simple fashion. You can assign work, monitor usage of resources, and much more in real-time without much hassle.

Collaboration: The project management system allows you to share ideas, references, progress easily for greater collaborative capabilities in your workflow.

It is also great for sharing proposals, organizing reference conversations, and making sure all team members are on the same page. 

Pricing: It is sold under two options:

Free trial: $0

Flat Fee: $99

Notion is an amazing application that is loved by millions across the globe.

This project management app allows you to take notes, manage tasks, and create a wiki for your personal use.

This flexible application allows you to create pages to organize and manage your workflow.

It can be used by bug industries but it is free for personal use.

Key features of this software include:

1. Customization: The project management application is highly customizable and can be fine-tuned to fit your personal taste. Almost all aspects of this application are ready to be fine-tuned according to you.

2. Multiple views: The data displayed in this application can be viewed in many different views including tables, lists, cards, etc. The view is dictated by the need of the hour. 

3. Collaboration: The application allows users to create pages that can be shared across collaborators and even different users. This way a lot of people can be working on the same task of different tasks with full knowledge of the progress of other components of the project.

4. Multimedia: You can include a variety of content types in the pages you create including images, bookmarks, videos, programming code, and a lot more. 

Pricing: It is sold under 4 categories:

Free: $0

Personal: $4/month

Team: $8/month

Enterprise: Contact the seller to know the details.

Teamwork is a project management tool that focuses on simplicity and speed.

This amazing application has all the good features that you’ll find in other project management tools and it improves upon their weaknesses too.

The app is simple enough to be used by anyone but robust enough to provide you with powerful features like Gantt charts, time tracking, and more.

The application comes in two modules: Projects and Teamwork Desk

The Projects module has a lot of features that allow you to stay on track and make sure that your work is being carried out with maximum efficiency and ease.

It ensures the effectiveness of every decision that you make during your work process. It includes features like comprehensive reports, Gantt charts, milestones, time tracking, and task management, among others.

Task coordination, documentation, and communication are achieved in a single spot that makes this project managing tool an attractive choice.

The Teamwork Desk basically acts as a support hub. It allows you to effortlessly manage all your tickets and coordinate communication between different modules of your project .

You can create docs, measure traffic channels, team productivity, and customer happiness in a single place. The Teamwork Desk seamlessly integrates with the Projects module for maximum productivity.

Some of the key features of Teamwork Include:

1. Streamlines communication: The applications help in streamlining communication between different modules of your project.

You can send tickets to the right address without any errors and check the status of each ticket to ensure customer satisfaction.

2. Problem solving: The application helps you save time with features like assigning tickets, unified inboxes, and ticket statuses.

3. Organization: This application can be customized to deliver customer support through standard emails that don’t look like automated tickets.

4. Customer happiness: The automated customer satisfaction feature allows you to gauge customer satisfaction from your work.

It allows you to see what customers have to say about your products and how they interact with your agents.

You can also check the team productivity reports to better understand the quality and quantity of the work done by your team.Pricing: The package is sold under 3 price offers

Pricing:

Free: $0

Pro: $10/month

Premium: $18/month

TeamGantt is a cloud-based project management system that focuses on simplicity.

It primarily works with Gantt charts to manage its projects. Gantt charts have a long history of being used in the industry and have become a mainstay.

This project management application is easy to use and primarily aids in coordinating the schedules and efforts of multiple employees.

The ability to use Gantt charts makes this software very user friendly.

Gantt charts are known to be very simple and intuitive, virtually impossible for someone to not understand. 

These charts display information in a visual fashion and all one has to do to understand anything about the project is to check the timeline for a project and its corresponding tasks.

Using different color formats makes this understanding even easier. For companies that need to share their project plans, these charts can be shared and even edited.

TeamGantt allows you to display multiple projects in a single chart. If the timelines of different projects overlap, they can be displayed in a single chart too.

It is possible to comment on tasks and send them to relevant people. All the comments made are recorded and the threads are organized and treated as conversations.

