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TOP programs for planning projects and time
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Planning Project Management

TOP programs for planning projects and time

Devel­op­ing an appli­ca­tion, start­ing an online store or any oth­er busi­ness, orga­niz­ing a con­fer­ence are all exam­ples of projects. The projects can be sim­ple and com­plex, low-bud­get and expen­sive, short-term and long-term. The term ​“project” is used in var­i­ous fields: sales, IT, edu­ca­tion, con­struc­tion, and every­day life.

Regard­less of the com­plex­i­ty and scope, any project needs plan­ning first, and then man­age­ment, i.e. coor­di­na­tion of actions, agree­ment of dead­lines and bud­gets and progress tracking.

It is con­ve­nient to plan projects, and then man­age them with the help of spe­cial soft­ware, most often these are task track­ers. The best project plan­ning tools are visu­al, sim­ple and intu­itive for all team mem­bers. We will talk about these below.


Among the top tools for plan­ning own activ­i­ties, we can high­light the following:
  1. Work­sec­tion
  2. Asana 
  3. Wrike 
  4. Click­Up 
  5. Smartsheet та ін.

Lat­er, we will ana­lyze each plan­ning ser­vice in more detail, but first we need to answer the ques­tion: What is project plan­ning and what are the main stages of project planning?

What is project planning?

If you con­sid­er plan­ning as part of project man­age­ment, it will be one of the most impor­tant ones. The suc­cess of the case will large­ly depend on the qual­i­ty of plan­ning. This activ­i­ty aims to answer the fol­low­ing questions:
  • What and why should be done?
  • How and when should it be done?
  • Who will do it and what are the costs?
The plan­ning result is a detailed descrip­tion of the step-by-step achieve­ment of the pro­jec­t’s goal, in which the stages, tasks, required resources (time, peo­ple, mon­ey, etc.) and cal­en­dar frames are prescribed.

5 stages of project planning

In order to under­stand what tasks should be solved by plan­ning pro­grams, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand what stages a project goes through from idea to completion.

Plan­ning usu­al­ly con­sists of the fol­low­ing steps:
  1. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with inter­est­ed par­ties (stake­hold­ers). First­ly, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand who is inter­est­ed in the suc­cess of the project. These can be cus­tomers or end users of a product/​service. It is nec­es­sary to describe stake­hold­ers’ inter­est and what tasks these peo­ple will per­form. Some­times one per­son con­trols and direct­ly par­tic­i­pates in the work. If the inter­est­ed par­ties do not know each oth­er, it is worth orga­niz­ing a meet­ing: offline or online. The expec­ta­tions from this col­lab­o­ra­tion should be discussed.
  2. Describ­ing goals. After the meet­ing of inter­est­ed par­ties and their dis­cus­sion of impor­tant issues, the goals of the project should be clear­ly defined. Accord­ing­ly, it will be pos­si­ble to deter­mine what exact­ly the result of the work would be.
  3. To-do list. When the goals are clear, the big stages should be bro­ken down into small­er ones, and spe­cif­ic tasks, their sequence, pri­or­i­ty, and inter­re­la­tion should be writ­ten down. Here, a Gantt chart with described depen­den­cies in the project will be useful.
  4. Mak­ing a sched­ule. Key dates should appear in the cal­en­dar: start­ing dates for par­tic­u­lar tasks, inter­me­di­ate con­trol and dead­lines, as well as fur­ther steps.
  5. Risk man­age­ment and, if nec­es­sary, adjust­ment of plans. When there is a detailed plan, it is eas­i­er to see poten­tial rea­sons why the work may not go as desired. Some­thing can be cor­rect­ed even before the start. It is also worth think­ing of some extra time in the plan in case of force majeure.
Expe­ri­enced man­agers know that the strate­gic plan must remain unchanged. But tac­ti­cal plans can be changed based on com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the team and stake­hold­ers and feedback.

Project plan­ning in prac­tice: an example

Of course, each com­pa­ny has its own plan­ning fea­tures. But on the strate­gic lev­el, it will be good to make a tem­plate that will speed up the planning.

For exam­ple, if the project is the cre­ation of a web­site, the process of its devel­op­ment will look some­thing like this:


Gantt Chart in the Worksection
You can see that the main stages of work are list­ed: prepa­ra­tion of mate­ri­als, TR, design of the pro­to­type, and so on. The tasks go from main to sec­ondary. Although some process­es may in fact be par­al­lel, for exam­ple, when writ­ing con­tent for a blog, arti­cles can be writ­ten by sev­er­al authors at the same time.

