How to select the right Project Management tool for your business

When it comes to thinking about the right Project Management tool to choose to help you get organised in your business, it’s hard to know what to look for. There are so many on the market that it can be very confusing, and lead to overwhelm – and going around in circles but not selecting one and moving forward.

In this post, I’ll provide you with a simple framework on how to select the right project management tool for your business, and share the pros and cons of 3 of the more popular tools for small business with teams.

What is a Project Management Tool?

Understanding what a project management tool can do for your business goes a long way towards helping you select the right project management tool.

Often considered as a giant to-do list, they are so.much.more! Project Management tools turn your to-do list into a supercharged, time saving, organised task list for you and your team.

A Project Management tool helps you organise your to do’s and keeps you accountable to the plans you make.

It allows you to plan, collaborate with others, delegate with your team, and prioritise where you need to start every day.

In a nutshell, it’s

Centralised, capturing all of the tasks required for you and your business
Organised, allowing you to manage teams, tasks and schedules by project
Prioritised, allowing you and your team to manage their workload effectively without getting caught up in unimportant activities

Why is the right Project Management tool important?

As a small business owner or a team member in a small business, there are a lot of moving parts.

Operationally, there are all of the regular tasks that need to be tracked. These can be part of a bigger workflow, recurring tasks or one-off tasks.

Strategically, there are the goals, milestones and results that need to be tracked, broken down and reviewed regularly. It can be easy to lose sight of the big picture when you work in the details every day.

From a workload perspective, it’s important to know ‘who’s doing what, by when’, and to know that the tasks are spread evenly throughout the team.

From a management perspective, this is the biggest time saver. By documenting what needs to be done and the deadlines, you and your team can work transparently without the need to micro-manage. Each person can clearly see who has responsibility for a task, as well as the bigger picture – which helps the team understand their role in the process.

Finally, if you’re still working as a solo business owner, all of this still applies to you. You still need to be strategic, operational, manage everything and streamline it – especially so. It was a huge lift for me when I started using it. It saves you HOURS every week, helps you feel more organised, and helps you prioritise and plan ahead.

All of these important functions are essential for helping your business succeed without burning out.

How to select the right Project Management tool for your business

Below I have provided a comparison Table, against the following factors. These are areas that I think are important to consider.

Cost
Integrations
The flexibility of Views which is helpful if you are a visual or linear thinker
Capacity for growth
Chat functionality
Time Tracking
Automations
Sharing and collaborating

Pros and Cons of Trello

Pros:

t’s really visual and creatives love it – really easy to add images to make it pretty.
It’s quick and easy to get up and running
Moving tasks through a workflow using this visual process is clear and simple
Has checkboxes in the cards/ tasks

Cons:

As only board view, it’s really limiting
Yes, you can add the calendar, but why isn’t it just syncable from the get-go?
You can’t see ALL of the tasks. You have to go into each project individually so it’s hard to get the bird’s eye view. **note – you can if you add a power-up 🤣

Pros and Cons of Asana

Pros:

Really simple to set up your projects and tasks very quickly
Can easily flick through board, list and calendar view
My Tasks for prioritising tasks assigned to you is fantastic. It pulls in all of the tasks from all projects and allows you to sort them by due date, project or Today, Upcoming (7 days) and Later (more than 7 days)
Inbox makes collaboration super easy. There you will find any updates or comments to tasks you are watching, so that you can keep up to date easily. You can also create follow up tasks from there, show your appreciate or comment, without having to click through to the task
The Slack, Asana, Gmail combo is pretty awesome!

Cons:

The features that allow for more customised use are premium – such as the Dashboards, custom fields, forms and goals
The recurring task functionality is limiting.
Many (95%) don’t use the Inbox for collaborating, so don’t get the time-saving benefit.

Pros and Cons of ClickUp

Pros:

For the cost, it is mind blowingly good, and there are still some amazing features about to be launched
You get nearly all of the features at the free price to test them out
It can really become a business management hub for you and your team.

Cons:

It can take a little longer to get your head around it if you’re not used to thinking in folders/ lists/ tasks/ subtasks/ checklists
Because there are so many functions, it can be overwhelming (that’s where I can help you!)
Keeping up with all of the new features…and they’re still coming!

Your Next steps:

If you’re still thinking about the right project management tool for your business, then take some time to reflect on where you’re heading and assess use my table to help you determine which functions are more important to you.

I’m an Asana Certified Pro and a Vetted ClickUp Consultant. I like them both and different people/businesses suit different project management tools!

There is no 100% correct answer here, you can’t go wrong if you start. I just recommend starting with one to create the organisation and structure your business needs to level up.

If you want to chat with me about choosing which one, or moving from one to another, then click here to schedule a free call.

You can also book into the Productive Teams with Asana Workshop – click here for the latest dates.

(ClickUp workshop coming soon!)