Leave a Comment / Management, Project management / By Tim Lauenroth
The demands on project managers are becoming even greater, the projects more and more complex, and the teams larger and larger as a result. The challenges for IT project managers within the individual projects are great in everyday life.
In addition, there is the change of the workplace from office to home office. This causes problems for many teams. New structures have to be defined, new programs implemented. Collaboration has become different. Communication platforms such as Microsoft Teams make it possible to work and exchange ideas from home.
However, the exchange among each other and regular reconciliation usually still comes too short. With even larger teams and more complex tasks, this is a gap that needs to be closed.
One possibility is a good project management software, with which tasks and projects can be clearly displayed and effectively processed.
We’ll show you the things that matter when it comes to PM and present the top 4 project management programs that will help you work most effectively in today’s world.
Communication
“Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity”
Nat Turner, American Preacher
Good communication is the key to success. Through regular exchange and agreements, the goals in the projects can be achieved faster and more targeted. In the home office, exchange among colleagues has become even more important. Due to the isolation from co-workers, many colleagues are left to their own devices and the team spirit shrinks.
Project management software enables you to communicate in a targeted and effective manner. Meetings about prioritizing tasks for the upcoming work week can be held better and more effectively. Besides the technical exchange, the personal exchange is at least as important. As a suggestion, introduce weekly meetings in which you and your team play games or talk about private matters.
Transparent presentation of the progress of the project
A transparent presentation of the projects allows every employee to see how far the progress is, who is assigned to which tasks and which documents are necessary for the solution of the corresponding task. The resulting transparency not only has a positive impact on productivity, but also creates a different team dynamic at the same time, because everyone can follow the progress of the project live.
Clear task management
A big advantage of project management software is the clear management of tasks. There is no more paperwork at this point. Instead, you have one software in which you can clearly record all tasks and projects. Gantt charts, work breakdown structures or Kanban boards give you the overview to manage your tasks and projects successfully. Further advantages are time savings and also risk minimization due to the fact that things are almost never forgotten.
Data protection
Data protection is especially crucial for cloud-based software. It is important at this point that the programs are GDPR — (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant. The GDPR standard is an important criterion for users and their data security when deciding which software to buy. The programs we present below are all GDPR-ready.
Project management software
1. Asana
Asana was founded by facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein and was initially only used internally at facebook. In the meantime, Asana is also made available to external companies. Above all, Asana is characterized by its clear and graphically appealing UI.
You can display your projects and tasks in different ways: Decide between the list view, the timeline view or the board view, in which the individual tasks are displayed.
Integration/connectivity options
Another advantage of Asana is the possibility to connect their services with other programs. This allows you to customize and expand your project management workspace even more. Not only do you benefit from Asana as a stand-alone solution, but you can also link the programs you already use in your team to the software. Here you will find the integration options you are entitled to with Asana.
2. Jira
Jira is a software development tool from Atlassian for agile teams, with which you can manage your projects and tasks clearly. The structure of Jira is based on the stages of software development: Plan, track, release
Plan
In planning you can create user stories, plan sprints and distribute the resulting tasks in your software team.
Track
You can prioritize the tasks with your development team and visualize them in clear boards.
Release
In the release status you can see how far the registered releases are. The information provided is always live.
In the real time reports you can improve the team performance by evaluating them.
Extension possibilities
Jira also offers extensibility options and allows you to customize your cloud-based work environment.
The software is primarily intended for development teams working on complex projects in correspondingly large teams. If you want to use a somewhat simpler, but less comprehensive program, Trello is the right choice.
3. Trello
Trello is a project management tool, also developed by Atlassian, with which you can manage your tasks and projects on a easy way. However, the user interface is kept simpler than Jira and also offers fewer features in use. The software from Atlassian is very intuitive and can be quickly implemented into the work process by your team members.
Trello is based on the “Kanban” project planning method.
4. Microsoft Azure DevOps
Microsoft Azure DevOps is the project management tool from Microsoft that you can use to plan, track and discuss your projects. The various Azure tools provide you with many options for the successful development of your software.
The Extension Marketplace offers additional extensibility to other apps and services.
The power of extensibility
The fact that the project management software can be perfectly used for companies has to do with various reasons.
On the one hand, it’s about the team being able to use the programs’ features for themselves to work more productive and targeted at several tasks and projects
On the other hand, the connections to other programs are crucial for effective work. You and your team can work even more effectively with a network of programs that are all linked together, because the individual advantages of the software can complement each other perfectly. With the extensions, you and your team has even more options in your cloud environment to make better use of the tools you work with.
Integrate timeghost as project time tracking into your project management environment
timeghost offers you the possibility to assign your working hours to individual projects and tasks from the project management software you are using. The possibility to extend and connect the software to other programs plays a decisive role.
timeghost integrated in the Microsoft365 environment
The software works closely together with Microsoft Teams. As a third party App from Teams, timeghost is integrated and connected to the Microsoft365 environment. For you and your team, this means that you can build links from timeghost to other Microsoft365 programs, such as Microsoft Teams, Outlook or Microsoft Planner.
Conntect timeghost and your project management software
With Microsoft Power Automate, you also have the option of linking the software to external programs such as Asana or Jira. We have already developed a number of automated workflows that can be used to connect Jira, timeghost and Teams, for example.
Here you can see for which programs we have already developed automated workflows.
For example, an automation looks like this:
When you have completed a task in Jira, an event of the task is automatically created in timeghost, which you can directly record as working time and assign to the corresponding project. In addition to the PM tools, timeghost provides you with further evaluation and optimization options for your projects.
Test timeghost 14 days for free
If you want to test timeghost to see if it helps you and your company to track the working time of the individual tasks of your projects, try the 14 free trial.
Try it yourself
We really appreciate all the feedback we can get, so please feel free to contact us and tell us what needs improvement or what you are missing in the software.
If you need any help in setting up timeghost, please don’t hesitate to visit our Support Center or send us an email to support@timeghost.io.
Get the timeghost Teams App
You only need to install the timeghost Teams App directly from the AppSource Store in the application. You can find a manual on how to do this right here. The app includes all features that you know from the web client and since you use your Office 365 account in order to access timeghost you’re set and done in only a few seconds.