You can also see that large tasks are bro­ken down into small­er ones. For exam­ple, the design devel­op­ment task is divid­ed into sev­er­al sep­a­rate parts: the main page, tem­plates of oth­er pages, etc. The more com­plex the project, the more sub­tasks and performers.

We also see the link to the cal­en­dar and the total time spent on a task, as well as per­form­ers. This plan­ning for­mat offers the man­ag­er or project man­ag­er to quick­ly get an overview and, if nec­es­sary, find an answer to any ques­tion about the project.

To make plan­ning even more effec­tive, it is worth devel­op­ing a tem­plate for work­ing with tasks, where each one is treat­ed in a sim­i­lar way:
  • the project is indi­cat­ed that the task belongs to ;
  • right in the title, the essence of the task is briefly described;
  • a per­son respon­si­ble is appoint­ed;
  • the dead­line is specified;
  • a detailed descrip­tion is attached, if nec­es­sary, as well as useful/​necessary files for the task;
  • if the task is divid­ed into sev­er­al parts, you can make a check­list, which will imme­di­ate­ly show what has already been done.

5 Most Pop­u­lar Method­olo­gies of Project Management

Not only rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the IT field know about Agile or Kan­ban, although it is in this field that the list­ed approach­es are used most often.

Method­ol­o­gy is a step-by-step instruc­tion that describes stan­dard pro­ce­dures for work­ing on a project and meth­ods of inter­ac­tion between inter­est­ed par­ties to achieve the result.
Based on the gen­er­al approach, spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dures and meth­ods are developed.The most famous method­olo­gies are:

Agile Har­vard Busi­ness Review ana­lysts called it ​“a key advan­tage of the dig­i­tal era.” In fact, this is not so much a method­ol­o­gy as a gen­er­al prin­ci­ple of inter­ac­tion between project par­tic­i­pants to prompt­ly respond to changes.

Kan­ban The main tool here is an elec­tron­ic ver­sion of a reg­u­lar phys­i­cal board, on which cards with the spec­i­fied sta­tus for each task could be posted.

Scrum An approach in which the goal is achieved by sprints. The project is divid­ed into tasks, each of which fits into a short peri­od of time — a sprint (usu­al­ly last­ing one or two weeks). The results of the sprint – new prod­uct func­tions or tools – can be shown to the tar­get audi­ence and receive feed­back from them in order to improve the qual­i­ty of the final product.

Water­fall The name of the method­ol­o­gy ful­ly reflects its essence. Objec­tives are arranged in a hier­ar­chi­cal order. Until the low­er-lev­el goal is met, work on the upper-lev­el goal is not started.

PRINCE2 An approach patent­ed by the Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try of Great Britain. Great atten­tion is paid to detailed doc­u­men­ta­tion, as it is expe­ri­ence that is con­sid­ered the basis of risk reduction.

5 Key Prin­ci­ples of Project Management

Method­olo­gies dif­fer in ​“phi­los­o­phy”, ways of set­ting pri­or­i­ties, but the main thing, how­ev­er, remains com­mon. This can be called the prin­ci­ples of project management:
  1. Every­one should know exact­ly what to do and when. It is very impor­tant that each task is assigned to a per­son respon­si­ble for its completion.
  2. The team needs effec­tive communication.
  3. Coor­di­na­tion should be car­ried out by the leader, to whom all infor­ma­tion flows go.
  4. The leader per­forms his func­tions with the help of appro­pri­ate tools.
  5. After the com­ple­tion of the project, sum­maries are drawn up, mis­takes are ana­lyzed and ways are devel­oped that will pre­vent them from hap­pen­ing again.

