Project Management Showdown: Do More Beyond the To-Do List
In most group-bring scenarios, the ability of one team member to complete tasks with success depends on other people's ability to provide feedback or to complete other tasks first. When I launched a website for my confect-making company recently, I quickly discovered that using my email inbox for to-manage lists worked fine when I had only one person to manage. But it wasn't sufficiency to keep track of team members' actions and responsibilities.
For example, our developer couldn't settle the layout for the house page without first receiving graphics assets from our designer. The weight of keeping cover of the jut out's progress became a greater burden than the work itself. This is the kinda scenario where stick out direction software steps in.
Which services john ease your workflow and raise communication among team members? For this roundup, I tested five externalize management programs, including the popular Basecamp, and the recently released Asana. I focused on three criteria: the tractableness and ease of from each one interface, the degree of email consolidation, and the capability to account for task dependencies.
Basecamp
For so much a popular political platform, Basecamp does surprisingly little. Basecamp offers the introductory protrude management touchstones–a to-do list, a calendar, milestones, and a tagging system–in an interface that's tardily enough to use. IT lets you post to online content boards and build comments along to-do items and milestones, and it notifies users of updates via electronic mail. Yet none of those features are specially robust. Though my squad and I diligently entered our tasks and milestones in Basecamp to initiate, we stopped using Basecamp halfway through with the project because information technology failed to aware U.S. to dependencies in our task tree. Basecamp could not help us separate the truly deputation-critical tasks from the rest, which led us to wonder: What was the spot of using this program?
Pros: Free interlingual rendition open; easygoing to tack together and perplex started
Cons: Weak features; miss of contact-direction or advance-tracking functions; lack of task-dependance tracking
Charles Herbert Best use: For my project, I found no real reason to use Basecamp. If your projects don't ask a piping level of complexity, you should follow time-honoured organization tools such as spreadsheets and email. If your projects are more involved, choose a computer program that's more capable of handling those complexities.
Pricing: Free edition for single users; Basic plan for $34 a month with 15 projects; Plus plan for $49 a month with 35 projects and unlimited users; extra plans available
5pm
5pm has a far more robust platform than Basecamp, with many many features. Although the interface is a trifle too littered for my taste sensation, it comes with few neat keyboard shortcuts and a thoroughly documented FAQ system, including easy-to-understand instructional videos.
5pm's military capability lies in its task- and progress-management capabilities. In one case a task is entered, anybody can supply a onward motion note Beaver State a comment happening the tax. For example, if my project is to weatherproof a location for an coming event, I backside show in the task's progress note that I first must contact ten vendors, and that I'm waiting to hear back from my top triad choices. Even if the project hasn't been completed yet, this feature article gives my squad members a picture of the work that has been done.
Additionally, you nates associate tasks to one another, and show dependencies by creating subtasks that must be completed in front the nurture task can be completed. The Timeline feature in 5pm is a Gantt-like interactive graph that provides a visual delegacy of the subprojects and subtasks in a project, allowing team members to discover military mission-critical tasks and task dependencies at a glance.
One of my biggest concerns about using a project management program is how often it requires me to log in to the Web application. Untold of my unit of time dealings comes direct netmail. Because of that, if the program doesn't have stellar email integration–if it doesn't let Pine Tree State assign tasks and comment on progress updates without going to the application's internet site, for instance–then chances are virtuous that I'll never use the program. As luck would have it, 5pm, the likes of competitors Cohuman and Asana, excels in this department. You ass create projects and tasks, and respond to alive tasks and progress updates, every within your email inbox. You can too use email to attach files to an existing project, or to update the progress on a task. You bum even use the subject blood line of your e-mail message to specify inside information about the task, such every bit its start date and deadlines.
Pros: Feature film-rich, full-service project direction program; task-dependency tracking system with interactive Gantt-inspired charts; excellent email integration; iPhone app
Cons: Littered port; price
Best use: Turn to 5pm if you are looking a full-featured programme, and you have a dedicated project manager who butt help identify and log on task dependencies. Also, use 5pm if you have a small group. Large groups will find that it makes more sense, price- and features-wise, to try Cohuman.
Pricing: $18 a month for 5 users and 10 projects; $28 a month for 10 users and 20 projects; $48 a month for 20 users and 40 projects; $88 a month for 40 users and 80 projects; $175 a calendar month for unlimited users and projects
Cohuman
Whereas 5pm allows users to indicate dependency relationships between two tasks, Cohuman also evaluates the information associated with each task, and automatically identifies those dependency relationships.
Cohuman assigns apiece unweathered task a score that determines its priority in relation to the other tasks in a project. All team member receives a Cohuman-generated smart list of all of his Oregon her tasks, organized away grandness. Simply put down, no issue how umpteen tasks are related with a project, Cohuman makes it incredibly easy for each squad member to unintegrated the mission-critical tasks on their to-do list from the rest.
