Adopting technology to manage projects is the need of the hour to gain a competitive edge. Project management software efficiently manages tasks and initiatives while supporting timely execution.

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Best Project Management Tools

Which products are the best of the best? Here are the top five project management tools according to our research.

ClickUp

ClickUp is an online work management solution that offers comprehensive functionality, including goals, docs and an inbox. Its add-ons, called ClickUp apps, offer rich customizations.

It enhances the user experience by paying attention to statuses, views and processes while converging all tasks, initiatives and resources in one place.

ClickUp streamlines workflows while boosting work efficiency. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Customizations — 100
• Mobile Capabilities — 100
• Project Planning and Scheduling — 100
• Team Collaboration — 96
• Platform Features — 95

Top Benefits

• Organize Processes: ClickUp’s advanced modules streamline organizational processes while simplifying software development, design, marketing and sales.
• Customize Workflows: It customizes workflows by centralizing all projects and tasks into a single dashboard. Managers can assign tasks as per employee skills while asking for feedback.
• Set Achievable Timelines: The app’s AI algorithm lets you set realistic timelines to reduce poor forecasts and boost project success.
• Access Multiple Views: It offers over 15 views like Gantt, calendar, mind map and box to improve project visibility and requirements.
• Reduce Confusion: The system sets clear initiative objectives and structures projects from scratch while simplifying group task delegation.

Primary Features

• Task Management: ClickUp offers robust task management modules to match different project requirements. You can add custom fields, set daily or weekly reminders, save automation and share screen recordings.
• Progress Tracking: It tracks and measures team progress against weekly, monetary and sprint targets. Companies can set team goals while controlling access.
• Team Collaboration: ClickUp boosts team collaboration by centralizing all project information and documentation in one place. It offers real-time chat channels with mentions on threads.
• Integrations: It integrates with popular third-party modules to improve efficiency and extend functionality.
• Reporting: It generates customized reports that offer in-depth insights into team performance and loopholes. You can view time estimates, tasks in progress and behind schedule items.

Limitations

• Too many customizations are overwhelming for beginners.
• The learning curve is significant.
• It faces occasional downtime.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Custom Reports — Supported With Workarounds
• Forecast Resource Needs — Not Supported
• Project Completion Forecasting — Not Supported
• Private Messaging — Supported With Partner Integrations
• Accounting Software Integration — Supported With Partner Integrations

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Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-hosted task management system that organizes projects, tracks employee work, monitors deadlines and boosts stakeholder collaboration. It offers advanced capabilities like Gantt charts, task management and real-time news feeds.

Teams can prioritize critical tasks while meeting deadlines. It integrates with multiple third-party project and work management suites.

Wrike’s workload view helps visualize individual employee work for easy adjustments. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Project Planning and Scheduling — 100
• Customizations — 100
• Platform Features — 98
• Integrations and Extensibility — 93
• Team Collaboration — 88

Top Benefits

• Standardize Processes: Wrike standardizes processes using workflow rules to smoothen task movement through project phases. Workflow organization tracks task progress efficiently.
• Improve Visibility: Its dashboard widgets offer project overviews on one screen. Managers can track task status, pending approvals and overdue items.
• Stay Connected: Wrike’s mobile apps simplify work management on-the-go. Employees and team leaders can access project updates and information using any device while prioritizing crucial tasks.

Primary Features

• Task Management: Wrike’s drag-and-drop capability creates projects and organizes tasks. Employees can link tasks, add tags and move things around to complete work.
• Resource Management: It provides visibility into employee workloads and available resources. This function helps manage additional workloads and manage resources efficiently.
• Reporting: The system generates pre-built and custom reports to give in-depth insights like weekly project status, active tasks and unassigned jobs.

Limitations

• The user interface isn’t intuitive.
• Too many customizations are overwhelming for beginners.
• Steep learning curve.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Burnup Chart and Burndown Chart — Supported With Additional Modules
• Responsive Web Portal — Not Supported
• Generating Public URL for Work Items — Supported With Workarounds
• Budget Tracking With Planned vs Actual Costs — Supported With Additional Modules
• Expense Tracking for Projects — Supported With Workarounds

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Teamwork

Teamwork is a work management solution designed to deliver complex projects while tracking profitability. It manages projects through advanced capabilities like collaboration, knowledge sharing, helpdesks and customer relationship management.

