Project planning software helps project managers plan and track their projects efficiently. So, in this article, we’ll discuss some popular project planning software.
Table of Contents
What Is Project Planning?
Planning is the second phase of the project management life cycle. According to the PMBOK 6th edition, the full cycle includes initiation, planning, execution, and closing. Project planning is the major phase in project management that helps you determine the steps to complete a project successfully. Typically, this includes laying out timelines, establishing the budget, setting milestones, assessing tasks, solidifying tasks, and assigning them to the appropriate team members.
Read More: Project planning in project management
What Is Project Planning Software?
Project planning software is designed to help project managers track and manage their projects from start to finish. As a tool, project management software plays a vital role in staying organized and ensuring your team members remain on task and aligned with project objectives.
Why Important Project Planning Software
As a project manager, you can use project planning software to plan your project, assign tasks, track progress, and more. Furthermore, project planning software has become more sophisticated and using cloud technology enables anyone to access the project data anywhere. Here are some planning tasks you can perform with the project management software.
- Helping create a timeline with milestones and task dependencies
- Prioritize, organize, and allocate responsibilities using graphs and charts
- Keep track of project progress, resources, and costs
- Adjust timelines and maintain flexible scheduling as problems or issues arise
- Parepare data-driven reports and updates for project stakeholders
- Share project plans with appropriate pirates
Read More: Importance of project planning
Most Popular Project Planning Software
Project planning software plays a crucial role when managing your project. Furthermore, each project planning software has its own unique features and benefits. The following are some popular project planning software.
Asana
Asana is a great option for project management because it helps project managers to coordinate work across multiple projects and teams. By keeping your plans, projects, tasks, and communications in one shared platform, you can ensure everyone within and across your team is on the same page. Then, if project deadlines or priorities shift, everyone can track the updates in real-time and it will help your team members to work on the most important initiatives.
As a tool, Asana helps you organize and plan all the tasks related to your project. The task can also have a subtask, which helps break the work of a task into smaller steps. Furthermore, you can assign tasks to team members. Moreover, this tool offers many features such as time tracking, file sharing, integration, dashboards, portfolios, status updates, and templates. The template includes a cross-functional project plan, project reporting, Kanban board, Gantt chart, Kickoff meetings, and action items.
Can I try Asana for free?
Try Asana for free for 30 days. No credit card is required.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a cloud-based software that helps project managers to manage their projects, team members, and tasks efficiently. Using this software you can create projects, organize tasks, assing tasks to team members, track progress, and more. The following are some features you can get while planning your project.
- Document project details and keep everyone informed with docs, including outlining the business case, defining project scope, and other document requirements.
- Mapping process flows and making ideas actionable with whiteboards
- Keep track of critical work with relationships. To do that, ClickUp provides features such as link tasks, integration, and more to access related tasks and resources in one place
- ClickUp allows project managers to create shareable links and manage permission for team, guest, or public access
Read More: ClickUp software for project management
Wrike
Wrike is the best tool for project management and collaboration. This software allows project managers to manage their projects from start to finish. Furthermore, Wrike has a clean, easy-to-use interface and features like resource management and time-tracking. Here are some features you can get while planning your project.
- Wrike allows project managers to create unlimited items – folders, projects, tasks, and subtasks
- Allows team members to view which assignee is responsible for each specific initiative
- Allows bring work breakdown structure, team workflows, and favorite tools into one place
- Provides powerful native integrations like Email, Zoom, Slack, and MS Team to work in one place with Wrike
Can I Try Wrike for Free?
Try Wrike for free for 14 days. No credit card is required.
Hive
Hive is a simple and easy-to-use project management tool that is great for teams of any size. It offers valuable features to the project managers such as time tracking, progress reporting, and task management. Furthermore, Hive allows project managers to consolidate all projects, tasks, deadlines, approvals, notes, and reminders in one place.
Trello
Trello is a popular free project management app for managing projects and collaborating with team members efficiently. With Trello, project managers can manage projects across teams or solo efforts using cards representative tasks or ideas for future projects. Furthermore, Trello offers flexible sharing options. Then, team members can collaborate on specific cards from anywhere. Moreover, use this tool to plan your team’s ideal workflow, for projects big or small.
Read More: Why do project managers use Trello project management software
Freedcamp
Freedcamp is a web-based project management tool designed for people who need help managing multiple projects simultaneously. The following are some features you can get while planning your project.
- Allows project managers to organize all project tasks within your project, assing them, and create deadlines
- Allows project managers to create a customized calendar to track all the projects
- Allows highlight the critical moments in your projects
- Allows project managers to store all relevant files in Freedcamp with unlimited storage space
Scoro
Scoro is another popular project management tool among project managers because it provides great features for planning and managing your project. Here are some features you can get while planning your project.
- Plan project resources, including assigning tasks based on true capacity to ensure successful project delivery
- Allows illustrate project delivery timeline and track progress in the Gantt chart and share it with stakeholders to align expectations and communicate updates
- Allows create proposals and estimate projects
Conclusion
Many project managers use project management software such as Asana, Trello, Wrike, Hive, Freedcamp, Score, and ClickUp while planning their projects. However, before selecting this software, you must understand your project needs and requirements to increase the chances of its success.