Exploring The Essential Phases Of Project Management And Top Project Management Tools In Today’s Business Landscape

Carlos Baker

Updated on:

 

Project management is crucial in today’s competitive global business environment, requiring a comprehensive understanding of organizational skills, analytical minds, and interpersonal abilities. Project managers often use software like Wrike to manage goals and set up Gantt charts and Kanban boards, ensuring successful project delivery throughout the project life cycle.  

What Are The Stages Of Project Management?  

The project management process consists of five phases: Starting, Planning, Execution and Monitoring, and Closing. Starting involves defining the project, Planning, creating a guide, Execution and Monitoring development deliverables, and PMs track performance. Closing consists of a post-mortem and a new team.  

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Why Is Project Management Important?  

Your organization will benefit from project managers

  • Have a more dependable approach to organizing and carrying out projects.  
  • Respect the project’s timelines, finances, and scope requirements.  
  • Eliminate obstacles in the project and escalate problems more quickly and simply.  
  • Determine which projects have no practical commercial value and discontinue them.  
  • Become more productive  
  • Boost cooperation both between and within teams  
  • Determine and prepare for dangers.  

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What Are The Seven Best Project Management Tools?   

  • Monday  
  • Adobe Workfront  
  • Onestream  
  • OnePlan  
  • ClickUp  
  • Basecamp  
  • Trello  

Monday  

Monday.com is popular project management software that optimizes operations and boosts productivity, providing a wealth of information for teams to navigate through long chains of events.  

Pros And Cons  

Although it lacks native proofreading and extensive analytics, Monday.com is a well-liked option for project managers because of its user-friendly design, automation, configurable dashboards, and templates.  

Key Features  

  • Monday.com offers a range of features to streamline work processes, including custom dashboards for project managers and team leaders to assess progress based on real-time data.  
  • Automation features for tasks to be set up with automatic reminders,  
  • It offers a library of 100 pre-built templates for quick project startups and uniformity across the organization.  

Integrations  

Monday.com syncs with the most popular applications, such as Google, Slack, Salesforce, and more, even if it has fewer connections than some of its rivals.  

Pricing Plan And Support  

Pricing plans for individuals include Basic (30-$36/month), Standard (36-$36/month), Pro (60-$60/month), and Enterprise (custom).  

Monday supports users, but finding a human is challenging due to the lack of an inbound phone line and callbacks for billing-related queries.  

Adobe Workfront  

Adobe Workfront is a popular project management solution for marketing teams, offering a wide range of features that justify its high cost, especially for enterprise-sized organizations.  

Pros And Cons  

Gantt charts, reporting, and sophisticated dashboards are just a few of the project management tools available in Adobe Workfront. But, according to some users, the most recent UX falls short in terms of cooperation and usability, which might prevent new users from adopting it as much. Moreover, there are issues with the DAM feature that might postpone release.  

Key Features  

  • Workfront’s Scenario Planner is a valuable tool for predicting and preparing for various situations, allowing users to create scenarios and evaluate potential responses.  
  • It also features strategic goal-setting, ensuring alignment and providing detailed dashboards to easily track overall goals or individual projects.  

Integrations  

Adobe Workfront, part of the Adobe group, offers seamless integration with its sister platforms, including Creative Cloud, but offers limited third-party integrations.  

Pricing Plans And Support  

The pricing information is Based on the quote  

Adobe Workfront offers a standard support package, but it’s only available five days a week, without holidays, and lacks a free trial, preventing users from testing the platform before signing up.  

Onestream   

Onestream is a cloud-based CPM 2.0 corporate performance solution that streamlines finance and performance management. It is designed for finance, manufacturing, public sector, and healthcare companies.  

Pros And Cons  

The manual has many features, the customer service was initially helpful, and the price is right, but it lacks an index or Table of Contents for easy navigation.  

Key Features  

  • Onestream software provides firms with balance sheets, risk-based reporting, and worldwide financial consolidation.  
  • It simplifies economic signaling, ERP, CRM, HCM, DW sources, and equity pickup.  
  • Further program features include tax analytics, consistent data collecting, and risk management.  
  • In addition, it provides project management and planning capabilities, including predictive analytics, what-if analysis, and general ledger.  
  • Additionally, it offers forecasting and strategic Planning to lower losses and raise income.  

Integration  

The platform provides various features such as Journal Entry Processing, Third Party Integration, Access Control, and customized permission granting for all users, making it an excellent choice for project management.  

Pricing Plan And Support  

Pricing for Onestream software is dependent on usage and starts at $150,000.  