It provides additional visibility into team tasks while reducing collaboration complexities for flexible approaches.

Teamwork offers multiple views to track tasks and resolve bottlenecks. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Time Tracking and Management — 100
• Project Planning and Scheduling — 97
• Team Collaboration — 97
• Customizations — 95
• Platform Features — 89

Top Benefits

• Manage Project Workload: Teamwork’s workload planner helps visualize workloads across teams and evaluates allocated resources and time. You can drag and drop workloads between users while filtering views.
• Centralize Data: Centralize all project information for easy access. Manage project portfolios to adhere to timelines while configuring board displays.
• Streamline Collaboration: Streamline collaboration using messaging capabilities for project communications. Configure tasks and share content through notebooks.

Primary Features

• Task Management: Teamwork creates and assigns tasks and subtasks to multiple users. Create task dependencies, leave comments and add dates.
• Risk Register: It tracks and records events that can jeopardize projects to minimize risks. Set risk impact areas, statuses and probabilities while including mitigation notes.
• Reporting and Dashboards: Organizations can measure overall project health, utilization metrics and task progress against completion dates. It generates pre-built and customized reports to offer insights on employee efforts, project success and planned vs. actual deadline completion dates.

Limitations

• Mobile apps aren’t user-friendly.
• Doesn’t provide offline access.
• Costly for startups and small firms.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Custom Status — Supported With Workarounds
• Custom Reports — Supported With Partner Integrations
• Capture Photo and Upload to Projects or Tasks — Not Supported
• Offline Access — Not Supported
• Feedback and Approval for Tasks or Creative Assets — Supported With Partner Integrations

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monday

monday.com is a comprehensive job management platform that integrates all project information into collaborative dashboards. It offers pre-built templates to customize boards and robust security capabilities.

It offers an intuitive interface to organize work while monitoring project status and updates.

Monday automates recurring tasks while updating project change statuses. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Customizations — 100
• Mobile Capabilities — 100
• Project Planning and Scheduling — 94
• Integrations and Extensibility — 91
• Team Collaboration — 90

Top Benefits

• Organize Workflows: monday streamlines organizational workflows using dashboards, integrations, applications and automation. Streamlining workflows tracks project progress accurately while promoting transparency.
• Improve Team Collaboration: It fosters team collaboration through group communication and task tags. Its inbox tab tracks essential conversations, while in-app email and message alerts keep you updated on task progress.
• Boost Efficiency: The system boosts overall output and team efficiency by automating recurring tasks and setting up triggers for repetitive processes.

Primary Features

• Work Management: monday.com automates task and initiative management while customizing workflows to streamline business operations. It compares planned schedules against actual progress to complete projects on time.
• Milestones: It measures task progress by setting project checkpoints or milestones. Monitor project status by toggling between multiple views.
• Pulses: Monday’s pulses capability provides access to information like priority statuses, project timelines and owner data. You can categorize pulses by days, weeks or months and project phases while adding to-do tags.

Limitations

• Its implementation is time-consuming.
• The mobile app interface is clunky and unintuitive.
• It lacks advanced communication functionalities.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Burnup Chart and Burndown Chart — Not Supported
• Pre-built Reports — Not Supported
• Form Branching With Conditional Logic — Not Supported
• Text Editor for Note Taking — Supported With Workarounds
• Accounting Software Integration — Supported With Partner Integrations

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Jira

Jira is a collaboration and issue-tracking platform that manages development team workflows. Agile teams can plan, track and release products while following Kanban, Scrum or hybrid workflows.

It manages tasks, changes requests and workflow approvals.

Jira breaks large projects into manageable chunks. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Customizations — 100
• Project Planning and Scheduling — 95
• Platform Features — 92
• Team Collaboration — 90
• Project Tracking — 88

Top Benefits

• Align Processes: Organizations can use advanced roadmaps to align processes and improve visibility for intelligent decision-making. Improved visibility aligns teams with larger business goals while tracking dependencies and work progress.
• Improve Visibility: Jira improves visibility for DevOps teams to focus on building products while integrating and automating processes with IT teams. Development teams can create, test and release products faster while measuring progress from conception to completion.
• Boost Connectivity: It boosts connectivity by integrating with most third-party applications available in the market and over 800 plugins and add-ons available on the Atlassian marketplace. Designers and product developers can be more productive without switching to other systems.

