Organizing work under the “new normal” will bring a number of challenges and will require us to learn new skills and adjust tools. Ultimately, this forces us to be extremely flexible in managing tasks, teammates, and work in general. In fact, the basic quality of successful work and task management today is flexibility.
What we learned from managing projects and teams of all sizes is that one of your greatest allies on this path is a perfect organizational tool for your team or project. In practice, the lack of flexibility can seem like a feeling of restraint, because the tools you use don’t give you enough room to adjust. As a freelancer with many clients, you may need to switch from a simple self-organizing tool to a flexible task management system. Or you may be a small business owner with a growing business, but the tools you use don’t have a feature set to evolve with them. Lastly, you may want to optimize expenses and find more cost-effective mission planning solutions.
Unfortunately (for everyone), there are tons of task management tools out there. To help you avoid being overwhelmed by too many options, we’ve gone through a number of key features and systematic reviews that the best task management software must have, so you can find your target choice the first time. Let’s take a closer look at the key features of the new mission planning software.
10 Key Features of the Best Task Management Software
Excellent structure — Is the structure capable of handling projects with many tasks, subtasks, and team members?
Total flexibility — allows you to organize whatever content you need in the way that suits you best?
Task customization — is it possible to customize tasks according to your system? Are templates provided to help you get started?
Task Priority — In task management, a good priority is the most important. No matter what distractions occur, can this tool help you keep your team focused?
Time Tracking — Can this tool help you complete your progress quickly before the deadline?
Task Tracker — An excellent task tracker allows you to monitor team members’ sense of responsibility, dedication, and task completion progress.
Multiple Views — Can you see your tasks on a calendar, Gantt chart, or dashboard?
Visual Appeal — Does using visual citations provide a great organizing experience?
Collaboration — Do you provide a set of features to help the team collaborate more effectively?
Excellent customer support — Will customer support listen to user feedback and resolve issues quickly? Can you easily reach them? Do you offer tutorials and other resources?
The 8 Best Project Management Apps for small businesses
- Asana — for ultimate project flexibility
- Airtable — for spreadsheet fanatics
- Trello — for visually managing projects
- AND.CO — for freelancers
- Paymo — for complex projects that require invoices
1 — Asana
In a modern and chaotic world of project management software, Asana stands out as a very powerful tool that supports multiple project management styles and allows you to fully control how you want to visualize and organize your work. Its interface is intuitive, the design is reasonable, and the hierarchy of elements is simple. On the far left is the navigation sidebar, where you can access various items, statistics, message inbox, and personal to-do lists. The main area displays a list of tasks, their due dates, and who each task is assigned to. In the case of overlap, each task can be assigned to multiple projects and can have an unlimited number of subtasks.
2 — Airtable
If you like the neat and clean look of your spreadsheet, but want it to have more features, give Airtable a try. It is a multifunctional spreadsheet-style database application that can help you manage any project, from an editorial calendar to a Scrum Sprint for product development projects. All air projects are managed at the base. To create a foundation, you can choose from dozens of pre-made templates, import an existing spreadsheet, or start from scratch. The pre-made templates are organized by project type and are preloaded with sample content, so you can easily visualize how to run your project. Each row in the database constitutes a record, which can include any type of custom field you can dream of.
3 — Trello
Trello is a simple and intuitive way to organize projects using Kanban. And unlike most project management software, Trello has a different learning curve: With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, your team can get up and running quickly. First, create a new dashboard from scratch or choose a template from many options such as marketing, sales, design, team management, etc. Each kanban board can be configured to mimic the standard agile format: to-do list, in-progress list, and full list. Or, you can be imaginative and use the board as an idea or collaboration tool, where the team idea is compiled, then categorized and approved as needed. Cards (i.e. tasks) can include checklists, due dates, tags, attachments, images, comments, etc.
4 — And.Co
As a freelancer, you may have the same needs — contracts, invoices, complex projects, and documents — as a large company, but you almost certainly don’t have the same budget. AND.CO is an all-in-one tool that can provide a lot of value for a reasonable investment. Although AND.CO provides all the standard project management features you expect, it also provides more features, such as the ability to create proposals and contracts, send invoices, and collect payments. Even with all these features, the interface itself is clean and easy to navigate, and the left sidebar allows you to easily access clients, projects, invoices, etc. After creation, all items will be assigned to specific customers in your account, including billable items. Whether you receive an invoice at the end of the project or reuse the invoice throughout the entire period, you can invoice your clients with complete flexibility.
5 — Paymo
If you need to invoice a customer, but the project is more complex than the project supported by the AND.CO task format, Paymo can solve the problem. Through the billing-centric format, you can set up a project for each customer and can decide whether the project is billable based on an hourly rate or a flat rate (or no charge). Thanks to the timer built into the interface, you can keep track of the time spent on each task and project, and Paymo will automatically create an invoice based on this information. Each project contains its associated tasks and subtasks, as well as three options for viewing the work: as a list, on the board, or on the calendar. You can also use Paymo filters to sort all tasks for each client and project by status, due date, priority, etc. In each project, you can view the calendar, communicate with your teammates, and save all the files related to the project.
