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5 best project management software programs

February 16, 2021 · 2 min read · By ASU CareerCatalyst

As a project manager, you have many tools and software programs to choose from. With so many options, deciding what new project management software to learn to advance your career can be a challenge. Knowing these five popular project management tools is sure to help you stand out the next time you apply for that promotion or a new job.

Microsoft Project

For years Microsoft Project has been a go-to project management software for large businesses.

The software is incredibly powerful, especially when it comes to some of the more detailed aspects of project management. The program offers traditional features such as interactive gantt charts and various project visualizations as well as more advanced features such as highly-customized reporting and resource tracking tools.

Microsoft Project integrates with other Office 365 software, but this can make collaboration difficult since Microsoft Project often requires you to leave the program to communicate with other team members through Outlook or Teams.

Wrike

As one of the most versatile project management software programs, Wrike can be useful for both small and large businesses to streamline workflow management and collaboration.

Unlike most project management software, Wrike has the capability to help you manage both complex projects and ongoing tasks. Project managers can populate project dashboards with tasks and subtasks whereas ongoing work can be organized into folders and subfolders.

In addition, Wrike has a wide range of project management features including interactive gantt charts, a kanban board view, time tracking, live collaboration, custom reporting and more. However, some of these advanced features are only available through Wrike’s most expensive plans.

Monday.com

Monday is a visual project management software designed to simplify task management and collaboration.

The software uses color to track progress so it’s easy for all team members to see the status of tasks and projects. Each project board is easy to customize and allows you to add columns, assign multiple people to tasks, set timelines, create conversations, attach files and more.

The software is intuitive and easy to use, but lacks some more advanced features such as cross-project reporting and budgeting.

Trello

Trello is one of the most popular project management programs using the Kanban methodology.

Project managers can create boards for projects and then add lists to represent workflow steps. Each list contains cards which can be assigned to team members and contain work details, checklists, deadlines, attachments, comments and more.

Trello doesn’t have some traditional project management software capabilities such as time tracking or progress reports, but you can add some of these features with Trello’s third-party integrations called Power-ups.

Jira

Jira is one of the most popular and advanced project management tools for companies using the agile methodology.

It was designed specifically for the software development sector,but can easily be adapted to fit different industries and workflows. Jira offers Scrum and Kanban boards in addition to other traditional agile features including sprint planning, backlog management, detailed reporting and more.

It was designed specifically for the software development sector,but can easily be adapted to fit different industries and workflows. Jira offers Scrum and Kanban boards in addition to other traditional agile features including sprint planning, backlog management, detailed reporting and more.

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