Are you a part of a fast pacing organization where everyone is juggling between primary and secondary tasks? You may be wondering whether you should start adopting an Agile project management strategy to keep the balance or you’re good to go.
If you’re a project manager, you’ll probably understand if your team needs tools to support the way they work. Agile project management tools are an approach to enable teams to complete projects on time and not hinder the quality of the project. Before we give a list of Agile project management tools, let’s first understand what is an Agile methodology.
Why Agile Methodology?
This model of project management is used by teams and businesses to save time, and money, and provide the flexibility to make changes. It allows for better flexibility than traditional methods of project management.
Faster, smaller. The projects can proceed faster.
Communication. The teams collaborate and communicate easily to ensure the process stays on track.
Feedback. The teams will not have to wait until the delivery phase and can track speed of the development process regularly.
Trust. Agile teams understand the goals and build their path to achieve the goals.
Control. The agile development gives project control as each step of the project is visible to both parties.
Advantages of Agile for Project Management
In the project management field, Agile is the right approach for every project manager as it provides numerous benefits, including:
- More rapid deployment of software for customers to get value sooner
- Detect issues and defects faster
- Increased collaboration and faster
- Reduced waste
- Increased adaptability to change
- Increased success through more focused efforts
- Customized team structures
- Faster turnaround times
- Optimized development processes
- Eliminates rework
- Relevant project metrics
- Focus on the needs of customers
- Increased frequency of collaboration
Table of Contents
List of Agile Project Management Tools
Now let’s explore a list of top Agile project management tools for small and large businesses.
1. ProofHub
ProofHub is a smart and feature-rich agile project management software used by leading organizations. Teams can effortlessly share ideas, compile documents, start discussions, and move forward with this collaborative tool.
The software comes integrated with all the necessary tools and features that you would need to make your projects successful using Agile methodology. Additionally, it is also apt for handling your projects using other project management techniques as well, such as critical path method (CPM), getting things done (GTD), etc.
As for organizing tasks and streamlining all the project work, you can use ProofHub’s Kanban boards and Gantt charts. With Kanban boards, you will be able to define all the workflow stages of a project and see tasks moving across different stages in the form of cards. On the other hand, Gantt charts allow you to visualize the timeline of a project and ensure timely completion of all the project work. You can schedule tasks, associate milestones with tasks, define task dependencies, and see who is handling a particular task all using a Gantt Chart.
Here are some more things related to task management that you can do without breaking a sweat using ProofHub:
- Create tasks and divide them into smaller and manageable subtasks
- Select one or more assignees for a task
- Set start and end dates for each task
- Set up recurring tasks
- Attach files and add comments to tasks
- Add labels to prioritize tasks and make it easier to organize them
As agile methodology also lays emphasis on team communication and feedback, ProofHub emerges as the perfect agile project management tool with its built-in chat interface and online proofing tool.
At any point in time, you can use the in-built chat interface to connect with other members of your team. You can either go for a quick one-on-one chat or select multiple team members to initiate a group conversation for discussing ideas, reporting work status, etc.
The online proofing tool incorporated within the ProoHub’s framework unlocks real-time feedback, suggestions, and work approval for your team. You can simply open a design or a document file within ProofHub to proof it and add comments in case you have some feedback to share. While proofing, you can use markup tools to annotate files and highlight specific portions where changes need to be made. To make the decision maker aware that all the suggestions and requested modifications are made successfully, team members can mark a suggestion or feedback as resolved.
All in all, ProofHub will make the agile methodology more meaningful for your projects and you will get better outputs.
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2. Wrike
Effective project management is all about making instant changes where needed in order to save up on costs and increase the revenues. Wrike is ideal for centralizing and connecting multiple projects and spiking up your team’s efficiency. It gets a lot of bad rep for its utilitarian interface, but just like with teamweek’s tool, setting up your project tasks will be a walk in the park. Although Wrike is up to date with their releases and enhancements, their mobile versions get a bit of a lag in the process. This might frustrate if you expect to see changes on your mobile devices at the same time as they happen on your desktop.