Choos­ing the best plan­ning tool 

There are more than enough offers on the soft­ware mar­ket, you can choose an option for any of the method­olo­gies described above. Most pop­u­lar pro­grams have the fol­low­ing basic func­tion­al­i­ty:
  • for­ward­ing files;
  • com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools;
  • cal­en­dar, Gantt chart;
  • the abil­i­ty to cre­ate and del­e­gate tasks and mon­i­tor their status.
Many have a friend­ly inter­face and an attrac­tive design. There­fore, it is worth choos­ing a prod­uct that cor­re­sponds to the specifics of the com­pa­ny and the projects with which it deals most often. For example:
  • in the field of design and IT devel­op­ment, func­tions to approve lay­outs with the cus­tomer are relevant;
  • for an edu­ca­tion­al com­pa­ny, con­ve­nient access to doc­u­ments (cours­es, tests) and the abil­i­ty to make pre­sen­ta­tions are important;
  • a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny will need func­tion­al­i­ty to opti­mize the work with the mate­r­i­al data­base or com­plex reporting.
A ben­e­fit for the tool will be its com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with oth­er pop­u­lar dig­i­tal prod­ucts. Sup­pose most of the team mem­bers cre­ate doc­u­ments in Google Docs, or at the begin­ning of the project a cer­tain amount of doc­u­men­ta­tion in this for­mat has already been accu­mu­lat­ed. If the project man­age­ment tool allows you to inte­grate Google Docs into it, the prob­lem of work­ing with doc­u­ments is solved.

Some­times inte­gra­tion with exter­nal ser­vices makes it pos­si­ble to com­pen­sate for gaps in func­tion­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, a project man­age­ment ser­vice does not have a live chat func­tion, in which team mem­bers com­mu­ni­cate in real time. But you can imple­ment inte­gra­tion with Google Hang­outs, a prod­uct for exchang­ing mes­sages and orga­niz­ing conferences.

Anoth­er group of task track­er eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria refers to hard­ware. Where are the ser­vice provider’s servers locat­ed? Do they with­stand peak loads? Is their data secure­ly pro­tect­ed? The com­pa­ny, which has seri­ous tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties, ensures the work of a large team and data pro­tec­tion in 24⁄7 mode.

An impor­tant advan­tage of the soft­ware is the avail­abil­i­ty of a free tri­al ver­sion. As a rule, it is not enough for large-scale projects, instead, with its help, you can test the tool, try the func­tion­al­i­ty you need at work, and then buy it.

TOP 15 Best Project Plan­ning Tools

Work­sec­tion

Plat­forms: Web, Win­dows, iOS and Android.

Fea­tures: A tool for project man­age­ment, which both ​“techies” and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of non-tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ties can eas­i­ly work with. Dur­ing devel­op­ment, all tasks of project man­agers and team mem­bers are tak­en into account: plan­ning, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Kan­ban boards, con­trol of finan­cial costs, and reporting.


Data secu­ri­ty and unin­ter­rupt­ed oper­a­tion are ensured by SSL encryp­tion, a reli­able serv­er base, and a two-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion pro­ce­dure. The response time of tech­ni­cal sup­port is between 10 and 60 min­utes. There are inte­gra­tions with Google Docs, Slack, Google Cal­en­dar, Telegram, Viber.

Draw­backs: Users would like the prod­uct to work offline. There are also ques­tions regard­ing the oper­a­tion of the mobile application.

Pric­ing: A 14-day tri­al peri­od is avail­able. There is also a free ver­sion, it pro­vides 0.1 GB of data stor­age capac­i­ty, 2 active projects and 5 users. 

For $69 per month you get access for 20 team mem­bers and up to 20 projects. For $299 you get an unlim­it­ed user/​project num­ber and 500 GB of data storage.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.9 of 5.

Asana 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: This work plan­ning tool is good for its func­tion­al­i­ty and inter­face, bright and at the same time not intru­sive. The soft­ware is posi­tioned as com­pre­hen­sive, cov­er­ing all project man­age­ment tasks, accord­ing­ly, it con­tains a full set of basic func­tions. Inte­gra­tions with a large num­ber of exter­nal tools and ser­vices (Jira Cloud, Adobe Cre­ative Cloud, Slack, Microsoft Office 365, Gmail, OneDrive, Box, DRop­box, Git­lab, Trel­lo) are available.


Draw­backs: There are prob­lems with the set­ting of email noti­fi­ca­tions, there are few tools for work­ing with text, there are not enough integrations.

Pric­ing: A 30-day tri­al peri­od is avail­able. Paid tar­iffs cost between $13.49 and $30.49 per user/​month when paid month­ly, and between $10.99 and $24.49 per user/​month when paid year­ly. There is also a free ver­sion for teams with up to 15 users. This tar­iff does not include project tem­plates though. For $13.49 you get access to the work­flow con­struc­tor and a pos­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate closed projects and groups.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.5 of 5.

