According to software review aggregator site G2, there are over 400 Project Management applications out there – that just they have reviewed. Other software review sites have many more. The market for productivity is quite vast, and finding a way to manage projects and tasks is big business. In choosing these apps, there are multiple factors:

Does The Application Work Like You Do?

Are you visual and love Kanban boards and colors. Are you structured and prefer grid like excel layouts? Are you organized and like grouped layouts? Of course you can be all three – but the reality is each system leads with a different approach, and only test driving it will let you know of you like it or not.

Does The Application Suit Your Business / Project Size?

For people that do smaller numbers of large projects (measured in months) or undefined / custom development projects, Project Management applications are ideal. The number of tasks for each project are much larger, and milestones at each phase may change future phases. They key here is to always have the big picture view as well as the task view.

For people that do large numbers of smaller projects (measured in weeks) or very well defined repetitive projects, Task Management Systems are ideal. The number of tasks for each project are limited and the team gets into a groove with them and know how they work. 

How Many People Are On Your Internal Team?

And can you afford the monthly SAAS pricing? Some really beautiful systems are designed for smaller teams of power users. The difficulty comes when you have a larger number of users who only use the application some of the time. Then the pain of each license comes in. It’s a good idea to calculate a three year window of license costs. Is the price right at your current user base? I’ve seen some people take the approach – well not everybody needs to use it, so we’ll only license some team members. That won’t work. People will find workarounds and start using free systems like Slack. 

How Many External Team Members / Customers Need to Use The Application?

In our interconnected world, there is every chance you will want to share project plans / updates with your customers. Will you be paying for them too? For external team members, how will they co-ordinate task updates? For customers, will weekly / milestone status reports be enough?

Finally, Is Your Business Disciplined Enough?

There is a saying that the best applications are the ones that you will use all the time. If your business is free flowing  – and people will not use the application all the time – then maybe spreadsheets on Google Drive are good enough. If you are drowning in spreadsheets, and want to scale your business – then you need to put the processes and discipline in place first. Only then will you be able to start to find the right Project / Task Management application for your business.

10 Project / Task Management Applications To Consider

We’ll be discussing Project / Task Management applications at our next Women In Tech Peer2Peer in April / 2022.

 

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