Project Management Tools and Techniques for Beginners

Nowadays, it is not enough to be productive and execute a list of tasks in a project. There are many applications based on an approach checklist or a timeless distribution of activities. All of them are very valid, but not for the planning and execution of professional projects. For this, it is necessary to have powerful tools capable of managing complex planning and adapting to the uncertainty in the projects.

Tools for the management of simple projects are very popular and well known in the management sector. However, project managers can choose software that meet their needs in a broad market of professional tools. Therefore, it is worth mentioning some very interesting applications, designed for more professional environments.

If you have worked with different applications and none of them meets your expectations, here is a list of project management tools for beginners or techniques that may be of interest.

ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab is the perfect solution for agencies, IT consultancies, and other companies that offer creative solutions to their clients. Thanks to this intuitive tool, you can spend less time organizing your tasks and those of your team and more time doing the work that matters.

IceScrum

It is a good complement to other free software tools for managing tasks, and it can be integrated with other communication tools such as Slack. Some of its features include task panels, user history, issues, cloud storage, history, and solution of problems. It has a limited resource management per person but an interesting ability to group projects.

iceScrum has a communication service between the members of the team through an online chat and a timeline. Its wide integration capacity increases its learning curve.

Sinnaps

Sinnaps is an online tool that automatically plans both simple and very complex projects. It is perfect for projects that require constant updates in the plans. Sinnaps uses PERT and CPM techniques to plan and prioritize tasks automatically and allows you to create different scenarios in a project to see how the planning behaves in different situations.

The visualization of the projects is very intuitive and shows ‘critical roads’ and ‘bottlenecks’ easily.

It is a broad software regarding functionalities, the capability of managing resources, costs, and imputations. It has an Earned Value Module (EVM) that the tool itself interprets to suggest and help the project manager to manage the projects.

Among its features are the management of documents, conversations, reports, planning, portfolio management, and has complete management of roles and permissions for each project. It works as a social network, in which the user must register to be invited to projects.

The most interesting is in their price plans. Its free version has no limit of users, projects or time. Almost all its functionalities are unlocked.

GanttProject

It is a free and multiplatform desktop application for programming and project management. It is very similar to Microsoft Project. It is a tool that includes Gantt diagrams and the assignment of people in the project. One of the particularities of this application is that it automatically generates a PERT diagram and a diagram of people assigned to each activity.

However, Gantt Project has limited functionality and is not the best application for complex projects. Although PERT graphics do, depending on the complexity of the project, it can be too confusing for the user.

GanttProject does not offer features such as cost accounting, message service or document control.

TaskJuggler

TaskJuggler is powerful, free, and specialized in the edition of Gantt diagrams. Task Juggler must be downloaded and installed and covers all aspects of the development of a project, from the first idea to its end. It supports elaborate financial management.

The tool works with simple dependencies in the Gantt diagrams, creates a list of tasks, generates complete reports and reports the status of tasks automatically

However, the extensive functionality of TaskJuggler has an ineffective user interface, based on Excel aesthetics. The user faces complex learning.

It is a free application and works on Linus, Unix, Windows, and MacOS platforms.

Collabtive

Collabtive offers good usability and easy management. It measures the time devoted to tasks, issues reports in PDF and Excel format, and has several plugins to extend its functions. It allows the user to carry out extensive management of milestones, projects and tasks. It also has a simple permission control and offers instant chat tools, as well as offline communication. It offers the possibility of allocating hours and contains an internal document management system.

Redbooth

It is a complete tool capable of managing projects and tasks. Its specialty is to manage communication among the members of each team, for which it offers its tools to chat, call and even make video conferences. It is adapted for mobile and also has a desktop version.

The functionalities for planning activities allow the manual generation of very intuitive and visual Gantt diagrams, making the planning more enjoyable. However, it is limited to simple dependencies between activities.

This tool is perfect for companies that organize projects in collaborative workspaces, being able to combine tasks, files, and comments.

Jira

This is a software based on Scrum methodologies. With an agile and highly customizable approach, it is aimed at being an incident manager.

It allows defining and following workflows predefined by the user, making it very useful for managing actions and the quality of tasks.

One drawback is that you cannot change the objectives or requirements of the current iteration. Therefore, it is recommended for projects of short duration, where the probability of changes, once the iteration has started is minimal.

Like most incidents management tools, its interface is less friendly and intuitive than others, and its great adaptability requires an initial learning curve.

Wrike

It is an intuitive and visual tool. It is adapted for mobile, and one of its main purposes is to organize the work process and allow companies to prioritize the most important activities.

Wrike allows the creation of Gantts and workload diagrams among the members of the team and has a quite extensive business social network.

It is a very perceptive and easy to use application and it is ideal for collaborative environments.

These are the various project management basic tools.

Originally published at https://www.knowledgehut.com.