Wrike 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: The pecu­liar­i­ty of this work plan­ning tool is its flex­i­bil­i­ty. The user can choose the dash­board visu­al­iza­tion. A Gantt chart or a table, a Kan­ban board or a project sched­ule – any team mem­ber can eas­i­ly switch between win­dows and modes to con­trol his work area and have a gen­er­al overview of the progress. Lots of tem­plates and integrations.


Draw­backs: In order to ful­ly use all the advan­tages of the prod­uct, you need to con­tact tech­ni­cal sup­port often, and it is not always prompt.

Pric­ing: A 14-day tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. Then you need to choose one of the tar­iff plans, which cost between $9.80 and $24.80 per user/​month. There is also a free ver­sion, but it is lim­it­ed to 2 GB stor­age capac­i­ty for a team, with a lim­it­ed num­ber of active tasks. The cheap­est tar­iff offers 2 GB stor­age capac­i­ty for each user, inter­ac­tive Gantt charts and integrations.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.2 of 5.

GanttPro

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android.

Fea­tures: The tool helps to work care­ful­ly on set­ting tasks: divide them into sub­tasks and track the sta­tus of each. The user choos­es between the usu­al visu­al­iza­tion meth­ods in the form of a Gantt chart, a dash­board or a board. Sta­tus­es, pri­or­i­ties, dead­lines are as in usu­al task track­ers. Inte­gra­tion with Jira, Google Dri­ve, Slack and oth­er pop­u­lar appli­ca­tions is available.


Draw­backs: Not all users are sat­is­fied with the fact that it is not very con­ve­nient to edit data in the appli­ca­tion, so most of the time you have to work with the prod­uct from a PC.

Pric­ing: A free tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. The basic tar­iff costs $7.99 per user/​month, offer­ing Gantt charts, a cal­en­dar and auto­mat­ic plan­ning. For $19.99, you get more fea­tures, like project tem­plates, mass changes, sav­ing fil­ters, dead­line notifications.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.8 of 5.

Kiss­flow Project 

Plat­forms: Web, cloud, SaaS.

Fea­tures: A tool with no unnec­es­sary func­tions. Kan­ban board for vis­i­bil­i­ty, func­tion­al­i­ty for plac­ing pri­or­i­ties to meet dead­lines. Reminders of upcom­ing task dead­lines. Inte­gra­tion with Google Work­space and exter­nal tools via REST API is possible.


Draw­backs: Not every­one is sat­is­fied with mes­sages, doc­u­ment export and inte­gra­tion. It is also worth not­ing that the speed and effi­cien­cy of the ser­vice strong­ly depends on the qual­i­ty of the Inter­net connection.

Pric­ing: A free tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. Paid tar­iffs start at $10 per user/​month, if you pay year­ly, or $18 when paid month­ly. For more details on the fea­tures of each par­tic­u­lar tar­iff you should con­sult a manager.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 5 of 5.

Click­Up 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux.

Fea­tures: A prod­uct with a full set of basic func­tions: tasks and tem­plates for them, check­lists, pos­si­bil­i­ty to fil­ter doc­u­ments by spec­i­fied cri­te­ria, cal­en­dar, task timeline.


Func­tions for work­ing with doc­u­ments, includ­ing wiki doc­u­ments: cre­ation, edit­ing, access admin­is­tra­tion. Group chat, six types of report­ing tem­plates. Inte­gra­tions with Google Work­space, Drop­box and more than 1,000 Zapi­er automa­tion con­struc­tor tools are available.

Draw­backs: A mobile app could be more user-friendly.

Pric­ing: A 14-day free tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. There is also a free tar­iff plan with 3 boards and a file down­load of up to 100 MB each. A tar­iff plan for $5 per month offers unlim­it­ed down­loads, unlim­it­ed num­ber of Gantt charts, guest access and integrations.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.7 of 5.

Meis­ter­Task 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: The soft­ware is suit­able for Agile projects. The Kan­ban board offers con­ve­nient and effec­tive con­trol over tasks and resources.


A full set of com­mu­ni­ca­tion fea­tures, includ­ing com­ments and men­tions, inte­gra­tions with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Work­space, Mind­Meis­ter, and oth­er tools and ser­vices are available.