It offers good customer support  

OnePlan  

OnePlan is a cloud-based project management software that improves business planning and tracking, offering features like Sofia GPT, an advanced personal assistant, data analysis, communication automation, risk management, and portfolio optimization.  

Pros And Cons  

Reviews on OnePlan state that the AI assistant has a slow load time for complex mobile projects, a user-friendly interface, comprehensive reports, flexible resource utilization, and real-time data syncing.  

Key Features  

  • OnePlan is a program for managing project portfolios that centralizes project data to facilitate well-informed decision-making.  
  • It provides real-time data synchronization, time-tracking automation, resource planning, and capital planning.  
  • Capital planning maximizes project expenditure by assessing return on investment and strategy alignment.  
  • Planning resources ahead of time enables effective resource allocation. Automation of timekeeping reduces distractions and saves time.  
  • Real-time data sync ensures project status and business rhythm are in sync, enabling quick response to changing circumstances.  

Integration  

OnePlan integrates various systems such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, SharePoint, and Azure DevOps.  

Pricing Plan And Support  

OnePlan has two different price options

  • $5 per month for a team member  
  • Enterprise: $30 a month  

ClickUp  

ClickUp is a renowned project management software solution suitable for large teams, including those in remote settings, offering standard features for task planning, organization, and management.  

Pros And Cons  

With workflow automation, Gantt charts, and resource management tools, ClickUp is a feature-rich project management solution. However, users may find its frequent outages and inadequate proofing and approval capabilities cumbersome.  

Key Features  

  • Internal documentation, wikis, and FAQs are centralized in the document hub to speed up onboarding.  
  • By dividing jobs into manageable chunks, checklists facilitate quicker project launches, the detection of obstacles, and efficient progress tracking.  
  • Mind maps improve comprehension and strategy by visually representing activities and projects.  

Integrations  

ClickUp excels in integrating with major third-party apps like Slack, Google Calendar, Outlook, and HubSpot, ensuring seamless and efficient use.  

Pricing Plans And Support  

It offers folwing pricing plans  

  • Forever Free – $0  
  • Unlimited plan costs $9 a month for each user (paid monthly)  
  • Business cost $19 per month, payable monthly, per user  
  • Business Plus costs$29 per user, delivered every month  
  • Business – Custom  

ClickUp lacks phone support and a user community, potentially affecting users’ experience despite offering email responses and resources.  

Basecamp  

Basecamp is a user-friendly project management platform that offers scheduling, collaboration, and monitoring features for small teams.  

Pros And Cons  

Basecamp is a simple, user-friendly pricing solution for expanding businesses or smaller teams. Its short learning curve makes it easy to navigate. However, it provides few alternatives for work viewing and lacks sophisticated functionality for cross-functional cooperation.  

Key Features  

  • With features like task lists, discussion boards, and project scheduling.  
  • The software helps users break down complicated projects, visualize workloads, and ensure they don’t miss important deadlines.  
  • Users may also measure progress, spot obstacles, and interact with calendars to improve teamwork.  

Integrations  

Though not as comprehensive as other software solutions, Basecamp provides additional software development, project management, and reporting capabilities through integrations with various third-party apps.  

Pricing Plans And Support  

The company provides pricing plans for its services, including Basecamp, which costs $15 per user per month, and Pro Unlimited, which costs $349 per month for unlimited users.  

Basecamp offers phone support but promises to answer inquiry-form questions within four minutes and provides additional resources like tutorials and help guides.  

Trello  

Trello, an early Kanban-based tool, offers simple project visualization, effective task management, and easy sharing, facilitating collaboration among users and external users.  

Pros And Cons  

Trello is an intuitive task management platform that increases team output with eye-catching boards. Nevertheless, its deficiency in all-encompassing project and portfolio management functionalities renders it less appropriate for advanced strategic Planning.  

Key Features  

  • Trello is a well-liked Kanban board application with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.  
  • Task cards may be customized with comments and due dates, and process automation can expedite delivery and simplify intake.  

Integrations  

Trello offers over 200 pre-built integrations with popular work management tools like Google and Slack.  

Pricing Plans And Support  

It offers the following pricing plans  

  • Free  
  • Monthly billing for each user is $6 as Standard.  
  • The monthly fee for Premium is $12.50 per user.  
  • Enterprise costs $17.50 per user per month; yearly billing  

Trello provides email support during regular business hours and offers a community forum for new users to find common fixes and best practices.  

What To Look For When Choosing A Project Management Tool  

The best web-based project management tool for your organization depends on several factors.  

  • The number of users
  • Pricing structure
  • Critical features required
  • Scalability
  • Ease of use.  

By answering these questions, you can narrow your options and find your business’s best project management software.