Key features of this application include:

1. Collaboration: Collaboration is the strong suit of this application. The Gantt charts can be shared with relevant people very easily to make sure that no one is unfamiliar with the project. These charts can be viewed and edited easily too. Scheduling projects, including the clients and everyone involved in the project, is very easy.

2. Project creation and task management:  Creating a project and then displaying different projects over a single chart is a streamlined process. You can create Gantt charts through a simple drag and drop option.

3. History tracking and templating: The application is able to save previous projects as templates for future use. It can also save project views which basically act as snapshots of your project. This makes it very easy to track the progress of your project.

Pricing:  The product is shipped under 4 categories

Free Trial: $0

Free: $0

Standard: $7.90/user/month

Advanced: $12.45/user/month

Zoho Projects is a project management system that aims to give the ultimate experience to its customers.

This translates to achieving your goals before the deadline.

The software is fine-tuned to streamline the process of project management from the initial phase to the completion of the project.

The tool is highly customizable and offers a multitude of automated features.

The application also aims to make the process of collaboration easier and streamlines with its milestone mapping tools. 

You can monitor your progress with ease and with minimal clicks.

It also gives you the ability to track the productivity of your team in real-time. This way you have reliable information regarding the progress and utilization of resources in your company over a specific task.

In addition to monitoring data, you can also share this information seamlessly with concerned parties.

Key features of this application include:

1. Project Planning: This application allows you to plan your project down to the last detail. With its milestone mapping tool, you can create tasks and subtasks designated to individual members of the team.

2. Project collaboration: It allows you to collaborate on your project through multiple channels like chat, feeds, activity stream, forum, and Wiki.

3. Insights: It automatically generates insights to help you make better decisions. You get a shared dashboard to get a quick lookup of the project KPI.

4. Sharing: You can create and save documents that include the necessary information that can be shared easily.

5. Customization: You can customize certain processes in your project based on the kind of work that you have to carry out.

Pricing: The application is sold under 5 packages:

Free: $0

Standard: $25/month

Express: $50/month

Premium: $100/month

Enterprise: $150/month

10. Paymo

Paymo is a project management app that is specifically targeted towards small and medium sized businesses.

The application allows users to manage their projects from start to finish within a single platform without having to look for different solutions for different problems.

Paymo eliminated the need for a plethora of apps to manage your project.

The application is simple enough to be used by anyone but complex enough to handle the tasks of project management for most of your business requirements.

Paymo is able to identify bottlenecks and it helps teams to be more productive.

To keep your company organized, you need to make sure that all the work carried out in your company is well accounted for.

Also, there needs to be clear communication between different modules of the project team. Paymo helps with all of this.

Key features of Paymo include:

Task management: Task management with Paymo is quite easy. You are able to manage all the tasks by assigning each task to the proper individual early. You can also accurately track time spent on projects or tasks

Team collaboration: Collaboration is made easy by allowing users to share information across boards.

Gantt charts and Kanban boards: The use of Gantt charts and Kanban boards makes using the software a piece of cake and it also makes understanding all the information thrown at you very intuitive.

Automation: A lot of tasks are automated by the app itself and you can also set some processes to be automated.

Pricing: It is sold under 3 packages

Free Plan: $0

Small Office Plan: $11.95/user/mo

Business Plan: $18.95/user/mo

Why is it important?

Time, quality, and budget are the three focuses of every project. To achieve these three goals, you need to manage your work in a professional, organized, and efficient manner. This is achieved through proper project management.

1. Strategic Alignment

Project management is important because it ensures that the strategic influence a customer hopes for is met.

Instead of roaming around in circles, proper strategies that allow you to work more efficiently in more than a single process are formed. These strategies can then be used in other projects too.

Good project management ensures that the goals of a project are in line with the strategic goals of the business.

Implementing methodical strategies to ensure that the work is being carried out in the right way ensures customer satisfaction and less hassle while working on the project.

2. Leadership

Any project that is run without proper directions is doomed to fail. People tend to think that it is only manpower that is responsible for the success of a project.

The general ideology is that if a problem arises, just put more people at work and everything will work out. But Brooks’s law clearly suggests that this is not the case.