3. ClickUp
ClickUp is the ultimate productivity platform designed for engineering and product teams of any size to plan, organize, and collaborate on work using tasks, docs, chat, goals, whiteboards, and more. It’s a powerful Agile project management solution known for its intuitive UI and rich set of customizable features to increase efficiency across the board—whether you’re managing workflows, bugs, releases, or wikis. Visualize your work with over 15 unique views in ClickUp including List, Gantt, Calendar, and its Kanban-like Board view. While Custom Fields, custom task statuses, and over 1,000 integrations help you streamline your processes further to deliver work more effectively while boosting productivity to new heights.
4. Active Collab
Active Collab was devised as a great solution for businesses. With Active Collab you will not have to keep your clients on the sidelines anymore. You can determine what every user can see and access, keep them informed and shared what’s important. It offers project planning, allows to share files, time tracking, expense tracking, brainstorming, discussing important topic and more.
5. Asana
Asana is the ultimate cloud-based project and task management tool for planning, organizing, and tracking the progress of the tasks. From start to finish, Asana has the feature your team needs ㅡ from Boards to Timelines. For Agile project management, Asana track launches and iterations, simply project and sprint plans, communication with teammates.
If you are handling an Agile team or wondering if Agile can work for you, this article can help you with lots of information to handle projects. You can control your team’s work and achieve the best results.
Read on: 11 Powerful Asana Alternatives for Project Management in 2019
6. Agilean
Agilean is a SaaS enterprise workflow automation and project management software created primarily for IT enterprises. Its main features include project planning, execution, SCRUM and KANBAN board, analysis, and interactive reports. Moreover, it is extremely easy-to-use and customizable. Agilean enables continuous improvement by optimizing workflow and removing bottlenecks from your process.
7. Version One
VersionOne is an all-in-one Agile management tool that supports Agile software development methodologies. It’s forever popular features are Agile portfolio management, program management, quality management, business intelligence, collaboration, hub integration, and development. With it’s collaboration feature, you can establish link between global product and portfolio teams.
8. Binfire
An easy to use project management and collaboration tool helping virtual teams to plan, monitor, and coordinate projects. Binfire has rich features to manage milestones and tasks, to-do lists, online file storage, virtual whiteboard, and project management features. It offers easy task management where tasks and sub-tasks, and dependencies are all managed. Binfire offers free trial and paid plans.
9. LeankitKanban
LeankitKanban is a web-based virtual sign board and card system. Kanban is a scheduling system that determines what, when and how much to produce. LeanKit Kanban allows to optimize flow of work, lets visualize your work and workflow, plan and track your work, work together more efficiently, and integrate well with other systems.
10. DailyScrum
Dailyscrum has been developed by Scrum Masters and Project Managers. It is the brand name of the system built to plan, track and manage Agile projects. Some key features like release planning and project forecasting, project control, sprint planning, and system integration. Scrum offers visibility and frequent reviews. Daily-Scrum supports the needs of project like planning, prioritizing the most important requirements at all times, tracking down and following up issues that needs attention.
11. JIRA
JIRA is a tracking tool that is used for Agile testing as well as project management. It is developed for bug tracking, issue tracking and project management to software and mobile development processes. Some of the key features include capture, assign, and set priorities to do work. With Jira, teams get visibility into long term goals and real-time release information. The dashboard on JIRA can be customized to match your business processes.
Further Reading: 21 Best Jira- Alternatives for Agile Project Management in 2019
12. Axosoft
The another widely used Agile Project Management software solution to handle your project from start to finish. Axosoft changes how you visualize your tasks. It’s rich set of tools make sure that user can create and deliver a bug-free software on schedule. With Axosoft, you can undergo project scheduling, document management, project collaboration, reporting, resource management, task management, and time tracking. Everything is centralized, ensuring transparency and that everyone is on the same page.
13. Pivotal tracker
Pivotal tracker is a planning tool process that fosters collaboration, and dynamic tools to analyze progress, your team will deliver more frequently and consistently. Tracker helps your team better develop and keep track of them. Say goodbye to managing timelines and meeting unrealistic expectations. Pivotal Tracker is very good at what it does.
14. MeisterTask
Another honorable mention on the list is MeisterTask. This is a cloud-based project and task management solution that caters to businesses of all sizes. Key features include file management, time tracking, and reporting. Integrations with all your favorite tools such as Slack, GitHub, and Zendesk let you create a seamless workflow. MeisterTask’s free apps for iPhone, iPad, macOS, and Windows will keep you up to date wherever you are.