Using an earlier example, if my Web developer were to enter "Finalize homepage layout" into Cohuman, she could indicate that this task is due tomorrow, and that she necessarily the undertaking called "Upload artwork assets" to be completed by our graphical designer first. Cohuman would immediately move "Upload graphics assets" to the top of our graphic couturier's to-serve list, and the designer would receive an email notifying her of the change. Our graphic designer would then know that she has to complete the "Upload graphics assets" task readily, because that task is holding up other team member's work.
In this way, Cohuman prevents one team member's long to-DO listing from delaying the entire project. With, say, 30 tasks on her list, the computer graphic house decorator may non have gotten to "Upload graphics assets" for weeks. Meanwhile, without Cohuman's smart prioritization system, our WWW developer would have been unable to move back forward on her tasks. In addition, users can manually convert a task's priorities, and base "pings" (gentle reminders from Cohuman) when a task is overdue.
Finally, Cohuman's email-integration features are extensive. Cohuman makes it easily to donjon heavenward with project activities without ever logging in to the Cohuman Web diligence. For example, if I receive an email message from my internet site emcee, I can assign it as a job to my Web developer and allow for a comment on the task simply past forwarding the email to Cohuman.
Pros: Impudent dependency system; clean interface; excellent email integration; robust free edition; iPhone app and third-party apps for Windows Phone 7, Humanoid, and Palm tree Pre
Cons: Miss of get through-management features
Best use: Look to Cohuman if your project includes many soul-stirring parts, or if your team has no project manager.
Pricing: Free edition; Professional edition $20 a calendar month
Asana
Although Asana doesn't have the bells and whistles that 5pm and Cohuman offer, it emerged as the most versatile project management program in this roundup. Asana is essentially a very customizable to-doh list with a few tools that, when used intelligently, can bring ordain to a variety of projects.
For example, you toilet use Asana to track job applicants in a enlisting explore by creating a new visualise for every open position with each applicant as a separate task. Using Asana's tagging organisation, you can indicate which applicants have submitted a résumé, have scheduled a phone interview, operating theater have got completed a round of interviews. Later, you can track how many applicants are in apiece stage of the lotion process, victimisation Asana's metrics system.
Asana is the one program therein roundup that I kept going back to with more ideas of projects that I could manage using the built-in flutter lists–including Christmas presents I need to purchase, holiday events I have to plan, and home-improvement projects that I'd been meaning to undertake. While I would never sign up for a 5pm or Cohuman account unless I was working on a complex project that engaged twofold team members, I would open an account with Asana and share it with my family and friends to coordinate our personal projects.
Pros: Excellent user interface; customizable tags and disruption inclination headers; generally enjoyable to use; iPhone, iPad, and Humanoid apps
Cons: Lack of dependence tracking; lack of contact- and progress-direction capabilities
Best use: Asana is great if you are managing simple tasks and you want an interface that is cleaner than Google Spreadsheets, or if your squad has an excellent project handler who will assign and follow abreast task dependencies.
Pricing: Free
Worketc
Dissimilar the different applications in that roundup, Worketc is a full productiveness and small-business management suite that includes customer relationship management features, billing, sales, and project management. The sheer number of work-connate tasks that you can brawl in Worketc ready-made setup a microscopic excruciating. (The "Getting Started Point" alone is 33 pages long.)
Worketc's project management features are very similar to the features in 5pm, including Gantt-inspired charts to handle task dependencies and mission-critical tasks. One nice feature lets you post a comment on a task and get in visible to only one or several team up members. This social occasion is especially efficacious if you're functional with vendors, subcontractors, and outside clients. For example, if one of my clients posts a comment on a task regarding costs, I want the option to discuss the matter privately with my team members before posting a response.
Although the Worketc entourage offers many useful project management tools, I wouldn't use this program unless I was planning to apply the some other features too. Worketc's main advantage is its integration of project management with client relationship direction, sales, and billing. From establishing a Pb to invoicing a client at the completion of a see, Worketc is its own ecosystem of tools connected so closely together that it's difficult to pick and take what to use.
Pros: Excellent integration with email; integrates impinging direction, sales, billing, and project management; functions arsenic a center repository for documents, tasks, invoices, timesheets, email, and new items corresponding to your work on
Cons: Terms; not proper if you don't already employment Worketc to supervise your contacts and billing, or if you don't be after happening using Worketc for those purposes
Best use: If you're already using Worketc in your business, its project direction features are a good option.
Pricing: $39 per user per month for up to x users; discounts lendable for tenfold users
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/478520/project_management_showdown_do_more_beyond_the_to_do_list.html
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