If the project isn’t headed in the right direction from the start then adding more people at later stages won’t bring about any positive change.

This is where project management is helpful and it brings leadership and direction to the project. Without radar to guide the project, the project will lose its motivation and ultimately its efficiency. 

Project managers bring something vital into the team, accountability. The project manager manages everyone’s roles and makes sure that there is no confusion in the job of each member.

Under a project manager, everyone knows their roles and there is no debate about who is in control of what.

Since project managers are responsible for the success of a project, they tend to make sure everyone is doing their part.

With someone to supervise the efforts put in by each team member, the probability of success of the project increases drastically.

3. Clear Focus & Objectives

Every project needs proper planning for the most productive execution. You need to set clear objectives and goals, in a systematic fashion, to achieve the ultimate goal which is the completion of your project. 

If the job of project management is put under the care of the working team, you’ll soon realize that these teams will start working without proper briefings and without a defined project management methodology.

A project that lacks clear objectives, which is a by-product of briefings, will eventually lead the team with a vague idea of what they are supposed to do.

Project managers solve this problem by dividing the whole project into smaller, well-defined, tasks or objectives.

Then, these smaller objectives can be completed under the watchful eye of a project manager.

Breaking up a project into smaller sections enables the team to remain focused on their objectives and complete the project efficiently by taking one step at a time and completing smaller sections while identifying risks too, as risk management is part of project management. 

Sometimes, the goals of the project might have to change with the change in the mind of the customer or project leader.

Other times, the risk factors might change which will cause the goals or objectives to change. without a project manager, the project might falter and go in the wrong direction in the wake of goal changes.

A good project manager ensures sustained team focus and necessary refocus on their objectives.

What a Project Management Software Can, Cannot & Should Do?

Project management software is an invaluable tool that every project manager craves for. Using this tool can make life a lot easier and a lot more productive.

So here a list of what a project management software can, cannot, and should do?

Things that a project management software can do:

1. Track variables: A project management software allows its users to track a lot of variables. This variable that dictates the efficiency and success of a project can range from cost and schedule to equipment and other resources.

Tracking variables isn’t an easy task. Even if you are a small business there are a ton of variables that change on a daily basis and you have to make sure that you keep a track of them.

Doing this manually takes time and the process is prone to error. A project management software automates the process and reduces the overall time and error rate to boost efficiency and profit.

2. Schedule: If you have ever worked as a manager in any company, you’d know that the most difficult and confusing task is to manage the seduce of the employees.

This doesn’t mean taking care of their shifts. It means creating a good schedule of when they should be completed which task.

This cannot be done without a proper understanding of the project itself. But even if you are well versed in the inner workings of the project, scheduling is very confusing as you don’t want any clashes.

A project management software helps you create schedules for almost everything ranging from individual tasks to meetings to revaluations and more.

A project management software helps project managers do all this while aiding in avoiding conflicts.

3. Enhance communication: Project management software allows teams within a project to communicate in a much better and efficient way.

They ensure that the transfer of data and ideas from one cluster to the other is as streamlined as possible.

You see, it’s not just about text messages and some reports, the idea of proper communication involves sending multimedia elements like videos, audio, images are more. 

Video calling and voice calling over the internet are standard features that allow users to communicate in a much more natural way.

And it’s not just about the ideas but schedules and resources can also be shared efficiently through project management software in a less obnoxious and conflict-free manner.

4. Facilitate problem solving and collaborations: In every project, there are problems that need to be solved. These problems can be solved individually but that’d take a lot of time.

Instead what we tend to do is assign a lot of people to the same task so that the problem can be solved quickly. However, that might not always work.

It’s not just about the number of people that are working on the same tasks, it is also about how they are working together. Collaborating isn’t the key to success.

Collaboration in the right way is the key to success. Project management software allows users to collaborate in a much better way.

As project managers, you can enhance the experience of collaboration and facilitate problem-solving.

Better collaboration doesn’t just help in problem-solving, but it also reduces the time taken to solve the problem and hence reduces the stress of solving a problem on each individual.