Draw­backs: There are short­com­ings with com­ments, file export, field cus­tomiza­tion, and integrations.

Pric­ing: There is a free tri­al ver­sion; a com­plete­ly free tar­iff plan is also avail­able, with up to 3 projects and file down­loads up to 20 MB each. For $8.25 per month you get an unlim­it­ed num­ber of projects, up to 200 MB data stor­age, as well as task archive and beau­ti­ful backgrounds.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.7 of 5.

Flock 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: All key func­tions for plan­ning, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­trol are avail­able: file shar­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion tools, doc­u­ments search, cre­at­ing video calls in one click. Inte­gra­tion with Google Dri­ve and GitHub Repos.


Draw­backs: There are dif­fi­cul­ties with set­tings for admin­is­tra­tors, prob­lems with sound and inte­gra­tions. The app is a bit slow.

Pric­ing: A free tri­al peri­od is pro­vid­ed. The free tar­iff is pro­vid­ed for teams of up to 20 employ­ees with 5 GB of data stor­age and unlim­it­ed one-on-one com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For $6 per month (or $4.50 if paid at once for a year), the prod­uct can be used by up to 100 team mem­bers, with up to 10 GB data stor­age capac­i­ties for every user, as well as the abil­i­ty to demon­strate the screen and make group video calls.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.5 of 5.

Forecast.app 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android.

Fea­tures: The key high­light of this plan­ning tool is its smart approach to automa­tion. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence col­lects project expe­ri­ence in more than 40 coun­tries and uses it to make work more efficient.


The tool can auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate time­lines and bud­gets if you mark mile­stones and met­rics. Visu­al dash­board helps to get an overview and effec­tive­ly con­trol finances and dead­lines. Inte­gra­tion with Jira is available.

Draw­backs: Not every­one finds it easy to learn how to use the prod­uct, the terms of unsub­scrib­ing are not com­plete­ly clear. There are prob­lems with synchronization.

Pric­ing: A free tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. Paid tar­iffs cost $29 per user/​month, with tools for time man­age­ment and team­work, as well as busi­ness analytics.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.5 of 5.

Smartsheet 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android.

Fea­tures: This pro­gram will appeal to any­one who likes to work with spread­sheets, but is tired of the com­plex­i­ties of Excel. The tool will cal­cu­late every­thing by itself and add a com­pa­ny logo to the document.


Func­tion­al­i­ty which is typ­i­cal for task track­ers is avail­able: task cards, cal­en­dar, Gantt chart, reminders. Inte­gra­tions with Jira, pop­u­lar Google and Microsoft tools are available.

Draw­backs: Not the most con­ve­nient prod­uct in terms of work­ing with tasks, there are also prob­lems with noti­fi­ca­tions. Users would like to see more visu­al tools for work­ing with projects.

Pric­ing: A free tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. The cheap­est paid tar­iff costs $7 per user/​month, with up to 20 GB data stor­age capac­i­ty, automa­tion, per­son­al reporting. 

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.5 of 5.

ProWork­flow

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: A soft­ware prod­uct that allows all project par­tic­i­pants to mon­i­tor its progress, keep abreast of events and instant­ly react to changes. You can always have an overview of the project life cycle: per­form­ers, dead­lines, resources.


Inter­ac­tion with the tool is con­ve­nient and easy due to the click and drag mech­a­nism. Its high­light is inte­gra­tion with well-known account­ing plat­forms (Xero, MYOB, Quick­books). Inte­gra­tion with Google Work­space, Box and OneDrive is also provided.

Draw­backs: Not all users are sat­is­fied with report­ing, some would like more stor­age capacity. 

Pric­ing: A free tri­al ver­sion is avail­able. Paid tar­iffs cost between $18 and $27 per user/​month when paid year­ly (and between $20 and $30, when paid month­ly). Basic tar­iff offers unlim­it­ed num­ber of projects and up to 25 GB stor­age capac­i­ty, while a more expen­sive tar­iff offers 50 GB and more edit­ing features. 

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.5 of 5.

Celox­is 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux.