Primary Features

• Agile Work Management: Jira streamlines work for Agile teams through Scrum and Kanban boards. Scrum teams can break complex projects into digestible pieces, while Kanban teams can visualize workflow to decide work-in-progress limits.
• Roadmaps: Jira’s roadmaps plan a team’s strategic vision while breaking down project progress in understandable formats. They help communicate priorities with stakeholders and other teams.
• Reporting and Dashboards: It offers ready-to-use reports and dashboards that provide real-time work progress updates. Teams can use backlog insights to plan sprints that deliver customer value.

Limitations

• Initial setup is challenging.
• Comes with a steep learning curve.
• Lacks in-app messaging module.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Burnup Chart and Burndown Chart — Supported With Additional Modules
• Custom Reports — Supported With Partner Integrations
• Offline Access — Not Supported
• Company Level Goal Setting and Tracking — Supported With Additional Modules
• Specifically Identify Tasks in the Critical Path — Supported With Workarounds

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How We Choose Products

Our team of writers and analysts at SelectHub is committed to giving you the best recommendations based on our data. To make our list, products had to meet two criteria:

1. Closely match the topic
2. Earn a top-5 analyst score in our selection platform

Our analyst scores are based on an in-depth research process using primary and secondary sources. This includes SelectHub Analyst Briefings, direct communication with vendors, and reviewing materials such as user reviews, product brochures, specification sheets, case studies, user manuals, and technical documentation.

Our platform’s Scoring Engine processes the research and computes the analyst score. The score also factors in platform settings such as industry and company size.

Learn more about our research methodology and editorial standards

What Are Project Management Tools?

Project management tools are applications that plan, track and manage projects to achieve desired goals within a stipulated time. They enhance team collaboration to overcome constraints while accommodating scope changes.

They help users plan initiatives, assign tasks, track time spent and set deadlines. Unlike traditional methods, they objectify, quantify and prioritize tasks to fast-track project completion. You can customize project management software tools to suit multiple teams with different goals.

Key Features

Project management tools streamline initiative tracking and completion processes. Despite some differences, the following are core capabilities to look for while comparing project management tools.

Task Management

Projects comprise tasks that you need to complete to accomplish specific objectives. These tasks can be sequential, dependent or can take place concurrently. Depending on project complexities, you delegate tasks to individuals or teams.

An efficient project management tool simplifies task creation, tracking and management while setting due dates to keep initiatives on schedule.

Time Tracking and Estimation

The best project management tools track the time taken during different project phases for accurate planning, billing and effective team management. They track real-time progress while estimating constraints based on performance.

Collaboration

Collaboration capabilities are vital to delivering projects successfully and on time. These tools must allow employees and product developers to communicate efficiently and work together.

They offer functionalities like real-time updates, notifications and in-app messaging to collaborate with coworkers and other teams.

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Resource Management

Projects comprise multiple moving parts, and changing one variable creates ripple effects. These tools analyze trade-offs and how resource allocation affects project schedules.

They optimize resource utilization by avoiding under or overworking employees and ensuring that tasks match employee skill sets. They delegate work based on employee workload and availability using resource utilization charts.

Budgeting

Project management tools manage expenses to adhere to planned budgets. They track costs to invoice clients, compare actual expenditures with planned costs, and forecast budgets to analyze project health.

Reporting

Best project management tools generate reports analyzing an initiative’s health, budgets and efficiency. They tailor reports to provide strategic overviews of different projects.

They analyze operational performance through various metrics like cost, resource utilization, schedules and employee productivity.

Evaluating a Project Management Tool

Choosing the right fit for your organization in a rapidly growing market can take time and effort. Assessing a project management tool will depend on the following:

• Is the user interface easy on the eyes or crowded with too many features?
• Is it easy to navigate? Does it offer prompt customer support, training and tutorials?
• Does it offer pre-built integrations and connect well with popular modules like Gantt chart tools, workflow tools, payroll and time and attendance tracking solutions?
• Will it offer a return on investment?

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Next Steps

Switching to technology is your best bet in a rapidly changing market. Project management tools efficiently manage tasks and boost productivity by optimizing time and resources.

Looking for more? Our free comparison report makes it easy to see how leading systems stack up side by side.

What organizational issues are you looking to solve with project management software tools? Let us know in the comments below.