5. Create standard and custom reports: The work that you have carried out can be presented in two ways.

You can either tell everyone about your progress or achievements verbally or you can create a report that shows all your work in a much more advanced yet intuitive manner that is both easy to understand and takes less time to explain.

Creating reports is a no brainer, but you might have preferences. Project management software allows you to create custom and standard reports.

Standard reports are important when you are following a predefined structure and don’t need to add anything extra to fit the requirements of your project.

Standard templates save you time as you are able to create the repost quickly. Custom reports on the other hand are very important when your project demands a much more customized analysis.

With custom reposts, you have much more flexibility in the way you are able to present all your work.

Desired Features:

1. Graphs: There is no better way to visualize metrics than graphs. If you are looking for project management software, look for one that can display all the metrics in a graphical manner.

Graphs about the resources left, cost, much more can be better understood by people.

2. Show availability of equipment and staff on the calendar: What would separate a brilliant project management software from a good one is its ability to show the availability of rescues on a calendar.

If you can check the availability of resources based on the predictive model employed by the softeners, you’d be better equipped to allocate your resources in the most efficient manner.

3. Conflict warnings: While allocating resources on a table, you might lose track of the resources left at your disposal.

This is a grave mistake as it can create conflicts in the future and hamper your project altogether. A good feather to be desired in project management software is a conflict warning system that helps you avoid such mistakes.

What a project management software can’t do?

1. Cannot substitute for competent decision making: Good decision making is a skill that is honed for years before it is employable in the industry.

There is work being carried out in the field of machine learning, but no algorithms can match the decision-making skills of a veteran, yet.

2. Cannot provide leadership skills: Software cannot motivate people as a real leader can.

Even though you can use the help of a software, putting your own efforts and work should not stop and should in fact be considered the top priority. 

3. Cannot produce miracles: There is only so much that software can do. Do not expect it to create wondrous work without your efforts and take your project en trout success.

It is still your own job to work around the problems and strive for success.

How to Use a Project Management Software?

There is a certain task that needs to be completed in order to properly carry out the work of project management.

These come under two main divisions; Project Planning and Project Management. Project planning is the prerequisite to good project management.

Without proper planning, you cannot work efficiently. If you are trying to manage a faulty plan from the start, it doesn’t matter how many efforts you put in, you’ll always be playing catch-up.

We’ll briefly talk about the different steps in project planning and explain how to use project management software by explaining the different functionalities on offer.

Project panning is actually part of project management but it is sometimes seen as a prerequisite to project management. Here are the steps involved in project planning:

1. Creating project plan: The first step involves creating a project plan. First, you identify a project management tool and other details like workflow, billing method, hours estimate, and more.

Then you create a list of all the activities that need to be performed, in order to achieve the final goal of the project.

We have already discussed the importance of breaking up a project into smaller tasks that can be completed within deadlines.

While creating a project plan, you need to set up an ordered list of all the tasks with a brief description of what needs to be done in that talk, in the offer that they need to be executed.

Try keeping the tasks as simple as possible. If a task is a bit complex, you can always divide it into subtasks

You can organize all these tasks through a table, which shows deadlines, elapsed time, costs, and more, or you can use a graphical approach. Kanban boards are a great way to graphically set up your tasks.

2. Appointing the team and distributing duties: As already discussed, the role of a project manager is to decide who does what.

After you’re done with defining the tasks that need to be completed, it is time to decide who completes those tasks.

As a project manager, you look at your team and choose each individual carefully, and assign tasks with deadlines to groups of people.

You can outsource your labor by hiring freelancers or collaborators who can join your virtual workspace if they’re not part of your company.

If your project management system allows it, you can set up the task with the photo of who’s going to complete it next to it.

3 Opting for communication method: Communication is the key to success. We already know that. But you need to choose your mode of communication very well.

You see, the in-office workers can just talk to others or hold meetings to discuss problems and keep themselves up to date on the project progress. For people working in the remote field, it is not so simple.

People tend to use Slack to solve this problem Slack allows its users to create channels where they can either talk about specific problems or have open discussions.

Certain project management software allows their users to hold audio, video, and text-based conversations and meetings.