15. Taiga
Taiga is a very easy-to-use tool. An open-source project management tool to solve the problem of software usability. It is a reliable and popular platform for small developers, designers, and project managers for applications like project collaboration, reporting, time tracking, and task management. It provides integration with Webhooks, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Gogs. Mobile applications for iOS, Android, and Windows devices are offered.
16. Kantree
Kantree is a unique truly flexible project management software that makes team members collaborate with one another. The visual and easy-to-use interface makes it easy for teams to organize, plan, and manage their work on a daily basis. Kantree allows business users to find their marks easily and as a result, collaboration is improved fast. Teams feel more confident and deliver efficiently while using Kantree.
17. Notion
Teams can use Notion to communicate making it easy to add team members. Notion is all you need for your notes, tasks, and wikis. Available in the browser, iOS, Mac, and Windows. It is fast and responsive. Teams can use this to discuss projects, share files, and record ideas.
18. Hitask
Hitask is a task management solution that complete projects faster. It helps to focus on team collaboration, getting tasks done and manage an entire project. You can easily manage to-do lists, projects, team communication and shared calendars. Hitask enables you to synchronize your projects and tasks between your desktop browser and mobile app. Apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Project management is an indispensable function to understand what it takes to keep a project on track. For business, project management is a means of achieving strategic objectives. With the advancement of business requirements, technology and software development, use project management methodologies to cater the demands.
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19. Basecamp
Basecamp is a popular Agile project manager in the Scrum community. the tool is designed to serve both as a project management software as well as a team collaboration software. The software solution is easy to use on both desktop and mobile devices.
With Basecamp, you get a centralized place to promote quality teamwork, simple task management, seamless file sharing, real-time team communication, and task reporting.
Overall, Organize people, delegate tasks, monitor progress, sharing updates, and delivering work is quite easy with this software. However, if you don’t feel the same, there are plenty of potential Basecamp alternatives out there that you can try.
20. Smartsheet
Smartsheet defines how teams collaborate on projects and tasks such as managing the operation, tracking marketing campaigns, and planning events. Smartsheet considers the various solutions for business including different roles and industries. It unifies cross-functional priorities, has free and open collaboration, and allows you to create teams without limitations.
Project Management Methodologies ―The Agile Family
Agile is an umbrella term to identify various models used for agile development. Project managers should make themselves familiar with the project management methodologies and know which one is appropriate for their team. Being Agile in the software industry is defined in a way where people play different roles in managing projects. This makes sure that the entire team is responsible for managing the project and it is primarily not just the responsibility of a project manager.
Let’s take a look at the project management methodologies of the Agile family.
Agile
In the 1990s the industry faced frustration due to the cancellation of the project for various reasons like time lag between business requirements and delivery of technology. The core of the Agile methodology was then set by 17 people in 2001 in written form. It was focussed on delivering value and collaboration with customers.
The Agile methodology was comprised of the following four main values:
- Interactions of teams and individuals over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Today, the popular frameworks for implementing Agile methodology include Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, and the Adaptive Project Framework.
Different Types of Agile Management
Scrum
Scrum is the most popular Agile development framework that has taken a highly iterative approach focusing on the key features and objectives. The best part about Scrum is that it is adaptable and relatively simple to implement.
Kanban
Kanban was developed by Toyota to help increase productivity in factories. It is another framework for Agile based methodology. This approach gives a quick way to bring code to production. Teams can have a visual representation of their tasks and keep a transparency in the progress of their tasks by moving it through stages and identify where roadblocks occur.
Extreme Programming (XP)
Extreme programming is a disciplined approach to improve the quality (and simplicity) of software and deliver high-quality software continuously. In XP, the team estimates, plan and deliver highest priorities user stories and constantly collaborate with high-quality software.
Adaptive Project Framework (APF)
Due to changing requirements in most IT projects, teams started using Adaptive Project Framework. APF is basically designed to continuously adapt to the changing situation of a project. Stakeholders also use this approach to change the scope of the project at the start of each stage to produce the most business value.
With this information, you’ll now I have a better idea of if your business should go Agile or not. Go Agile for your next project!
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