“Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet.” – Henry Mintzberg
In a survey asking “what is the best way to learn about entrepreneurship”, 51% of people responded- Start a company. Starting a company may seem like a dream come true, but it is nothing less than a marathon. “82 percent of successful business owners did not doubt they had the right qualifications and proper experience to run a company”, yet they failed! Why? Because they lacked in managing the projects efficiently. Underestimating the importance of a startup project management tool may not cost a fortune, but it can lead to downfall.
If the right startup project management tool is not adopted in time, things are very likely to go haywire. It can lead to multiple verbal interactions, which can lead to missing out on the tasks that can cause project failure. There will be no list to follow up on and no overview of how productive is the organization, as a whole. The resulting disorganization and chaos will infect your employees and freelancers as well, which will foster laziness and procrastination. Hence, startup project management is so important that if not done correctly, it is a slow poison that can choke your startup efforts to death. To know more, here’s a list of project management tools for startups…
ProProfs Project
ProProfs Project Software is one of the best project management software for startups. Its features include:
- Defining tasks, creating dependencies and assigning tasks to your teams
- Tracking the time spent on projects
- Creating client reports
- Creating bills for projects
- Collaborating across different projects, remote teams and virtual teams
ProProfs Project Software has four billing plans, including:
- Forever Free:
Ideal for freelancers and personal tracking
- Solopreneur:
Ideal for small startups with less than 10 users
- Team:
Suitable for all typical startups with several projects
- Unlimited:
Ideal for large scale startups
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is an old-school project management tool with a lot of features and functions that support waterfall-style project management to its fullest. The features of Smartsheet include:
- Creating project plans and schedules
- Creating, managing and tracking project tasks
- Creating programs and projects within programs
- Allocating resources to multiple projects and monitoring resource utilization
- Tracking budget, monitoring variances in planned and actual costs, etc.
- Planning out overall strategy, charting your vision, creating strategy milestones, etc.
Smartsheet has four billing plans:
- Individual:
Ideal for freelancers and personal tracking
- Business:
Ideal for typical startups for complete project tracking
- Enterprise:
Suitable for established startups requiring additional security and control features
- Premier:
Ideal for large organizations requiring premium features (premium support, custom application integrations, etc.)
Teamwork
One of the best project management tools for startups, Teamwork is a simple tool but has all the features for running project management for startups. It features include:
- Planning, creating and scheduling tasks into a calendar, creating a milestone list and marking them on the calendar, and generating a Gantt chart.
- Allowing users to send messages to each other, sending files and controlling the version of the file, creating notes and sharing, etc.
- Teamwork offers excellent features to track the project during its execution. Activity time tracking also helps to understand the learning efficiency of the employee.
- It has the feature of offering default reports
Teamwork has four billing plans:
- Forever:
Ideal for individuals or very small teams with less than five users
- Pro:
Ideal for a typical startup with average team size
- Premium:
Suitable for established startups to improve performance across their organization
- Enterprise:
Ideal for large organizations with all corporate features, including security, integration ability, etc.
Trello
Trello is a project management software by Atlassian Corporation, a software company based in Australia which is already famous for similar applications like Jira and Confluence. Trello works differently when compared to other software on the list with its unique boards and card style. You can create lists in a Trello board (for example, to do, work in progress, etc.) with activities in the list being shown as cards. On the card, you can add comments, set due dates, attach files, etc.
Trello has three billing plans:
- Free:
Out of all the project management tools on the list, Trello offers the best features in a free plan. It doesn’t keep any limit on boards (except team boards), cards or lists at all.
- Business Class:
This is the best plan for startups offering priority support, unlimited team boards, and other premium features.
- Enterprise:
Enterprise plan has all the features of Business class along with features like single sign-on, attachment restrictions, organization level customization, etc.
nTask
The standard project management tool is packed with features for:
- Planning, resource allocation, project manager assignment, and roles and permissions assignment.
- Scheduling end-to-end task management
- Enabling users to add task comments, bulk assign tasks, attach and share files, and also create automated reminders.
- It allows time tracking reports, risk reports, issue logs, and meeting reports.
It offers four billing plans:
- Free:
Ideal for freelancers and individuals (with all basic features)
- Premium:
Ideal for startups
- Business:
Ideal for large corporates
- Enterprise:
Ideal for large business
Scoro
Scoro does not only help in project management but also supports in CRM and quoting. Thus, large corporates may prefer Scoro over others on the project management tools list. Scoro’s features include:
- Project planning:
This section offers everything you need to manage a project on one page. You can also allocate billable and non-billable work, and the cost will be calculated automatically at the back-end. This is a feature unique to Scoro. You can also manage the project portfolio from a high-level.
- Work scheduling:
Activities like scheduling the project, assigning tasks, and scheduling meetings can quickly be done from Scoro. You can also track billable and non-billable time separately.
- It provides financial management and unique features like automated late invoice reminders and issuing sales, prepayment or credit invoices. Scoro also helps in keeping a track of purchases and costs, cost variances, and comparing budget scenarios.
- CRM and quoting:
Scoro helps to maintain customer contact details in a complete overview board and allows to search, filter or sort contacts. Scoro also helps to compile quotes in PDFs and send them to customers.
- Reporting and dashboard:
Scoro helps to define KPIs and keeps an eye on them, views detailed financial reports, etc.
Scoro offers following pricing plans, including:
- Essentials
This plan offers all essential features needed for efficient project management.
- Work Hub Essentials
Ideal for medium to semi-large businesses
- Work Hub Ultimate
Ideal for large enterprises
- Free Trial
Offers 14-day free trial
Aha!
Aha! is more of a product management software unlike the others on the list. It is the most agile tool of all and the most expensive. The tool helps with the following:
- Building strategy and planning releases
- Capturing new ideas
- Organizing and detailing current product features
- Building roadmaps for the product
- Building product reports
- Creating presentations (for example, product lifecycle presentation)
Billing plans of Aha! goes as:
- Startup Plan:
Exclusively for qualified startups
- Premium:
Ideal for established companies
- Enterprise:
Ideal for large organizations
- Enterprise+:
Includes all the features of Enterprise plan along with corporate security features, backup, and export, etc.
Project management is one of the most crucial aspects of a startup’s success. The above tools can help you with effectively handling and executing a project without any added stressors or hiccoughs. Managing a start-up can be a challenging task, and you might make a lot of mistakes during the journey. Mistakes are a part of every growth curve, but some make too many of them can be avoided by using the startup project management tool.
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