One is hardly able to stay on top of the growing project-related software landscape. Capterra lists over 600 tools in the Project Management Software category alone. Add to that resource project planning tools like project management software, Gantt charts or task project managers, and you’ll end up with a very long shopping list.
Thanks to this article you will get a lot of information about project planning tools:
If you’re looking for an evident view of the whole team and all the tasks and projects – you’re in a good place. Teamdeck.io is the child of an IT project management software development company that also works with Uber, Netflix, Heineken, and Spotify. It is a fantastic project management tool. As the resource project planning tool in use by the tech, educational, creative, and gaming industries. Aimed into high-level planning helps – for example – in avoiding bottlenecks, under and overutilization, scheduling conflicts, or choosing the right employee for a particular project.
This project planning tool supports managing project progress, team schedule, or employees’ availability.
Teamdeck can be switched between teams and projects. This online project planning tool helps with scheduling, time tracking, workload management, or availability management – if mentioning a few groups o functions. In essence, the focus is on your team members and their capacity, not just on the tasks themselves. Teamdeck gives you a big picture of who’s available to work and for how much time. It is often exactly what you need to know when planning a new project, so you should be really interested in this project management software.
This approach allows you to plan your project with actual conditions in mind. You’re more likely to avoid scheduling conflicts when you see other projects, people’s vacation dates, public holidays, etc.
Once your project is live, team members can log in their time in the timesheets. You’ll see whether your estimates were accurate and be able to act accordingly. Note that overtime is marked with red bars, so you’ll notice it right away.
Another feature you’ll find useful during both project planning and execution is reporting. This is especially helpful if you have to keep an eye on your project’s budget. Using project planning tools you can create a report that compares financial estimates to the actual cost, calculated on the basis of your team’s timesheets.
Trello is project planning software that allows project managers to create boards and fill them with different lists. I went for a simple Kanban-based board and created lists that correspond with statuses (in progress, to do, etc.). I listed the main tasks that have to be done during this project:
Trello is one of a project planning tools that would allow project managers to create more granular tasks but I’ve decided to use checklists that are built inside the cards to track smaller tasks (see the image below).
You can also add attachments to cards, making it easier to communicate new iterations or get feedback. Adding due dates to particular cards is also handy when you want to plan a project.
Trello, as a project management software allows to deep view into the entire team and file sharing between members
If you want to use Trello – ultimate project planning tool, just for the project planning phase, you have a couple of approaches you could go with, for example:
When looking for a way to set up your Trello board, make sure to check out these public boards prepared by fellow Trello users. They can serve as inspiration for you, as they’re based on real-life projects.
Price: Core features of this project planning software are available for free for an unlimited number of people
A list of the best project management tools couldn’t exist without Asana. Asana is another very popular and powerful project management software for managing projects of various sizes, and while the free version comes with limited features, it seems to be perfectly suitable for smaller projects.
Using this project management software, the plan of your project can be displayed as a list, a board, or a calendar (see below). The latter view is especially useful when planning milestones and deadlines. You can see how much time actually is between different due dates. Keep in mind, however, that setting start dates for tasks is not available in the free plan.
Each task in this project management software can be accompanied with a list of subtasks (with their own deadlines), attachments, tags or comments.
Before you onboard your team, you might want to check the free video courses available at the Asana Academy. Watching them can give you and your team members a lot of ideas when it comes to making the most of this tool.
Price: Teams of up to 15 people can use Asana – one of the most popular project planning tools for free with limited features (including tasks, board view, list view, and calendar view).
The creators of project management sofware Nifty pride themselves on building an app that covers project management and team collaboration. The collaboration aspect is supported by the fact that a team chat is a part of this app. What about the project management part?
Using this, one of the most popular project planning tools, you can plan your project starting with a list of tasks, or map your milestones on a Gantt chart:
Tasks themselves can be managed in a board view. Using this project planning software you can create the board and columns from scratch or use a predefined template. For this project, I’ve picked the agile development template (and removed thebacklogcolumn):
Among Nifty’s features includes predefined project templates
Out of the box, you’ll notice that TeamGantt will not leave you hanging. The onboarding experience will help you tremendously, especially if you’re new to project planning or Gantt charts in general.
As the name of this project management software would suggest, creating Gantt charts is the core functionality here. The process of building and editing charts is very straightforward, you can also assign people to particular tasks:
Gantt charts are a crucial part of many project management tools
Using this project management software, the plan of your project can also be displayed as a list:
Another interesting feature from project planning tools like TeamGantt is the workload table: you can see how much work everyone has on their plates. Free plan users can only measure the workload by the number of tasks per day, which may not be the most accurate measure, but it still gives you some idea of your team’s utilization.
TeamGantt’s workload management feature
On its own, MeisterTask is a project management software that allows you to plan out your work on aboard.
What I found particularly interesting for project planning tools like this is its integration with MindMeister, a tool for creating mind maps. Mind maps themselves are great for drafting the initial structure of your project.
Create such a map in MindMeister and then import the tasks directly to MeisterTask. All you have to do is drag an element from your mind map onto the person this task is assigned to. These tasks will be added to your MeisterTask board. You will also see the assignees on your mind map:
Many online project planning tools don’t have a feature such as a mind mapping
If you’re looking for a tool for project planning software, and resource allocation, to manage multiple projects, nTask could just be right for you. Of course, it will also be suitable for single project purposes. It’s just that nTask is really good at providing you with the big picture of all your ongoing projects.
