Project the board programming is becoming progressively creative and with further developed highlights. They possess a noticeable spot among the board devices. Whether you are a venture director, designer, advertiser or imaginative, this product will make you significantly more helpful and less focused.
Is it said that you are restricted in time and financial plan? Try not to overreact; there are many free undertakings for board programming or, regardless, intended for all spending plans; here is a choice of the most fascinating. You can track down numerous other ventures the executives are programming on Appvizer.
Project Management Software: Paid Or Free?
Contrary to belief, paid does not mean better quality. Once this premise has been made, it depends on your needs. Free software often offers interesting but limited solutions for users or projects. On the contrary, with paid software, it is often possible to decide “your limits” by opting for a solution tailored to your needs.
Another factor to take into account is the assistance we expect to find. The best assistance services are the premium ones, where you can have different communication channels with the company and short response times. A common practice that should be considered is opting for software that offers a free version.
It will allow you to work on the project when the company’s size (and budget) is still limited. At the same time, it will be possible to upgrade to a Premium version later. All of this allows you to have both software you are familiar with and comfortable with and a solution that grows with the size and needs of your business.
Why And How To Choose A Software
Choosing software allows you to coordinate team members and structure a project plan in an orderly manner while limiting the risks of delays or financial losses. A more organized work is undoubtedly more fluid and less stressful.
For the choice of the software, there are criteria that you will have to take into account, especially if you want at the same time to keep a relatively low budget and have the functionalities you need for a top organization of your project. In the paragraphs below, we explain in detail what questions you should ask yourself.
What Are Your Privacy Needs For Your Data?
Software houses sometimes guarantee that your data will never be lost, damaged or resold. If this concerns you, invest in more expensive and safer software.
Task Or Project Management?
A task manager is often sufficient for agile marketing and sales teams. The notions of time spent, budget, and Gantt are less relevant than assigning tasks to your collaborators or yourself. On the other hand, task managers must be more open to real IT projects. For example, it is impossible to invoice, create milestones or integrate a Project Management methodology. More advanced solutions are preferred in this case but involve a higher cost.
Do You Need Planning Or Collaboration?
Working on the project does not necessarily mean planning a project. In many teams, the main task is to centralize information to collaborate and carry out a project. Project planning consists of analyzing a project’s variables and phases to build a subsequent plan. In project management, planning allows you to control the delivery of a project.
What Do You Want To Evolve Towards?
The question of your evolving needs should be raised immediately. Indeed, if your free software blocks your organization’s evolution, you will have to migrate your data to more suitable software. Migration is, therefore, very complex, time-consuming and expensive, with no guarantee that you will be able to migrate all your data.
How many users and how many projects?
The limitations of free project management software often relate to functionality, but not only. Zoho Project, for example, limits the free version to one project. Other software like Asana limits free users to a certain number of users. Take the most challenging scenario (e.g. five side projects and 30 users max) and see what the cost will be at that time.
Online Project Management Software
In this selection, we offer software with a free version, but for which it is possible to make a premium upgrade later; in this way, you can adapt your budget to each of these solutions.
Asana: The Collaborative Task Manager For Startups
Asana is an excellent task management tool that can be spread across several projects. The free version is so comprehensive that for most businesses, there’s no need to upgrade to the paid version.
Above all, Asana allows you to distribute tasks among all employees and supports online collaboration and dialogue to work more efficiently. Everyone knows what to do when they arrive at the office or after a meeting – no more to-do lists at the corner of the office or meetings that lead to no action.
However, Asana poses some problems of use, such as the too-easy deletion of tasks (with the impossibility of recovery) or the impossibility of customizing the fields of the tasks. Asana is excellent for managing small collaborative projects but only allows for effective project portfolio management.
Basecamp: The Software For Fny Platform
Basecamp is a SaaS software characterized by a highly intuitive interface. It allows users to use it without excessive effort in initial learning and is proposed as a useful collaboration tool. The mobile application is remarkable, well-made, and essential in its completeness. Unfortunately, this software is not free but allows a 30-day free trial and then offers an all-inclusive service for €99/month, proving to be decidedly cheap as the number of users increases.
Redmine: Open Source Project Management Software
Redmine is an Open Source solution. The project software is free, globally recognized, and offers all the features you need to work in project mode regardless of your team setup. Warning, however: Redmine must be hosted on your servers and maintained by a competent team (backup, security, SSL).
Its use is, therefore, not accessible due to operating costs. The software is particularly suitable for developers, but its use is suitable for all projects. Redmine is appreciated for its simplicity, customization of ticket formats, priorities and workflows. On the other hand, it’s simple and rigid interface (there are themes anyway) are not the features most appreciated by the public: no drag-and-drop or relative prioritization of tasks for the moment, and the uses are at the center of management efficiency of the project.
Trello: The Most Visual And Collaborative Tool
Trello understood that project management is all about collaboration and seeing the progress of ongoing tasks. Trello allows you to create projects that take the form of multi-column tables (customizable). Each column contains the tasks or ideas in the form of cards. Collaborators move them from left to right at each step.
Trello is free in the basic version and has a very well-designed mobile application. On the other hand, this free version poses a problem with privacy and data security. The software house has admitted to guaranteeing “more security” in the paid version. Finally, Trello is more like a task manager than a project management tool in that it neglects cost, time, budget, and administration functions.
Method: Strategic Project Management
The method is suitable for those who want to manage any project entirely and intuitively, whatever their activity: creative agencies, consultancy firms, architecture and engineering firms, software houses, training institutes, museums and foundations. Thanks to Wethod, they can manage projects and workflows in an organized and automated way.
This way, a 360° view of the company is obtained, displaying sales performance, productivity, project status, and workload distribution among team members. It is a platform that supports the entire management thanks to an interconnected system between CRM, project management and income statement. It provides graphs and insights into various business areas.
Its reports allow you to carry out a strategic analysis, monitor the productivity of projects, the health and progress of projects, and the organization of the team and activities. The software encourages professional growth thanks to sharing feedback, skills and interests and a system of OKRs that promote collaboration and achieving professional goals.
Zoho Project – Complete And Free Online Project Management
Zoho is software that offers a complete set of online tools at unbeatable prices. Zoho Project is a perfect example: the free offer allows an unlimited number of users to work on a single project with all the essential features. These include task management, document management, HR, budgets, time management, etc. Zoho doesn’t stop there: it has integrations with Microsoft Project, G Suite, and DropBox.
More Traditional Method: Excel, Flexibility First
Excel is not free, but since almost all companies have this software, its cost is zero. Excel has the advantage of not adding any new tools and being able to do almost anything you want. On the other hand, Microsoft Excel needs to be structured more to manage a project rigorously. Even starting from an Excel project management model, the risks of error are not inevitable (calculation of availability, margins, costs, times).
Also, the deletion of entries has no safeguards, and the traceability of actions needs to be revised. Microsoft Excel is therefore recommended for small projects, provided they are based on a proven model and in the project study phase. The tool allows several people to collaborate to remove the big picture from the project quickly.
Conclusions
Free project management software allows you to organize and collaborate better without requiring a budget. However, publishers limit features and associated services or use user data for advertising purposes to generate revenue. There are two kinds of software: task managers that answer collaboration problems and project management tools that answer scheduling problems. A third option between paid and free software emerges with Open Source software, which requires technical skills to install and maintain the software.
Read Also: Portfolio Management: Principle And Types
