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There are many software tools for managing projects, tasks and work on the market. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, you have probably realized that with so much hustle and bustle around, it’s challenging to handle things. Therefore, a software tool might come in handy to help you stay on top of things.
However, with so many options, it might be not very easy to choose the right tool that would suit your company needs. In this article, you will find what kinds of software tools there are, how they differ from each other, and a couple of examples of the commonly used ones.
Project Management Tool
Project management tools are probably the most sophisticated solutions with dozens of functionalities to manage large projects from the very start to finish. They are suitable for large companies managing complex projects where many members collaborate and communicate. In many cases, they are very customizable, enabling you to tailor the features to the specific needs of a company.
The most common features:
- Planning/scheduling – This feature enables you to plan and delegate work to other team members. There is usually an overview (dashboard) of the entire project to track the overall progress. You can easily create, assign, manage and track tasks/subtasks and see a calendar with deadlines.
- Goal tracking – To see the overall success of projects and tasks, many tools enable set goals (OKRs). In a goal overview, you and most probably your entire team can track the success of achieving the goals.
- Time tracking – A beneficial feature that allows you to track time down to the minute on tasks. You can quickly see how much time-consuming specific tasks are.
- Communication – A communication functionality is also included in the project management package. You can usually chat with one team member or invite all relevant people to a private or public channel.
- File storage – These tools also include file storage to avoid missing files. You can upload files or provide links to documents in other software solutions.
Examples: Jira, Asana, Basecamp
Collaboration Tool
Collaboration tools are very similar to the project management tools (someone would say they mean basically the same). However, collaboration tools are not usually that complex and focus more on team collaboration on multiple tasks. For sure, you can use them for managing projects, but they don’t often have that many functionalities that you would need to run a large project. These tools enable you to create, assign and manage tasks. If there is an overview or a dashboard, you can easily keep track of what everyone has on their plate. Collaborators can discuss tasks, leave a comment, add additional information, upload files, provide links, and more.
Examples: Trello, Notion, Airtable
Knowledge Management Tools
Knowledge management tools help teams better organize useful team knowledge such as frequently asked questions, workflow guidelines and other important information into easily accessible formats. A good internal knowledge management tool should offer powerful search, good collaborative features, built-in workflows to help ensure accuracy and freshness of content, and should integrate well with other tools your team already uses.
Benefits of investing in knowledge management tools:
- Speed up onboarding
- Enhance team productivity
- Standardize workflows and share learnings among teams
- Reduce repeated questions and mistakes in your team
Task Management Tool
When using task management software, you can create, assign and track tasks. Most of them are targeted at both everyday users and businesses, which means that you can organize your weekly shopping list on one side and a team project on the other side. These solutions usually enable you to add a short comment to tasks, assign them a priority, add customizable tags, and more. You can also see what assignments are due today, soon, next week and the like. In addition to that, you can group tasks to projects, areas, workspaces to have a more transparent overview of all your tasks. More complex project management tools have task management integrated as one of the core features.
Examples: Todoist, Things, Sorted
Time Tracking Tool
Time tracking tools help you capture worked hours on projects and tasks down to the minute in real-time. They are mainly used by companies, which work for multiple clients (such as marketing agencies, web/app development companies). These companies have to regularly report the time spent across assigned projects due to billing and client invoicing reasons. Apart from tracking the client work, companies also record time spent on internal projects and operations. There are more reasons for that, such as finding out insights about profitability, mapping out how much specific tasks are time-consuming, or if there is a need for hiring a new team member. Many tools provide timesheets that you can export to CSV, PDF and other formats to work with the data further. Integrations with commonly used software tools are a standard nowadays.
Examples: Toggl, Wlog, Clockify, Wobbly, My Hours
Learn more about the top Time Management Apps here.
Communication Tool
Communication tools are usually one of the core tools of larger and more complex software tools. However, they can also stand alone (such as Slack). The tools enable us to chat real-time, create private channels, public channels or write a direct message to a team member. Besides, many tools have video calls integrated which means that you can easily have a call or a video call with your team members. This feature is especially helpful when it comes to remote teams.
Examples: Slack, Flock, Chanty
And What about Scrumie?
Well, we haven’t found a suitable group to which we would categorize Scrumie. Since Scrumie gives you a simple overview of the work done in your team, team’s availability, and much more, we think we could call it something like „team overview tool“ or just „team software tool“. The latter one is probably not the best since it suggests that it is an HR tool. So, let’s stick to the term „team overview tool“ for now, and we will see if anything better will come to our minds. Read more about how we use Scrumie at Webscope.io and why we have actually developed the tool.
With umpteen software solutions for managing projects and tasks, time tracking tools and else, it’s hard to say which one is the best. Which tools do you use? And why these?
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