As a project manager, I’m sure you find it a challenge to stay on top of resources, tasks, time lines and documentation.
What’s more, throw in things like stakeholder management, emergencies and scope control, and you’re most probably going to get overwhelmed by it all.
Well, there’s an answer to all of this – project management software. These days, you’ll find project collaboration tools (usually online and cloud-based) that help a PM coordinate, track and organize tasks, documents and discussions.
In this article, I’ll give you my pick of the top 4 project collaboration software that I’ve come across.
1. Flow
This is one of the sexier (but powerful) project collaboration software suites out there.
Flow has a clean, organized and intuitive user interfaces makes it a pleasure to use. The platform also allows you to set up projects, run discussions with team members, and also upload documents and brainstorm ideas.
Once you give it a try, I think you’ll agree Flow has very well thought-out design. It also synchs seamlessly across mobile and desktop (PC and Mac) devices.
For $49 a month, you can run projects of up to 10 people, create 5 workspaces and store 10 GB of documents.
2. Wrike
Another one of my favorite project collaboration software programs is Wrike. I think it stands out particularly in three areas.
First, it has excellent collaboration and document management capabilities – users can discuss ideas, upload and retrieve documents – all with audit trails in place.
Next, Wrike is strong in task management. For example, when a user leaves a comment in a task or assigns a new task, the recipient associated with the task is alerted by a small pop-up message.
For $99 a month, you can run a team of up to 15 users and store up to 15 GB worth of project documents. Yes, it’s a bit more expensive when compared to the other options in this list, but if you look at the features of Wrike – I can say it beats out the others too.
3. BaseCamp
I have to mention BaseCamp because it is one of the leading project management platforms out there.
You can keep track of every team member’s tasks, files, discussions and all project events – with full audit trails and history.
The BaseCamp interface is cutting edge stuff and you’ll see that once you land on their homepage.
I’ve used BaseCamp successfully on small projects before. However, I had two complaints.
The first is its lack of a responsive design on a smartphone. And this is a common compliant which I don’t see on, e.g. the likes of Flow.
Also, Basecamp lacks a time tracking feature – which again, is present in most other project collaboration tools I’ve seen.
For $50 a month, you can manage up to 40 projects and get 15 GB of file storage.
4. 5 pm
5 pm is another interesting project collaboration software that pique my interest. After trying it out, I can say it does stand out as a solid project management platform.
5 pm has all the bells and whistles you need in an online PM platform – task management, document management, as well as email integration to send alerts to team members.
I also like the interactive timeline, where you can drag and drop tasks in a Gantt-style view (few of the other platforms allow this).
For $48 a month, you can run teams of up to 20 users, store 40 active projects and 5 store up to 30 GB of files.
Conclusion
And that’s it! The above list represents my picks for top 4 project management software programs out in the market.
If you’d ask me to pick which were the best PM platforms – I’d say the fight would be between Flow and Wrike. BaseCamp and 5 pm are good, but personally, I find that for larger projects, they both get a bit unwieldy.
That’s all for now. Until next time, good luck in delivering your projects!