Another advantage of project management software is that you can attach your documents to tasks and store them in the cloud. Thus, you can share documents through the project management software on any device on the go.

4. Identify a prevent risks: Even though risk management is something you don’t use technology for, you can use the project management software to attach a document explaining risk to each task.

Here, you can let others edit this document by proposing ways to overcome or handle this risk. 

5. Estimate costs: Cost is one of the most influential driving factors that dictate all the tasks and the ultimate goal of a project. If the project is too costly, it might never be started in the first place.

While project management software doesn’t necessarily do much, it does provide us with tools and calculators to estimate the overall cost of a project. Not only that, you use it to keep an eye on the project cost too.

6. Create project schedule: After all that is done, you need to prepare a project schedule. You need to be careful about this one. You see, your workers are human beings and not machines.

You need to make a realistic estimate to fulfil your needs while maintaining a balanced work environment where workers don’t have to work endless hours to finish the project.

Also, consider prioritizing your tasks. By pre-defining which activity needs to be done before and after some arbitrary activity, you make sure that no work is left undone at the end of the project.

You can use Gantt Charts for scheduling your tasks. You need to make sure that you are tracking the time it took to complete each task so you can better estimate the time it’ll take to complete other tasks or similar tasks in the future.

7. Create resource management plan: Remember that your resources are limited. You might want an unlimited number of employees or an unlimited supply of raw materials, but you’re not going to get that.

Instead, what you need to do is evaluate how many resources do you possess and evaluate the number of resources you’d be employing or exhausting in each task of the project. 

Then you need to carefully manage your resources so they are never completely exhausted or at-least replenished before they get exhausted.

Using a resource scheduler, you can keep track of this. Note that getting the right resources isn’t enough. You need to consider the time and cost of using these resources too.

You might want to readjust your plans and schedule as per the resources.

8. Review your plan: No matter how fool-proof your plan sounds, it always needs adjustments. Therefore, be ready to review your plan.

Making changes when you’ve already made changes is completely normal. Whenever something unexpected happens or you get a new idea, you should review your plan.

It is okay to make changes and ask for more resources just make sure not to overdo it.

Management: After you’re done with the planning, you need to work on management. This is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring. There are certain ways in which your project management software aids you in this endeavor. 

1. Creating the project: The creation of the project is already discussed above. All you need to do is create a new project in your software and you are good to move forward.

2. Milestones: The best way to keep yourself on track is by creating milestones that you need to cross in a specified time.

Project management software allows you to create different milestones that you can check off your list after you are done with them.

Having an elaborate list like this also ensures that you finish your project in an orderly fashion. Milestones can also act as effective ways of visualizing your progress.

3. Real-TIme assessment: Using project management software, you can keep track of your progress in real-time.

It allows users to update their progress through the day and as each team does that, you get a detailed idea of where the project stands and what are things that still need to be implemented.

The same can be said about the resources at hand and the cost of those resources. As a project manager you are, you are able to keep track of all those things that you need to keep a track of in real-time.

This allows you to examine everything and make changes in your strategy accordingly.

4. Reports: You can create project reports using project management software. Just click on the reports options and you’ll get a detailed description of all the data collected for that project.

From there, you can choose a premade template or create your custom report to display the outcome of all the work carried out.

You can assess these reports to see if you are doing your work right, at the right place, and if not, then you can assess where and what changes need to be made.

5. Collaboration through file-sharing: Through a project management software, attach files with tasks or just upload the daily report of the work that you or your team carries out.

This way, there is a real-time input of data that can be shared across the different components of a project and different teams working on the project so they have an idea of the modules that are completely and the modules that are being worked on. 

Conclusion

Project management tools are essential in the success of any project. While you can, in theory, do all the managerial work manually, you won't be making life easier for yourself or your customers.

Amongst all the project management tools listed above, Monday.com is the most comprehensive in our opinion and you should probably go with that one.

But beware that the management tool that you use depends on the requirements of your project and you should avoid overkill as much as possible.

Keeping things simple is the best way to ensure the efficiency of your project. With that, happy hunting!

Here is the List of Top 10 Best Project Management Software For Small Business

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