Fea­tures: A real-time plan­ning tool for the team pro­vides the project man­ag­er with a 360-degree view: task and per­former sta­tus­es, bug reports, doc­u­ments, tick­ets. A spe­cial fea­ture is the func­tion­al­i­ty for visu­al expand­ed reports. The tool can be eas­i­ly adjust­ed to com­pa­nies of dif­fer­ent sizes in dif­fer­ent fields of work.


Draw­backs: The inter­face needs improve­ment, and to under­stand how the prod­uct works, you need to learn a lot of instructions.

Pric­ing: It is pos­si­ble to use the free tri­al ver­sion. The cloud ver­sion costs from $25 per user/​month, each user gets 2 GB of stor­age capacity.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.4 of 5.

Easy Project 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux.

Fea­tures: An effec­tive tool for team coor­di­na­tion at all lev­els, from exec­u­tives to top man­agers, with stake­hold­ers’ mon­i­tor­ing. Due to the visu­al­iza­tion of resource dis­tri­b­u­tion, the prod­uct allows you to avoid bot­tle­necks and thus ensures the con­ti­nu­ity of process­es. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is able to pre­dict the course of the project and help in its optimization.


Draw­backs: Users do not like long report­ing updates, there are prob­lems with guest access, and the timer does not always work correctly.

Pric­ing: To get acquaint­ed with the func­tions, you can use a free tri­al ver­sion. Paid tar­iff costs from $25.75 per user/​month, with inter­ac­tive Gantt charts, Kan­ban boards, mile­stones and bud­get­ing tools.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.4 of 5.

Project Insight 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: Plan­ning ser­vice with an intu­itive, aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing inter­face for effi­cient and com­fort­able work, offer­ing stan­dard func­tion­al­i­ty for task set­ting, pri­or­i­ti­za­tion and con­trol, as well as a real-time mon­i­tor­ing of the project progress for each par­tic­i­pant. Inte­gra­tion with Box, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Out­look and Quick­books is available.


Draw­backs: The app is not real­ly con­ve­nient, the set­tings are some­times dif­fi­cult, and some users would need assis­tance with the reporting.

Pric­ing: A free tri­al is avail­able, as well as a free tar­iff plan with unlim­it­ed user num­ber, Gantt charts and Kan­ban boards. For $3 per month you will addi­tion­al­ly get bud­get­ing tools, sched­ul­ing and time track­ing options.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.4 of 5.

Zoho Projects 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android.

Fea­tures: The inter­face of this project plan­ning pro­gram resem­bles social net­works, as the func­tion­al part empha­sizes effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion. At the same time, the soft­ware has oth­er key func­tions: the sta­tus of tasks and per­form­ers, a cal­en­dar and reminders of approach­ing dead­lines by email, a com­par­i­son of planned and actu­al time spent.


The pro­gram can be called an ecosys­tem that inte­grates with Zoho’s own prod­ucts and exter­nal tools: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Dri­ve and Zapier.

Draw­backs: The set­tings for projects and inte­gra­tions are dif­fi­cult for an inex­pe­ri­enced user. Report­ing and bud­get­ing func­tions need improvement.

Pric­ing: A tri­al ver­sion and a com­plete­ly free ver­sion (for up to 2 users work­ing on 3 projects) are avail­able. For $5, you can man­age an unlim­it­ed num­ber of projects and have 100 GB of data stor­age space.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.2 of 5.

Com­par­a­tive table of top pro­grams for plan­ning and activities

Name

Plat­form

Rate

Work­sec­tionWeb, Win­dows, iOS та Android4,9 із 5
Asana Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac4,5 із 5
Wrike Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac4.2 із 5
GanttProWeb, iOS, Android4,8 із 5
Kiss­flow Project Web, хмара, SaaS 5 із 5
Click­Up Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux4,7 із 5
Meis­ter­Task Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac4,7 із 5
Flock Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac 4,5 із 5
Forecast.app Web, iOS, Android4,5 із 5
Smartsheet Web, iOS, Android4,5 із 5
ProWork­flowWeb, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac4,5 із 5
Celox­is Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux4,4 із 5
Easy Project Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux4.4 із 5
Project Insight Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac4.4 із 5
Zoho Projects Web, iOS, Android4.2 із 5

If you know the prin­ci­ples of project plan­ning and fol­low them, you can move in the right direc­tion from the project start. The tools for project plan­ning and man­age­ment will make this process eas­i­er and more comfortable.
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