To track or not to track… Out of the question!
Startup setting is a daunting task not only because of the lack of funding, risks and market competition. It is quite hard to track the process of its development. Only imagine: you need to build a team consisting of at least 6 people who will perform tasks every day. These tasks will differ from one another not only in nature but in the duration, priority, and difficulty. So, you won’t be able to pay attention to all of it just with your pen and a notebook.
For your startup, you’ll need automated project management tools. Why? To save yourself some time for more important things like looking for investors, developing new and better features and improved user experience. In other words, it is necessary to improve your effectiveness and the team’s focus on their work. These tools visualize the plans, track the emerging issues, remind about the deadlines and even indicate if someone overworked. So, the main criteria for the perfect app would be the following:
1) user-friendly design and easy-to-understand structure (so that your team wouldn’t waste time trying to figure out what on the world it all means)
2) issue-tracking and assessing risks;
3) having an Agile methodology dashboard;
4) with a general set of features;
5) mobile-friendly.
Here, we gathered the necessary information about 8 best project management tools for your startup.
Jira
The company Atlassian worked their way from bugs radar to the weapon from unmet deadlines. Its first function was tracking software issues. Now, it’s one of the best tools for efficiency management. You can track all aspects of project development in one place.
Features:
- Scrum and Kanban boards with code, branches, pull requests and deployment status.
- Custom workflows show developer workload, the average age of the task and recently created issues.
- Roadmaps structure the work and show the full picture of the project.
- Agile reporting shows the effectiveness of customizable charts and tables.
- Agile Cards – extension for PRO users.
- Project Template Manager (for PRO).
Pricing:
- Cloud-managed FREE: <10 users; basic features; 2GB file storage and community support.
- Cloud-managed, $7/month: <5 000 users; + advanced permissions, anonymous access, and audit logs; 250GB file storage; local business hours support.
- Cloud-managed, $14/month: <5 000 users; +99 uptime SLA; potential updates: sandbox, IP allow listing, admin insight, project archiving and advanced roadmaps; unlimited storage, 24/7 premium support.
- Self-managed, SERVER plan from $10 for 10 users to $120 000 for 10 000 users.
- Self-managed, DATA plan from $20 400 for 500 users to $475 200 for 50 000 users.
Pros and cons:
+ Built for Agile and Scrum management, convenient for the IT industry;
+ Combination of bug tracking tool and management platform;
+ Customizable features;
+ Integrations with thousands of other apps;
– Hard to migrate from another platform;
– Complicated user interface;
– Not reusable reports.
– The mobile app leaves much to be desired