These days Project Managers have lots of responsibilities like planning, scheduling, managing resources analyzing reports & many more. And to automate these time consuming tasks and to run a large team of professionals, a project management software becomes mandatory to be used by a Project Manager. There are thousands of softwares available in the market, but before choosing one of them you should look for some important features in them.

Here I am suggesting some important features which a Project Management Software should have :-

1. Traditional & Agile Project Management.
2. Issue Tracking.
3. For Task Management :- Scheduling, Time Tracking, Resource Assignment, Task Alerts, Group Tasks(Milestones, Sprint) & Task history.
4. For Budgeting & Expenses :- Forecast Budgets, Manage Expenses, Set Hourly Rates , Track Project & Staff Hours & Invoice and payment tracking .
5. For Collaboration :- Document Management , Forums, Online Messages, Chat, Activity Updates, Email Notification & online Meeting Tool.
6. And Lastly for Resource Management :- It should manage / search resources by their skills and resource planning.
   
   

Here you can see a comparison chart of some of the important Project Management Tools.

Please keep these features in your mind before choosing a Project Management Software.

In the present scenario when you are overburdened with loads of work, packed schedules and unmet deadlines, it becomes a dire need to integrate automation tools into your business. A good project management tool may help you in achieving desired results. In fact, 87% of high-performing companies use project management tools. Selecting the best tool for your business is really very important and difficult at the same time. But it becomes easy when you know exactly what set of features you require. To automate most time consuming tasks, we need the best project management tool which would implement all the tasks and covers everything in our required feature set. The plethora of options available make it a daunting task to select the best project management tool.

Here are some of the must have features you should consider while selecting the best Project Management Tool:

Planning and scheduling

When managing a team, it is very important to have responsibilities and tasks of the team outlined and visible. This would help in avoiding any misunderstandings and knowing whom to delegate new tasks. A good PM tool should provide you with features to plan and set priorities, deadlines, assigning tasks, scheduling etc.

Collaboration

Your team may have 10 or 100 people working on different tasks. It is highly important to establish an organized and quick communication between your team and their clients. It can be through file sharing, built-in messenger in the tool, dedicated dashboard for project updates.

Documentation

The tool should provide you the feature to save, manage and organize all your data at one place and should should also provide you an easy access to it.

Painless Time Tracking As most of the companies bill on hourly basis, it is crucial to have a possible way to track the hours. A built-in timer and tracker is a very important feature to look for in any PM tool.

Project and Productivity Reports

To keep yourself updated with the projects progress is extremely important. Any PM tool should provide you with insightful reports of your projects whether its a time-sheet or a weekly productivity chart.

Mobile App

Almost every brand/business have their mobile apps available. Use of mobile phones has increased rapidly over a period of time and according to a survey done by Litmus, more than 47% of emails are opened on mobile devices. The tool you choose should have a dedicated mobile app and it should facilitate the work style of your team.

Project budget management

The bigger the project, the more expenses you need for its documentation and management. A good PM tool should track your expenses and provide you a quick and clear reporting on the budget performance. It should track the time spent on tasks, add hourly rates to users and generate invoices automatically in accordance to the work done.

Desktop Record and Share

There are many tools which allow you to record your work and share with your clients or other team members. This helps in maintaining transparency within the team and also allows in providing visual help through videos and presentations.

I totally agree with Amrinder that their are hundreds of project management tool over market but you have to chose one with best and verity of features at minimal cost, Without making an answer too long here is the one point which I would like to mention and it is that you should go for the tool which provides you Time Tracking and productivity Reports rest other features are almost same in all PM tools.

Time Tracking plays a pivotal role in Project Management and is directly connected with the success or failure of a project. When we talk about time tracking it not only means time management but also refers to effective resource management within the stipulated time frame. Here time tracking is crucial as it can help us to track vital stats like Real-Time Progress of project and how productive the employee is. Prioritising tasks is the need of the hour. But along with all these, there is one more ingredient without which Project Management is just like "sheep without a shepherd. The missing ingredient which I am pointing about is Invoicing.

And yes there exists innumerable tools for attaining all this information in one place. And one such tool is, FindNerd

FindNerd is a complete Project Management and Task Management Tool with core features for Time Tracking it's currently in beta stage and most importantly it's free of cost.

Core features of FindNerd:

• Plan and Monitor Project Tasks & Milestones
• Stand alone PM Tool
• Automatic Status Alerts
• Issue Tracking
• Minute by minute Resource Tracking
• Desktop Record and Share
• Project and Productivity Reports
• Collaborate with Team and Clients

Hii harish,

Project management tool delivers the better ratio of detecting the actual outcomes of a particular project. Although all tools are the great medium of project status but however it depends upon your kind of compatibility. Nowadays its a digital trend so, I think the below tool would be helpful to track your required tasks of project in different way which is easier as expected.

Asana is formally known as the efficient tool in PM terms because its organizes information in an optimal way. Apart from other PM tools like giant charts, bug tracking etc. This tool can be use by anyone without having some extra knowledge. This tool has to do list function, which makes creating and managing tasks exceptionally easy.

For more details please visit Asana

But if you don't want to spend your money in PM tool then i personally recommend Findnerd which is not only a PM tool but it also provides additional features as compared to Asana with zero Cost such key features are:

• Productivity Reports Easy Invoicing
• Easy Collaboration with Client and Team
• Enables you to perform Desktop Recording and Sharing
• Provides the Resource Tracking Services

Findnerd delivers the quality services along with the 24X7 techincal support, and i am personally using it.

Hello Harish,

Hope you are Doing good!

Thanks for asking such an interesting question.

You should go for the Project Management tool, which has following features.

Some of them are-:

• Task Management:- Manage all your Tasks and Sprints easily

• Budgeting and Expenses Management:-Manage all your expenses and set and track hourly rates.

• Collaboration:- Engage with your team and its members.