When it comes to planning a single project using this project plannig tool, you can create a list of tasks or a simple Gantt chart. The assignments can also be viewed as a grid:
Team members are able to log time spent on a particular task. Using this project management software, you can assign hourly rates to your employees in order to track the cost of your project.
Tasks assignment in nTask
When it comes to project planning itself, project planning tools like Teamwork is a really powerful option. First off, you can map everything out in a Gantt chart, and spot dependencies and potential roadblocks.
Teamwork also provides a board view, a calendar with milestones or a list:
If you’re planning to track your employees’ time throughout the project (or need to bill team members for the time they put in), you’re all set. Project management software Teamwork comes with a built-in time tracker:
It could be the number of features available in Teamwork, but I found this app a little challenging to navigate around. Fortunately, their knowledge base was extremely helpful in getting me back on track.
Zenkit, as one of the project planning tools will be appreciated by those of you who like to start planning their project with a mind map. While there are many mind mapping tools out there (plus, you can always rely on pen and paper), it could be a hassle to translate your visual map into a project backlog. With Zenkit, it’s pretty easy.
I started out with a simple mind map:
You have to know that using this project management software, each element of the mind map is a task-esque item: you can add a deadline, a project stage or a team member responsible for its completion. Then all you have to do is change your view to a board and you’ll see a Kanban board based on the mind map:
Other available views of this project planning software include a calendar one, a list, or a table. The feature that makes the latter one really powerful is the ability to add custom fields. This way you can customize your view and aggregate the data in a way that works for you.
Airtable might not be on top of your mind when thinking of free project planning tools, simply because it’s not a project management app per se. It’s more of a tool for storing and organizing data. As such, Airtable is really versatile and, in my opinion, great for project planning as well.
When creating a list of tasks/milestones, using this project planning software, you have full control over the structure of your database. You can add fields (with different formats), connect different tables, or import a spreadsheet you’ve previously made.
The view is this project planning tool can be changed from a list to a calendar or a Kanban board:
I’ve created a pretty basic structure for my project, using this project management tool. If you want to include epics and customer stories in your project plan, you might findthis templateuseful:
Airtable has templates that support ending project milestones
Price:Free plan with basic features is available (team members aren’t limited)
ProofHub – on of the most interesting project planning tools
ProofHub is one of the best project planning software that enables you to plan and organize projects in a way that’s best suitable for your team. Furthermore, you can assign tasks, view data based on priorities, and keep essential details at hand.
Utilize Gantt charts for visualizing, planning, and scheduling tasks. The Gantt Chart software lets you set dependency between tasks, highlight critical paths, associate milestones, track progress, export or print Gantt charts, and view your Gantt data in a centralized location.
Using this project planning software you can add task lists and tasks to the Gantt chart. Moreover, it shows you how your tasks will be completed in a timeline view and allow you to plan and schedule how they will be completed.
Project planning tools (or work planning tools, online planning tools, online project planners, etc) are software systems developed to handle project managers whole project-related processes – generally to manage tasks and the people assigned (or unassigned) to them. To organize projects, task lists, and project estimation, and ensure the project team and each individual specialist is capable to complete both short- and long-term project expectations. In one word: they help both leaders and team members to manage multiple projects.
Best project planning tools streamline the process by offering one centralized platform (mostly in the SaaS model via desktop and sometimes via mobile phone) that helps define a project’s critical path, create tasks and subtasks, schedule resources, and communicate with team members—all using the same platform.
Main, general functions of the best project planning tools:
Project progress monitoring is not the same for every company. Even small businesses with small projects and small teams sometimes use several tools to track tasks, track time spent, or just manage projects and to-do lists.
Of course, projects change, the expectations and assumptions of the principals are rarely the same, and the people who create the product also change. That, of course, determines the role of or choosing a project planning tool.
Is the situation different in large teams responsible for the development of very complex products? Each leader, not only the head of a large project management department, the leader of complex projects, which includes many specialists and individual tasks, knows how important it is to be close to every aspect of the entire process. It is not only about the performance of the team or individual employees, but about knowledge about the development of individual elements of what constitutes the final product.
With the above considerations in mind, these are the reasons why the market offers an absolutely large number of tools for managing multiple projects, sometimes tools dedicated to some aspect of the entire project management process, or to the industry (e.g. creative industry) and understand why good project planning tools are so important.
So what can be called a “powerful project management tool” or “the best project management tools” is different from company to company. Some of them need software with advanced features at some time, but at other times they don’t use all the features, but a few of them. Some need project scheduling software, but another an employee time tracking software.
There you have it: a list of free apps for planning your project. You can combine a couple of them and create a really powerful toolbox for your project. From project ideation, through resource planning to kanban boards, you should be able to find software that fits your needs.
I’m still on the lookout for great free project planning tools: if you have a suggestion for a tool that can be added to this list, make sure to drop us a line in the chat.
Chances are, however, that you’re just starting out with your project. And that you’re working solo or with a very small team. As a result, your ideal budget for project management tools is $0.
If that’s the case, there’s no need to worry. There are more free options for project planning tools than a spreadsheet or an office room whiteboard. I’ve tried out 10 free project planning tools that come with $0 plans (not just free trials). In this article, you’ll find a list of these apps together with their main characteristics.
In order to test these project planning tools, I’ve created a simplified plan for building a website. My imaginary website consists of a homepage, an about us page, and a contact page. I need to design it, create content for it and, finally, develop it.
Who else would be better to work on an imaginary website than an imaginary team? I’ve got one as well: it consists of 2 software developers, UX/UI designer, a freelance illustrator, and myself.
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